Showing posts with label Genealogy Websites. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Genealogy Websites. Show all posts

Friday, February 04, 2011

African-American Genealogy

Start Your Family Tree
If you watched the compelling TV show Who Do You Think You Are?  which led Vanessa Williams on a journey back in time as she discovered more about the ancestors that came before her, you may be wondering how to do your own African-American family tree.  Like any genealogy project, you start with what you know and take your research back step-by-step.

Begin with yourself and work backwards as they do in the TV show. Start your FREE family tree online to enter what you already know about yourself, your parents, your grandparents, and as far back as you know.

Invite your parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins and other family members to contribute what they know to add to your online tree - fill in names and dates, tell stories and upload photos.  Ancestry.com will automatically use what you enter to try and find more about your family in the world's largest online collection of historical records and family trees. Look for the green leaf.

Talk to the older people in your family.  You may be surprised what they know but never talked about because they thought no one was interested.  Here are some suggested questions to ask them to get the ball rolling.

African-American Genealogy at Ancestry.com

African American Collections at Ancestry.com
Start searching the world’s largest online collection of African American family history records now. You could find ancestors who served their country in wartime, learn about their homes, their careers and much more.. Ancestry.com is a subscription database, but you can examine all the records for free for 2 weeks with a Free Trial.

African-American Research
Step by Step Guide to finding your African American family tree. Learn how to do the different phases of African American Genealogy from gathering oral history to finding the slave owner to going back to Africa.

African American Research Center
Learn how to begin building your African-American family tree. For many African Americans, tracking down ancestors can present a unique set of challenges. Fortunately, a vast collection of resource materials are now available.

African-American Heritage Search Tips 
Tips and hints for getting the best results when searching Google and other search engines for African-American genealogy

Additional Websites
Here are some other free online  resources for finding African-American ancestors.

Here are further resources to begin your genealogy search. And here is a unique African-American search engine that searches multiple African-American genealogy sites across the web.

If you would like to use the same professional genealogists that helped with the research for Who Do You Think You Are, Contact ProGenealogists for a free estimate.

Your family story is waiting to be found.   "To know who you are you, you have to know where you came from."  Your journey can be as exciting, as emotional, and as surprising as the stories on the TV show because it is your personal family history.  The excitement and surprises happen as you uncover that story
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Thursday, January 13, 2011

Delaware Genealogy Links

Here are my favorite free Delaware statewide genealogy links:


Land and Maps

Military
You can learn a lot about an ancestor from his military pension records. 

Vital Records
Where to write for Delaware Birth and Death Records
Newspapers Search for obits, birth announcements, marriage announcements and other newsworthy events.
General
Delaware Naturalization Records
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Monday, October 11, 2010

Pennsylvania Genealogy Links

Here are some of my favorite state-wide free PA genealogy links.

Land and Maps

Military
You can learn a lot about an ancestor from his military pension records.  Here is how to
Order pension records from NARA.


 General
  • Pennsylvania Archives
    The Pennsylvania Archives were originally published as a 10 series of historical records in 135 volumes, covering the initial colonial settlement through the Civil War. The series contains military, tax, marriage, and land records, as well as documents from American history covering the Revolutionary War and the Whiskey Rebellion. Pennsylvania researchers will be glad to have these archives online and searchable. The Archives include:
    • Early Pennsylvania settlements, from 1664 to 1780.
    • The Revolutionary War (1775–1789).
    • The Whiskey Rebellion (1794).
    • The War with Mexico, 1846-1847
    • More Pennsylvania history through 1880.
Vital Records





    Newspapers
    Search for obits, birth announcements, marriage announcements and other newsworthy events.
    Free Ancestry Ancestry has some totally and always free Pennsylvania databases in addition to their fee-based Pennsylvania Databases.  The PA databases below are always free - no free trial necessary, but you may be asked to register.
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    Saturday, July 10, 2010

    Geocities? Reocities!

    Back when the internet was new, one of the places genealogists started putting their family trees was Geocities.  During these last 15 years, a whole lot of genealogy info was stored on Geocities.   Family trees, Civil War regiments, burial locations, obits, you name it. When Yahoo closed Geocities last year, a lot of info was lost forever for internet genealogy researchers.  While many active webmasters moved their sites, all too many did not.

    The Internet Archive  has archived Geocities webpages from various dates, but I've found the Internet Archive didn't always save all the interior pages of a site.

    However I have just discovered Reocities.  Reocities has archived much of Geocities and has an amazingly large amount of the interior pages archived also.

    To find a Geocities website you have bookmarked, just change the "G" in Geocities to an "R".  The rest of the URL remains the same.

    Examples:
    Change
    http://www.geocities.com/g96thpvi/ to
    http://www.reocities.com/g96thpvi/

    Change
    http://www.geocities.com/g96thpvi/lettersdiaries.html to
    http://www.reocities.com/g96thpvi/lettersdiaries.html

    Change
    http://geocities.com/Heartland/5251/obitscly.html to
    http://reocities.com/Heartland/5251/obitscly.html


    To search the reocities archives, do a site search in Google.

