We don’t say this to scare you, but to encourage you to be cautious about the information you put online, be vigilant about knowing who is watching you online and be sure to keep your privacy settings up-to-date. There are many common sense actions you can take to protect your online privacy and reduce the chance you’ll be the next target for an identity thief or scammer.
The first step in protecting your privacy online is to ensure the tools—desktop computer, laptop, smartphone and/or tablet—you use to access the internet are as secure as possible. Follow these steps to secure your devices:

Lock or log off of your device when you’re done using it. Set a password to access your devices. To be extra cautious, disconnect computer or phone from internet when you’re not using it.
Update your anti-virus software. Virus software updates often include security updates critical to protecting your devices, so it’s important to do these updates regularly.
Make sure web bowsers and plug-ins are up-to-date. It’s important to update your web browsers, PDF viewing software, iTunes software and other software, plug-ins and apps you use when they ask. As with anti-virus software, software updates often include security updates critical to protecting your devices and your private information.
Secure your wireless internet network at home. Your wireless router should come with instructions for setting up a secure network.
Use anti-malware software. This software can check for and remove any malware detected. Microsoft has a free Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool at http://www.microsoft.com/security/pc-security/malware-removal.aspx for computers running the Windows operating systems.
Protect yourself against scammers

Our First Steps series of courses are designed to help beginning genealogists develop a solid foundation of research skills. In this course, you’ll learn the basics of securing and maintaining online privacy. Don’t be the next target for an identity thief or scammer. In this course you’ll learn:

•    How much information on you is line, from public records to social media
•    Who’s watching you online
•    How to set up secure online accounts, such as email and banking
•    Online searching privacy
•    Online family tree website privacy tips
•    Guidelines for posting info on living relatives
•    Best tools to manage your internet privacy

Sign up today

The post 5 Steps to Protect Your Online Privacy appeared first on FamilyTreeUniversity.com.

Friday we were in a mad rush to get some things done around the house and to pack because early Saturday morning we were heading out of town for the weekend.  We had a family reunion on my wife’s side on Saturday, followed by an early Father’s Day celebration with her family since we won’t see them next weekend.  The reunion was a lot of fun!  It’s held at a park every year, where the siblings of my wife’s grandfather get together with all their descendants.  Unfortunately several of them have passed away, including my wife’s grandfather, but it’s neat that the whole family continues to get together, and it’s fun to talk with the great aunts and uncles.  Saturday night I enjoyed watching the Chicago Blackhawks win an exciting game to move on to the Stanley Cup Finals for the second time in four years!  The only downside was that the game went into double overtime, which meant I had to stay up later than planned.  Why is this a problem you ask? Well that’s because my wife and I had to wake up at 4:00am to head out for her first triathlon!  I was a little tired, but once we got there and the race started, I was filled with excitement for her.  She did great and plans to make it an annual event.

Not to worry, I still managed to insert a little research between our activities.  In the process of going through my records to record key details & activities into my Blake family history book, I came across an article.  It was from an 1886 story in the Detroit Free Press about when Patrick Blake moved his family and his undertaking business from Lafayette Boulevard, where they had been for the last 18 years, to Abbott Street.  He had been planning the construction of the new building for years, and it would serve as both the family home and place of business for his growing undertaking empire.

In May of 1886, he had several prominent friends over to inspect the new building.  One guest, General George Harrington, was reported as saying that he visited many undertaking establishments across the country, and that this was the best he had seen.  The article went on to describe each room in the building, which helped me to visualize what the place looked like.  The best part of the article was the description of a room that had family photos.  On one wall of this room was a portrait of Patrick and his wife, Eliza, on their wedding day, as well as a portrait of them many years later.  Surrounding those two portraits were pictures of each of their children.  Being a bit of a “glass half full” guy, I immediately started to think that these pictures are probably still out there today in the possession of a descendant of one of Patrick’s children!

