Footnote.com Always Free Databases

Fold3 (formerly Footnote.com), which has a partnership with the U.S. National Archives, has a number of always-free online databases.

What's Free on Fold3

• 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.
  
  • Early Pennsylvania settlements, from 1664 to 1780.
  • The Revolutionary War (1775–1789).
  • The Whiskey Rebellion (1794).
  • More Pennsylvania history through 1880.

• US Milestone Documents
  These are the documents that have shaped American history from the 1776 Declaration of Independence to the 1964 Tonkin Gulf Resolution. You can view images of the originals and learn where each document is archived. This collection provides a first-hand look at some of the nation’s high and low points, including the purchase of Alaska, the 1945 surrenders of Germany and Japan, recognition of Israel, censure of Joseph McCarthy, the 19th amendment, and more. Some of the images would be a nice addition to flesh out timelines in your genealogy program or as backgrounds in a heritage scrapbook.

• Project Blue Book
  Nearly 13,000 government UFO reports from within North America and even around the world are documented in these files. These are text descriptions of encounters or sightings during the years 1947 to 1969. Since the names of people involved in the sightings are excluded, there is little genealogical value. I did think it would be rather funny if a flying saucer has been spotted when I was born or another important day in my life, but I didn't find any. Perhaps you may. What is interesting to note is that most of the sightings that I read were spotted by the military, not civilians.

• Story Pages
  These user-contributed story pages are completely searchable. Story pages This is such a wide range of articles that I can't really do justice to describing them. Some of the stories I browsed are biographies of Civil War soldiers complete with uploaded photos, Civil War hangings and executions, family research, how-to's, letters, complete yearbooks. You can use the story pages to share photos and

Examining the full Revolutionary Pension Files at Footnote.com

Fold3 (formerly Footnote.com) in partnership with with the U.S. National Archives, is digitizing the Revolutionary War Pension Files to post online. These are the complete pension files taken from the National Archives microfilm publication M804, which includes an estimated 80,000 pension and bounty-land warrant application files. These pension records give full details about each veteran's history and service, as well as information about his family, state of health, and life after the war. Many of these pension files can contain upwards to 80 pages.

To locate a Revolutionary War soldier, you can use the browse menu if you know the state where the soldier served,. You can also use the Footnote search engine but you have to be very aware that there were many surname spelling variations during the 18th century.

I used the browse menu to look for my Revolutionary War ancestor, but since the digitization of the pensions is about 10% complete, my ancestor's records are not yet online. However, I did find my 5th great grand uncle, Harmon Aughe of Chester County, Pennsylvania.

His pension file begins with his affidavit of his duties as a soldier. He says he was drafted while living in Pikeland township, Chester Co.. Pennsylvania and that he was involved in building breastworks. He describes his movements "thence to Chadd's Ford on the Brandywine where the battle was fought...thence to Chestnut Hill and Germantown, where the battle was fought, thence to winter quarters in Valley Forge, Chester Co. Pa.





In these few words, I realized how the history of my country and the history of my family were intertwined. He was present at two early battles we lost to the British, and also wintered at Valley Forge. Valley Forge is the story of suffering, sacrifice and ultimate survival against terrible odds, against hunger, disease, and the cold and became our symbol of the will to prevail.

Further down in his affidavit, Aughey states he knew General George Washington, General Lee and General Wayne.


His affidavit give a lot of genealogy information.. He tells that his date and place of birth is written in the family bible which is now owned by his sister's daughter who lives in another state. He tells of his migration from Pennsylvania to Virginia to Ohio to Indiana. He gives the names of his children and the states where they live.

Unfortunately for Harmon, he also states he lost his discharge papers as he pioneered to Indiana and no one in Indiana can substantiate his affidavit. Because of that and also because part of his war duties were wagon service to carry supplies, his pension claim was disallowed .

At the end of his file is a letter written to NARA during the 1930's inquiring about his war service. The letter doesn't say why the inquiry was made, but I assume it was either for genealogy reasons or to obtain documentation to join the DAR. If so, this letter give the names other descendants of the soldier, possible distant cousins, along his address.

All the names in his pension file are annotated and indexed for easy reference and searching.

I was glad to find the genealogy information, but learning that he survived the winter at Valley Forge and knew George Washington and Mad Anthony Wayne was the most exciting to learn.