    Examples:
    site:reocities.com civil war burials pennsylvania
    site:reocities.com schuylkill county
    site:reocities.com mahady genealogy

    There is a lot of historical treasures tucked in these reocities sites. 


    Webmasters:  if you link to an old geocities site, simply change the "G" in geocities to "R" to continue linking.  You can also check the Internet Archive and see if either site has archived the interior pages.  I don't know if reocities has archived all old geocities sites, but it had the ones I checked.

    Reocities is historical information only.  There is no way that a webmaster can update his old site.  While some of it may become outdated, much of it is still valuable.  There are old letters, obituaries, regimental histories, and so much more.

    The Making of Reocities
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    Saturday, May 09, 2009

    My Genealogy Site is on Geocities. Now what do I do? Part III

    Geocities is soon closing its doors forever. If you have a genealogy site on Geocities, you may want to read

    Those who want to save copies of their Geocities sites before it closes have a couple of choices:

    • Copy each page manually using the Geocities File Manager
    • Use a program that automatically copies the whole website to your hard drive.

    Copying each page of a site individually might be OK for a small site, but for a larger site, it would be very tedious and extremely time consuming.

    I decided to try the free http://www.httrack.com/ to copy a Geocities website. Httrack is meant to be used to copy sites to browse them off-line, but is also ideal for copying a site for which there is no FTP such as Geocities sites.

    I downloaded the Windows version of httrack and tried it to copy a couple of my Geocities websites.

    The first site I copied was small - about 25 pages. Hhtrack copied my site to my hard drive in only a few minutes. Note: Httrack copies the linked pages only, so that if you have some pages or graphics in the Geocities file manager that are not linked to other pages, they will have to be copied manually.

    Then I tried a larger site that had over 700 pages. Httrack started copying this large Geocities site, but when it finished, I noticed I had many errors in the error log and saw that the whole site wasn't copied correctly.

    Part way through the copying of the site, the httrack error log started to show the error message "Service Temporarily Unavailable" for each page. I realized that once Httrack reaches the Geocities' bandwidth restriction, it copies the error page that Geocities displays instead of the page on your website. Thinking that perhaps Httrack's "resume download" feature would resume the download from when I started getting error messages, I found I was wrong. Since it copied the whole site as it was displayed (albeit with many Geocities error pages noting that the bandwidth restriction had been reached), Httrack started to copy at the beginning instead of resuming and I quickly ran into the bandwidth restriction again.

    Httrack does allow copying one directory at a time. I was able to copy directory by directory spaced out over time so as not to invoke the Geocities limit. Make sure each copy is at least an hour apart.

    If all of your files are in one directory, you can move them into separate directories for the purpose of being automatically copied. Just click on the check box for each page you want to move into a directory, then select move to a directory.

    Httrack does a good job of copying the linked pages of a website to your computer. However, you must manually copy anything from the file manager that is not linked.

    And if you have a large website, Geocities bandwidth restriction will keep you from automatically copying the whole thing. Check the error log for problems and check the pages you copied onto your hard drive to make sure you have your website pages and NOT the Geocities error page. You don't want to find out too late that you haven't successfully copied your whole site and have a couple hundred pages of Geocities error pages instead of your site.

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    Saturday, May 02, 2009

    My Genealogy Site is on Geocities. Now what do I do? Part II

    Geocities will be closing down later this year (2009). If you have a genealogy site on Geocities, you can take steps now so that when Geocities does close down, your site will already be moved and links around the Internet will already be pointing to your new site.


    I've outlined the steps to move your Geocities site to a new web host in
    My Genealogy Site is on Geocities. Now What Do I Do? Part I

    Also see:

    Once your site is moved, there is still more to do if you want your site to be found by other genealogists.

    If you have a Geocities site, it has probably been on the Internet for awhile and has built up a fair amount of backlinks from other websites. Once Geocities shuts down, these links will become broken and will no longer point to your site.

    You don't want to lose links to your genealogy site. The more sites that link to you, the better chance a distant cousin has of finding your site.

    Other webmasters who link to Geocities sites will want keep their links current and will appreciate an email with the new URL to your site. If they have to hunt for your new URL, there is less chance that your link will be updated. And once Geocities is gone, other webmasters may just delete all their Geocities' links en masse.

    But how do you find out who links to your site? Use the link: command in the search engine box:

    • Type link:http://www.geocities.com/smithfamilytree/ into the Google searchbox. (This URL is made up. Please substitute your own URL)
    • Type link:http://www.geocities.com/smithfamily tree/ into the Yahoo searchbox.
    Note that there is no space after the colon and before the URL. Surprisingly, Yahoo will generally list a lot more backlinks to a site than Google.

