While helping a patron with her Chicago genealogy recently, I came across a few other very helpful websites that anyone doing Chicago genealogy should know about and use. The Newberry Library has a great page on Chicago Genealogy. But don't overlook their research guides page, either, which has many helpful links to researching Chicago history.…
Finding an obituary, marriage notice, or news article about your ancestor in a newspaper can be thrilling, giving details to an event that the official record doesn't convey. But where and how can you find these gems?The answer is three-fold: Some newspapers have been digitized and are available through subscription databasesSome newspapers have been digitized…
I hope some of you out there will be able to take advantage of some free databases this weekend: Find My Past, which is primarily English records, and ArkivDigial, which is Swedish records. Read Dick Eastman's blog with more details on FindMyPast and ArkivDigital.Have a happy and successful genealogy weekend!~Sonia
At our Networking Group last night the conversation turned to Social Security Application cards. You can send away for an ancestor's application for a Social Security number (Form SS-5). This application can reveal helpful facts such as the ancestor's birthdate, place of birth, and parents' names, even your ancestor's signature. Here's a copy of a…
At our last Genealogy Writing Group we also talked about passenger lists, immigration, and finding the "holy grail" of genealogy: the home town or parish in the country of origin. I don't have any magic tricks for answering this question; usually finding immigration information is the result of lots of hard, diligent work. But we…
At our Genealogy Writing Group yesterday our discussion centered around adding images, specifically post cards, to our writing. One of our group had post cards of sites of places important to her family history.If you want to look for post cards to buy, here are a couple of post card shows in the area to…
Earlier this week I noticed several genealogy patrons looking at city directories. Have you tried finding your ancestor in such a directory? Larger cities often had city directories which contained lists of businesses and residents, sort of like a phone book except that you didn't have to own a phone to be included in one.…
Grace DuMelle of the Newberry Library joined us last night for an interesting and informative presentation on Chicago genealogy. She emphasized the address changes that took place in 1909 and the wealth of newspapers available for our area--there's more than just the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times.Grace mentioned several databases that Cook Library subscribes…
There certainly is a lot of overlap in the world of digital book collections. Today's topic, the Digital Public Library of America, claims to be a site that brings different online collections together into a single platform and portal. Translation: they are a website that points to other sites containing digital collections. How could you…
www.finditillinois.org/tryitAt our last Genealogy Networking Group, we explored some of the TryIt! Illinois databases. I should say, we attempted to explore the databases. We were unable to access some databases, most notable those databases produced by ProQuest. I intended to email the State Library the next time I came in to work, but you Cook…
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