If you want to view these fascinating Revolutionary War pensions to read about history as our ancestors lived it, Start Your Free Trial with Footnote.com.

New Ancestry.com Always Free Databases

Ancestry.com has recently added several databases to its list of always-free records.

You can see these and other always-free Ancestry.com databases at Ancestry Freebies

The new databases include:

Minnesota

• Minnesota Divorce Index, 1970-1995
• Minnesota Territorial and State Censuses, 1849-1905

Germany

• Brandenburg, Prussia Emigration Records
• German Leaders of Yesterday and Today
• Wuerttemberg, Germany Emigration Index
  

Footnote.com Teams with Family Search to Release Revolutionary War Pension Files

Yesterday FamilySearch announced that it will provide free services to archives and records custodians who wish to digitize, index, publish, and preserve their collections. This is in addition to the project already underway to digitize and make freely available the 2 million rolls of microfilm stored in the Granite Mountain Records Vault.

Today we see the first announcement of this collaboration. I suspect there will be many more.

May 15, 2007 06:15 AM Eastern Daylight Time

Footnote.com Teams with Family Search to Release Revolutionary War Pension Files




Revolutionary War Pension Files Will Be Available for Free at All Family History Centers Worldwide

LINDON, Utah--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, Footnote.com announced an agreement with FamilySearch, historically known as the Genealogical Society of Utah, a nonprofit organization sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints. FamilySearch is the world’s largest repository of genealogical information.

This new partnership brings together two organizations that will utilize their combined resources to digitize and make available many large historical collections. The first project will be the three million U.S. Revolutionary War Pension files which will be published for the first time online in their entirety.

“The Revolutionary War Pensions will provide an intimate look into the historical events and individuals that shaped our country’s history,” said Russell Wilding, CEO of Footnote.com. “We are excited about this relationship which enables us to put many more historical collections online.”

The Revolutionary War Pension Files feature original records that include muster rolls, payrolls, strength returns and other miscellaneous personnel pay and supply records of American Army Units from 1775-1783. They provide a wealth of new information for historians and genealogists which they can share with other colleagues and family members.

“We are excited to partner with Footnote.com to provide historians and genealogists alike a tremendous source of data that will assist greatly in putting puzzle pieces together to create a rich family history,” said Paul Nauta, manager of Public Affairs for FamilySearch. “This affiliation allows us to better meet one of our goals to provide as much data online as fast as possible for those working on their genealogy.”

Also, as a part of this agreement, Footnote.com will be accessible for free in all FamilySearch operated centers worldwide. FamilySearch has more than 4,500 Family History Centers in 70 countries.

Since partnering with the National Archives in January 2007, Footnote.com has digitized over eight million historical records. Each month an additional two million documents are digitized and added to the site. Footnote.com estimates that by the end of 2007 it will have made over 25 million digitized documents available on its web site.

To see free examples of the Revolutionary War Pension Files, go to Revolutionary War Pension Files

Fold3 (formerly Footnote.com) has now begun offering free three-day trial memberships. Start Your Free Trial with Footnote.com

Using the Google Toolbar to Search Genealogy Sites

If you have wanted to search a genealogy site that doesn't have its own search engine, it is possible to search that site using a site search on the Google Toolbar.

Actually, you can the Google Toolbar site search even if the site has it own search engine to make use of the google operators such as quotes, the + or the -, all of which may not available on a site search engine provided by the site.

Download the free Google Toolbar, you will notice the Google Search box that is always visible on the Toolbar. In order to use this search box to do site searches, go to the Toolbar Settings, then choose Toolbar Options,, then click on the Buttons tab. Make sure there is a check mark next to Search Site.

Now look for that same Search Site icon on your toolbar. To search a site, go to the site, enter a keyword into your Google toolbar and click on the Search Site icon on the toolbar.


It is not necessary, but you can use the Google operators for site searches:

• Use a plus sign [ + ] before words that you want to appear in your search results exactly.
• Use a minus sign [ - ] before words that you do NOT want to appear in your search results.
• Put a name or location in quotes so that Google will search for that exact phrase.

The Google Toolbar site search is something I use everyday. For more about Google operators and how to use them, go to Google Genealogy Tips.