    Once you have moved your site and found out who links to your Geocities site, you can write to these webmasters. It is definitely worth the effort to request the links to your site be updated.


    Go to each listed website and look for a link that says Contact me or Email the Webmaster or something similar. Your letter to the webmaster of the site that links to yours should include:

    • the URL of the page where your link appears (this is the linking site URL, not your URL)
    • Your site name
    • your old Geocities URL
    • your new URL

    Giving the URL of the page your link is on keeps the webmaster from searching for your link.

    Here is an example of what to write:

    Dear Webmaster,

    On your website on page http:www.biggenealogydirectory/links.html, could you
    please update the site called Mahady One Name Study.

    Old URL: http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Bluffs/4447/

    New URL: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mahady



    Thanks so much

    Some websites have automated the process to update a link. Look for a link that says Update your Link or a variation of that, then follow the instructions for the update link process.

    Be sure to cut and paste your URLs to lessen the chance of typing errors when sending your Update Link emails.

    As I write this, I realize it might be a smart idea for webmasters to list their former Geocities URL on their new site so that if someone searches for the old Geocities URL when it no longer exists, the new site will appear in the search results. I am going to add this as a footnote to my own sites so that if someone only has the old geocities URL, they can still find the new site by searching for the old URL.

    Mahady One Name Study was formerly located at http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Bluffs/4447/


    TO BE CONTINUED

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    Wednesday, April 29, 2009

    My Genealogy Site is on Geocities. Now what do I do? Part I

    You may have heard that Geocities will be closing down later this year (2009). There are many genealogy sites on Geocities, and sadly, many of these sites may be lost if the webmasters don't move the sites to a new location.


    Important Announcement

    After careful consideration, Yahoo! has decided to close GeoCities later this year. You can continue enjoying your GeoCities service until then — we just wanted you to let you know about the closure as soon as possible. We'll share more details this summer. For now, please visit the help center     for more information.

    How to fnd genealogy on Geocities sites.

    If you have a genealogy site on Geocities (as I do), these are the steps you can take NOW so that when Geocities does close down, your site will already be moved and links around the Internet will already be pointing to your new site.

    Why is it important to start now?

    • You can put a link from your Geocities site to your new site so both people and search engine spiders can find your new webpages. This will give Google and other search engines the chance to find your new site and index it. It will also give people a chance to find your new site and bookmark it. If you wait until Geocities closes to move, you may miss out on this linking opportunity. You cannot count on Geocities to allow pointers to your new site once it closes, and it sometimes takes months for Google to fully index all the pages of a new site.

    • Webmasters that link to your site may be inundated with link changes once Geocities closes, so you have a better chance of getting your links changed before the deluge of link change requests.
    • You don't know how much notice Yahoo will give before Geocities closes for good. Copy your site now before it is gone forever.

    How to Move Your Genealogy Site.

    Copy your site page by page to the hard drive of your computer. To do this, go into the Geocities file manager and open one page at a time, copy and paste the page to Notebook or an HTML editor, then save each page into a folder on your hard drive using the same Geocities file name. Example: page1.html or familytree.html Also, copy all of the image files on Geocities to your computer.

    This serves two purposes.

    • You will now have a backup for your website.

    • You can make changes to the website offline and then upload to new server

    Edit: Dick Eastman likes http://www.httrack.com/ which will automatically copy your website to your hard drive. I haven't tried this free program, but I'm for anything that automates the tedious process of copying a site.

    If you have a genealogy site, it makes sense to move your website to the Freepages at Rootsweb. The advantages of Rootsweb are:



    Of course, there are other free places to put a genealogy website. Your ISP may have some free space available. Search Google for free web hosting to see what else is available if you don't want to move to Rootsweb.


    How to Build a Genealogy Site at Rootsweb.

    I moved my Geocities sites to Rootsweb, so that is the process that I am going to describe.

    • Request space for your website at Rootsweb.
    • Copy your Geocities site page by page (or use http://www.httrack.com/ to automatically copy) and save to a folder on your computer keeping the same HTML names. This will keep the links on your site from becoming broken.
    • FTP or upload your site from this folder on your computer to Rootsweb. How to FTP your site to Rootsweb.
    • Change each page at the Geocities site to point to your new Rootsweb site. Example: This site has moved to Rootsweb (provide link) Please update your bookmarks.

      Here is an example of how I did it. http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Prairie/4280/1886.html

      You want each page to point to its corresponding page on the new website. You do not want all pointers to link to the index page of your new site. It is important to link to your new website and remove the content from each old Geocities page because:

      • You want to give Google and other search engines plenty of time to find your new site so that it will index ALL the pages. It can take Google a surprising long time to find and index all the pages of a new site.

      • Google penalizes duplicate content (sometimes by not indexing the new site) so you only want to have your website content on one website at a time.


    • Test all your links on your new site to make sure they work.
    • Check all the images to make sure they work.

    • Set up a new Rootsweb guestbook

    TO BE CONTINUED

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