Blog Some Genealogy

GENEALOGICAL & HISTORICAL RECORDS OF PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO are now on line with a great search feature.

This project is a true labor of love. The idea was conceived by Susan Kendall, Library Director; Polly Kronenberger, Webmaster; and the Preble County Room staff. Our Senior Aide, Judy Kennedy spent countless hours scanning court records. Polly developed an Access form so that Judy and the Preble County Room staff could create index to the images. Polly then used Cold Fusion to merge the index and scanned images. The result, a researcher’s dream. Not only an index to but also the actual scanned images of genealogical and historical records. The project is on-going.

VIA genealogy researchers seeking records of their ancestors in West Virginia, can thank Elaine Via Bouscher for this convenient chart of the VIA deaths that she has located and formated from the on-line West Virginia Vital Records. It is outstanding in that with one click you can view the original record.

Via Deaths from West Virginia Archives

MORE Via Deaths from West Virginia

This is the very first book to purchase for anyone doing genealogy in the United States. This gives the names, brief histories and boundary change dates of all counties. It is a constant source for the amateur and serious genealogist.

The Handybook for Genealogists : United States of America (10th Edition)

This wonderful site from Central Rappahannock Regional Library covers history of Fredericksburg, Stafford, Spotsylvania and Westmoreland counties of northern Virginia. HistoryPoint.org

This is great news for West Virginia researchers. The West Virginia Division of Culture and History is offering FREE birth, death and marriage certificates on-line.

The Division makes more than a million genealogy records available online to researchers
The West Virginia Division of Culture and History (WVDCH), with FamilySearch Archive (Genealogical Society of Utah), has announced the launching of its Vital Research Records online database. The new online database features more than a million West Virginia birth, death and marriage records-a valuable resource for genealogists and historians. According to agency officials, family history researchers can now search and view scanned images of the original birth, death and marriage records from six counties, as well as most statewide death certificates from 1917-54, on the Division’s website at www.wvculture.org/vrr.

Fredrick H. Armstrong, the Division’s director of archives and history, added, “The ability to view digitized photographic images of the actual records rather than just the typed transcriptions is unusual in the online genealogy community. Having access to the actual record images contributes to increased accuracy in family research and we’re proud to move West Virginia into the forefront of this movement.”

Developed in collaboration with FamilySearch Archive, which microfilmed, scanned and indexed the records, the initial phase of the project includes county records for Calhoun, Gilmer, Hardy, Harrison, Mineral and Pendleton counties. The database includes county birth records for the period 1853-1930, county death records for 1853 until the late 1960s, and county marriage records from the creation of the county until the late 1960s, all of which are searchable by name, county and date. Records from additional counties will be added over the next few years. Statewide death certificates will be added annually as the records become 50 years old.

For more information, e-mail wvvrr@wvculture.org or call Armstrong or archivist Debra Basham at (304) 558-0230. Visit the Division’s website at www.wvculture.org for more information about programs of the Division. ~~Ginny Painter, Deputy Commissioner/Communications Manager, West Virginia Division of Culture and History

This looks like a great site to do “free” research: SassyTazzy’s Online Genealogical Research Library

Welcome to my free online genealogy research library!

This site contains over 4,000 pages of genealogy transcriptions, extracts, images & a database. Including Bible records; birth, death and marriage certificates and records; deeds and land records; wills and probate records; manuscripts and documents; research notes; letters and correspondence; obituaries and other types of printed material; census and tax records; headstone inscriptions and cemetery records; Revolutionary war and Civil war records; old photographs; genealogy database; etc.

Here is another good site: Not Just Links - Genealogy Sites with Real Content

Revolutionary War Records of Fairfield, Connecticut

This book was originally published in 1932, as the third volume of Donald Lines Jacobus’ “History and Genealogy of the Families of Old Fairfield”. Since that time, these books have become standards of genealogical references for Fairfield, Connecticutt researchers. Volume III has never been reprinted until now. It has been retitled “Revolutionary War Records of Fairfield, Connecticut” and contains virtually all transcriptions of known Revolutionary War references to patriots of Fairfield. The author, Mr. Jacobus, was one of the best-known genealogy scholars of the twentieth century.

By testing the DNA of males, direct mail line descendants of an ancestor can be determined. The Y chromosome is passed from father to son with almost no changes from generation to generation. So a man’s Y-DNA is almost exactly the same as that of his paternal grandfather, continuing back in the same line for generations. This is the male line that inherits the surname. Therefore, if two men have the exact same Y-DNA or almost exactly the same Y-DNA, they are descended from a common ancestor. There are mutations that occur, so that usually the more differences there are between DNA samples, the farther back in time the common ancestor is.

It is extremely likely that the DNA test results that were the same in both living descendants were ones that the common ancestor had also. If we test more than two descendants and they all share the same test results, that increases the confidence even more that the ancestor’s DNA had those values. So we don’t need to dig up and test our ancestors. We can discover their Y-DNA by testing the Y-DNA of their descendants.