You can also use the Google Toolbar to search a page.

Note: The Google Site Search will work on sites that Google can spider or index. For database sites such as ellisisland.org, you will have to use the database search engine.

Footnote.com

Fold3 (formerly Footnote.com) launched a new website in January 2007 in partnership with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Footnote has already posted close to 9 million NARA documents and is adding 2 million documents per month! And these original documents are found no where else on the web.

Footnote.com is the only Web site wholly devoted to making digital images of American historical documents, said Susan Cooper, a spokeswoman for the U.S. National Archives.

The National Archives holds 9 billion pages of documents and it has no money to turn them into digital images, so it readily agreed to a partnership with footenote.com, she said.

Footnote has a very cool interface with an easy-to-follow browse page. It is quite an impressive site to see.

The name Footnote is very descriptive as this site encourages users to add "footnotes" or annotations to documents or pictures on the site.

Footnote also encourages members to add stories, the footnotes to history. You do not need to be a paid member to add or search the stories. Some of the stories I was saw yesterday were high school yearbooks complete with photos and student names, Surname Research Groups, Native American Heroes, & Black Spies of the Civil War. It is quite a diverse group of stories and growing every day. All free and searchable.

Some of the Footnote NARA Record Collections so far are:

• Naturalization Records 1792-1966 - Petitions and Declarations for NY, PA, MA
• Pennsylvania Archives 1625-1880 (a FREE database)
• Civil War Pensions Index 1865-1899
• Mathew B. Brady Collection of Civil War Photographs
• Confederate Soldiers AL, TX, VA
• Southern Claims Commission
• Revolutionary War Rolls
• Papers of the Continental Congress 1774-1789
• Papers of the Constitutional Convention 1787
• Federal Bureau of Investigation 1908-1922
• City Directories for New England States

You can search and find a thumbnail of the original document and a snippet of what it contains. And if you are interested to see the complete record, Start Your Free Trial with Footnote.com

Genealogy Searching with the Google Toolbar

Google Makes Genealogy Searching Even Easier with its Toolbar.

One of my favorite uses of the Google Toolbar is to highlight all occurrences of a word on a web page. If you have ever hunted for a name or a word on a very long genealogy web page, you can appreciate what a time saver this could be.

The Google Toolbar is part of the FREE Google Pack. You can download the free Google Toolbar along with other free and useful software offered by Google. You can choose to download as much or as little of the free software as you choose. When the Google Toolbar is installed on your computer, it automatically appears along with the Internet Explorer toolbar.

To use the highlight feature, make sure the word you want highlighted is in the Google Search box in the toolbar, then click on the highlight icon. All occurrences of the word are now highlighted in bright yellow on the page. No more wasting time hunting to see if a word on the page. Or even worse, no more leaving a web page thinking a word isn't on a web page because it was overlooked.


For example, let's say I want to find all occurrences of the surname Schneider on a web page. On web page I want to search, the names are not in alphabetical order making it hard to find each occurrence. When Schneider is typed in the Search box on the toolbar, the name appears beside the highlighter pen on the toolbar. Now I just click on the highlighter pen icon. When it is turned on , the pen turns yellow and the the background of the pen becomes white.



With the highlighter pen turned on, here is the column of unalphabetized names from the web page. Look at how easy it is to spot each occurrence of the name Schneider with the yellow highlight. And now none of the names will be overlooked. Simple, quick, and a real time saver.

While I choose to highlight only one word in this example, you can use the highlight feature to highlight multiple words. Each word will have its own color.




Word Find is another way to find all occurrences of a word on a web page using the Google Toolbar. Click on the search term next to the highlighter pen on the toolbar. Again, the word has to be in the search box of the Google toolbar. Each time you click on the word in the toolbar, you will be taken to the next occurrence of the word on the page. Another great time saver while genealogy searching.

Hint: If you download the toolbar, and the highlighter pen icon is not visible on your toolbar, go to the toolbar settings, select options, select the more tab, go down to Find on Page, and select Highlight and Word Find.

For more on genealogy uses for GooglePack software, go to Genealogy Uses for Google Pack software.

Easy Google Genealogy Searcher, Part II

This genealogy search tool, powered by Google, offers specialized searches for finding ancestors in historic books, historical society and other scholarly articles, genealogy blogs, and US patent searches. The Google Genealogy Searcher Part II uses Google to search databases that you may have not known existed.

