Christmas week

Merry Christmas this week ...

Christmas is a great time to do family history work without getting on the computer to do research. This is a time where loved ones get together for long periods of time, which makes it a great time to get to know people better.

Take some time to ask questions that can help you better understand your family. If you need some ideas of questions to ask click on the link for 150 possibilities. When you ask questions make sure to find a way to record their answers. You can use paper and pencil to record their memories or pull out your cellphone and use a recording app. One app you might consider for recording is the FamilySearch app. If you use this app, you should know that it will be loaded to the FamilySearch website for you to play over and over.

The stories you learn this holiday season will become a treasure to you and your family.

Here at the center we want to wish you a fun and safe Christmas.

How can the new probate/wills record collection help my research

One of my new favorite databases on Ancestry to research in is the US Wills and Probates. Ancestry is still updating this database, but the information that you can find here is pure gold. This record type has been highly underused because they have not been easily accessible, but with the help of Ancestry, and FamilySearch we are now going to be able to use the valuable information found in these records.

In my own family history research, we have been searching for the death date, of one William Lumpkin Figg. There have been some who believed he died in 1912, 1918, and 1936 all in Linn County, Iowa; which do you pick. For me I picked none of them because I could not prove any of them. I searched for death records in Linn County and time and again came up empty handed concerning William. In my genealogical database the death on William has been blank about five years, but I had not given up hope that I would one day find the date of his death.  

The day this database was rolled out, I decided that I was going to search to see if there were any Figg's with a will in this area. One very promising probate popped up for a William Figg in 1918. When I clicked into the document this is what was found... 

Here I learned that this WM Figg was a resident of Linn County, Iowa, but he died in Buchanan County, Iowa on 9 January 1918. When I saw the dates on this document, I could not immediately take this as my own person, but it made me realize that for the last five years I could have been searching for a death in the wrong county. In order to figure out if this was the correct William Figg, I kept reading the document to see what other information I could come up with. As I continued to analyze the document, his heirs were mentioned as such:

When I found out who the heirs were for this William Figg, a joyful cheer came out of my mouth, because this is my family. I not only know when and where William Figg died. I now have a new county to write to for a death certificate for William. I also know where each of his children were living at the time of his death. This can be very helpful when I start to search for more information about each of their families.

The valuable information that was found in this probate, made me excited for the continued search for other people who possibly have a will/probate. I absolutely love when I am looking at the record collections Ancestry has added or updated and seeing this database increase in size. If you have not started searching for the gold in this database, start today. Take one person who you think might have a will/probate and search for them. The information you can use in these documents is well worth the search.

MyHeritage.com

MyHeritage is a great website for people who are looking for information about their family in other countries. Their goal is to connect people from one side of the ocean to the other. I have heard MyHeritage, called the Facebook of family history.

Here are some great features of MyHeritage…

1. Smart Matches - This feature takes the information from the tree you uploaded and looks at all the rest of the trees on the website. When matches are found in these different trees, you get an email, stating that there is someone else who has a tree with the same people as you. When you see these trees, you will find that you cannot just add the information to your tree, but you can request to visit with the person who owns that specific tree.
2. Record Matches - This feature looks at your tree, and then matches each person to records in their database. When you decide to attach records to your tree, remember to look at the bottom of the page, and you will see more records that can be attached to your tree. This feature is called "Record Detective".
3. Research Tab - MyHeritage will find a lot of records for you, but that does not take away having to search for additional records, not found by the computers. In order to research, you can use either the search all records, or pick a category available.

One really fun thing to do on MyHeritage to get to know your family, is to look at the family statistics, which is found under the home tab. You can visually see on charts different events in your ancestor's lives.

Have fun getting to know MyHeritage, and how you can use it in your family history research!