Thank You for Attending This Webinar, Which Is Part of the Jamboree Extension Series (JES) Produced by the Southern California Genealogical Society
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Thank you for attending this webinar, which is part of the Jamboree Extension Series (JES) produced by the Southern California Genealogical Society. The JES webinars meet one of the most important goals of the Society: to offer educational programs for our members and for family historians and genealogists everywhere. Our webinars are offered to the public, free of charge, on the live (first) broadcast. As a benefit of membership, SCGS members are able to access the webinar archive at any time of day. The Society does incur costs for conducting the webinars, including speaker honorarium, use of the GoToWebinar software, as well as valuable volunteer time. SCGS is committed to offering these sessions as long as we are financially able to do so. Please consider supporting this effort by joining our Society as a member, or by making a contribution to our education fund. Online Membership: http://tinyurl.com/SCGSmembership Online Contribution: http://tinyurl.com/SCGScontribution Of course, members enjoy a number of other benefits which are summarized elsewhere in this packet. We encourage you to join us, even if your family hasn’t made it to California yet. You’ll be glad you did! Thank you again for your participation, and for your continued support of the Southern California Genealogical Society. GENEALOGY HACKS Tricks to Crack the Top Genealogy Web Sites By Rick Crume Southern California Genealogical Society Webinar June 20, 2012 If you regularly return to the same Web sites and repeat the same old searches without finding much, it’s time to give your search an overhaul. These tips and tricks for effectively mining some of the Internet’s most-frequented family history stops will help you get out of that rut—and finally find your ancestors. The 1940 U.S. Census Ancestry.com and MyHeritage.com are creating The 1940 U.S. federal census was released to the their own indexes. public on April 2, 2012. You can view a blank 1940 Until the records are indexed, you need to census form at www.census.gov/history/www browse by enumeration district to find your ancestor /through_the_decades/questionnaires/1940_1.html. in the 1940 census. Ancestry’s browse feature is The 1940 census is available for free on the probably the easiest way to do that. Also, Ancestry following websites: has enumeration district maps at http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=3028. 1940census.archives.gov And you can use the National Archives’ tips at This site is the result of a contract between the www.archives.gov/research/census/1940/start- National Archives and a genealogy company, research.html. Archives.com. ELLIS ISLAND Ancestry.com ellisisland.org Ancestry is creating a basic name index first, but Finding your relatives’ names in ships’ passenger will create a more-detailed index later. The 1940 lists is exciting, but not always easy. It’s a myth that census will be free through the end of 2012. Ellis Island immigration officials purposefully changed immigrants’ names. The volunteers who Archives.com transcribed passenger records to create the database may have made the occasional mistake, though, or censusrecords.com had difficulty interpreting handwritten records. This site is owned by brightsolid, which also Finding your relatives may require some creative operates the British genealogy sites searching methods and taking advantage of all your findmypast.co.uk and Genes Reunited. options for searching the database. If you can’t find a passenger, maybe the FamilySearch.org name is there, but not spelled the way you expect. The site doesn’t support wildcards, but you don’t MyHeritage.com/1940census need to spell out the whole first name. The basic If you have a family tree on MyHeritage.com, the search finds first names that begin with what you site will automatically match it to the 1940 census as enter in the box. Search on Joh and matches include it is indexed and notify you of relevant results. Joh., Johann and John. Names are transcribed as they appeared in It may take several months to index the 1940 census. the original records, even if they were abbreviated. FamilySearch, Archives.com and findmypast.com So try Chas for Charles, Eliz for Elizabeth, Geo for are collaborating on an index. You can volunteer to George, Jas for James, Jno for John, Joh for Johan help create the index at https://the1940census.com. or Johann, Jos for Joseph, Patk for Patrick, Thos for 1 Thomas and Wm for William. Also, try foreign the First Name search box, you won’t get any versions of names, like Pierre or Pietro for Peter, and matches. To search on more than one given name, nicknames like Ed, Tom and Will. use FamilySearch Beta, FamilySearch Record If a last name can be written as more than Search or Ancestry.com. one word, try searching with and without the space, as in Dewitt and De Witt. ▪ Browse by ship’s name If you can’t find a match searching on a passenger’s ▪ Use the One-Step Web Pages by Stephen P. name, but you know the ship’s name, use Morse <stevemorse.org> to do advanced searches EllisIsland.org’s new ship search feature to browse This third-party site provides some search functions passenger lists by ship’s name. Select “Search by that are unavailable on EllisIsland.org. You can Ship” from the Passenger Search menu, the first choose from two One-Step search forms—White and letter of the ship’s name, an alphabet range and the Gold—to sort through the Ellis Island database. The ship’s name. Then you can browse lists by port of Gold form is usually the better choice because it lets departure and date of arrival. you search on similar-sounding first names and towns, traveling companion, marriage status and ▪ Browse by date of arrival exact date of arrival. The field for Port Name refers If you can’t find a match searching on a passenger’s to the ship’s port of departure. name, but you know the ship’s date of arrival, use Both the Ellis Island and One-Step sites let Ancestry.com’s New York Passenger Lists, 1820- you search on just a middle name or initial if you 1957, select the “contains” option. A search on a first name www.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=7488, to starting with Joh matches Joh, John and Johann. A browse passenger lists by date of arrival. In the search on a first name containing J matches John W “Browse this collection” on the right side of the and William Joseph. screen, select the year, month and day of the ship’s The Ellis Island site ignores periods, so a arrival and then click on a ship’s name. search on J or J. finds J. and John. The Gold Form searches on a period, so a search on J. finds J., but FAMILYSEARCH.ORG not John, and a search on J finds both J. and John. www.familysearch.org The Ellis Island site’s First Name search box The site’s new homepage has tabs for doesn’t allow spaces, so if you enter a first name and Records, Trees, Catalog, Books, Learn and Indexing. a middle name or middle initial, you won’t get any matches. The One-Step Gold Form allows spaces, so Records you could get matches if you enter “John W.” or “C. Millions of historical records are already Randall” in the First Name box. If you want to online and you can search all of them at once from search on both a first name and a middle name or the FamilySearch.org homepage. Since the church middle initial, use the Gold Form. began microfilming genealogically useful records in When you select the “sounds like” option 1938, its collection has grown to 2.4 million rolls for names on the Gold Form, it uses the Daitch- with 3.5 billion record images. You can access them Mokotoff Soundex, an improved version of the at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City or standard American Soundex. The option to find through FamilySearch Centers worldwide for a phonetic matches on a last name also finds similar- small fee, but most of the records are not indexed. sounding names, but greatly reduces the number of Now FamilySearch has taken on the daunting task of false hits. digitizing its entire microfilm collection and making To search for every passenger from a the images available online. Putting FamilySearch’s particular place, use the Gold form and specify the huge collection of records online, with indexes, will town name, but leave the last-name field blank. truly revolutionize genealogy. Some collections have just indexes or ▪ Search on a middle name transcriptions, while others are linked to digital You can search EllisIsland.org by either a first name images of the original records. Sometimes digitized or initial or by a middle name or initial, but not by records go online before they are indexed. more than one name or initial. If you put a space in 2 You can search on just a name or also names. Experiment with different combinations of specify an event (birth, marriage, residence or death) search terms. Remember, you don’t have to fill in and add a spouse’s name or parents’ names. Keep in every box. Here are a few search strategies: mind that you don’t need to fill in every box on the • An uncommon name. Just search on the search screen. Even the last name is optional. first and last name, like Dubois Cornish.