Easy Google Genealogy Searcher, Part II

With the Google Searcher, Part II, you can search:

Google Books
Search the full text of public domain books that Google has digitized. You can download, save and print the book for free. These books include genealogy books, county history books, military books, municipal annual reports, and other out-of-copyright books that include the names of regular folks. This is a great resource. I found my Civil War ancestors in their regimental histories, and biographical data of other ancestors in county books. And Google continues to scan and digitize books.

Google Scholar
Search historical society papers, journal articles and college thesis for your ancestor. (I actually found a college thesis about an ancestor of my husband who had been a city mayor about 100 years ago - so you never know what you will find until you search)

Google Patent
Google Patent Search Search US patents issued from 1776 to the present. Patents were not just issued to inventors and researchers, but also to factory workers, farmers, miners and many other regular people. I searched for the county where my ancestors lived, and browsed the many patents. While I didn't find anything specific for my family, I was able to get a general sense about the county during the time my family lived there.

Google Blog
Search for ancestors, genealogy topics, locations, or relatives. There are thousands of genealogy blogs today. Some genealogy blogs are about individual family research and some blogs make genealogy database announcements complete with surnames. This is a huge untapped resource to search for your ancestors.

And don't forget the original
Easy Google Genealogy Searcher
Puts advanced Google features useful for genealogy searching on one page with suggested keywords and ideas for use in genealogy to help make the most of your genealogy Google searches.

Google and Abbreviations

When using Google for genealogy searches, watch your abbreviations! Google searches for the *exact* word entered into the search box. It does not convert an abbreviation to the whole word.

If in your search query you use the abbreviation for a location, Google searches only for web pages that use the location abbreviation.

For example, Google does not consider Pennsylvania and its abbreviation PA to be the same even though we may we may use them interchangeably. If you type PA into Google, it will search for those pages that contain the word PA, and your search will miss all the web pages that only use the word Pennsylvania.

To see for yourself, try searching Google for PA genealogy, then search for Pennsylvania genealogy , (or substitute your own location), and compare the different results for each search. The results are not the same!

On the other hand, when searching for transcriptions of old data, you can widen your genealogy search by using the old-fashioned location abbreviation. Here's a list of the old style U.S. state abbreviations. http://www.searchforancestors.com/archives/oldstateabb.html

If you abbreviate a search keyword, you won't get complete and accurate search results. Just something else to keep in mind as we search for our ancestors on the Internet.

Google and Easter Eggs

It seems appropriate on April Fool's Day and the week before Easter to talk about Google and Easter Eggs.

You may have noticed I'm a bit of a Google fan, and try to learn as much as possible about how to take full advantage of Google for genealogy searching. Genealogy Google Search Ideas

But I also enjoy the sense of humor that Google as a company has. Google has some surprises known as Easter Eggs which are hidden and unexpected features.

So in honor of Easter and April Fool's Day, here are some Google Easter Eggs I have found. There is no point in me describing these features. Easter Eggs have to be experienced, so be sure to click on each one. Enjoy!

Hint: You may have to be signed into your Google account to see some of these features.

• Easter Egg Game

• Google Reader and the End of the Internet

• Google in Other Languages


• Klingon
• Elmer Fudd
• Hacker (for the techies)
• Pig Latin

• Google Moon
  
  

  Google says: In honor of the first manned Moon landing, which took place on July 20, 1969, we’ve added some NASA imagery to the Google Maps interface to help you pay your own visit to our celestial neighbor. Happy lunar surfing. And if you zoom in far enough, you can see something that we all suspected all along!




• Use Google Maps for to get directions from Boston to Calais and get a surprising instruction. Take a look at the 9th direction on these Google Directions . Phew!
  




• Enter answer to life the universe and everything into the Google search box and Google calculator will give you the fictional answer. You have to be a fan of Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to get the joke, and it appears that some of the Googlers are.





• New Themes for Google Personalized Pages . I choose the beach theme which dynamically changes to match my time of day. Very cool! But look carefully at this image to see who appears on my theme at 3:14 A.M. I'll give a little hint - it befits anyone with Scottish ancestry. Most of the themes have their own Easter Egg. Happy April Fool's Day!