That thought links with my other current focus of trying to find living relatives and map out the full family tree for all of Patrick’s children.  I’m more motivated than ever to do this as soon as I can.  Of his 10 children, I’ve found that four didn’t have kids of their own.  Of the remaining six, one is my great-great-grandfather, and I’ve made contact with relatives from two of the other branches.  This leaves three to go!  It sounds a bit odd, even to me, but I can’t help but shake a feeling that I’m supposed to keep researching the Blake family because there is something important for me to find.  Whether this is the long sought-after answer to the mystery of Nelson’s true birth parents, or some family heirlooms/pictures, I’m not sure, but I know I’m excited about it.

A quick side note: I was watching a history show on Billy the Kid recently, and it got me thinking about my family.  In my mind, the “Wild West” always seemed like it was way before any of my ancestors, and a world away from them.  When I saw the year Billy was killed, 1881, I realized this was during my ancestors’ lifetimes.  Patrick Blake was continuing to build his undertaking business, along with raising 10 children.  Rocco Parotto Sr. was roughly 20 years old, and was preparing to move to the US to start a new life of better opportunities.

I wonder what they thought when they read stories in the news about these gunslingers and cowboys in the Southwest? I was surprised to learn that at the time, most media outlets did not see Billy the Kid as the folk hero most see him as today.  Using GenealogyBank and several other sites, I saw that people seemed to be happy and relieved when Pat Garrett shot and killed him.  Pat was hailed as a hero, while Billy was labeled a murderer and an outlaw.  In the minds of most hard-working, law-abiding immigrants, the outlaws of the Wild West probably seemed like troublemakers and hooligans.  Interesting!  I try to keep an ever-expanding list of key historical events to weave throughout my family histories, because I think it’s neat to learn about the events that occurred in the time of my ancestors, and how these things may have affected them.

Well once again I’ve surpassed the word limit guidelines so I’ll cut it for now.  Have a great week everyone!

Family Tree Firsts is an ongoing blog series featuring newbie genealogist Brian Parotto of Hampshire, Ill.

Brian is attending Genealogy Summer School to enhance his family research, where select classes are on major discount. Learn more here: Genealogy Summer School Sale.

The post Family Undertakers and the Wild West appeared first on FamilyTreeUniversity.com.

Brian learned he has family ties to the Great Bambino, Babe Ruth.

Last weekend marked the beginning of the busiest June I can remember having.

We updated our monthly calendar we have on our fridge, and quickly saw that we have activities packed in every Saturday and Sunday until after the 4^th of July.  Weddings, family reunions, birthday parties, graduation parties, etc. Not to mention the stuff we usually have going on.  This should be interesting.  Just yesterday we had a wedding for a family friend, which was a blast!  I love weddings because it’s the only time my “dancing” is considered normal.  And in a short while we’re off to my brother-in-law’s house for a barbecue to celebrate his birthday.

One of the graduation parties I mentioned that’s coming up happens to involve my Blake side of the family, with my grandparents coming into town for it.  My grandfather’s brother and several aunts and uncles will also be there, and I was just informed they are all excited to see hear about my family research at the party.  So now I have a deadline to try to update the Blake tree as much as I can, and build up the story I’m working on so that I have something organized to show them.  Pressure!

My focus is now on those two things, so at least I can stay on track for a few weeks.  I started reaching out to some of the people on Ancestry.com that have Blake’s in their trees, and lo and behold, one of them happened to be a distant cousin!  She descends from Patrick Blake’s second oldest child, James Blake.  We traded information, and also the living members of our trees.  It was so neat to learn that there are other Blakes out there that we didn’t know about.  I hope to do this for each of Patrick’s children before the graduation party, so I can have a complete tree of Patrick Blake and all his descendants.  I may not be able to cover them all, but the closer I can get, the better.  I know my grandfather will love seeing the expanded tree.  It’s mind-blowing to see how large of a family came from just two people.  The other benefit of doing this is that I firmly believe someone out there has pictures, family stories, letters, etc. from the Blakes in Detroit.  What a feeling it would be if I could find that person!

On my Lindsay side, I’ve been corresponding with my Great Uncle Bill for the last several months.  He’s working on transcribing all of his father’s journals from a two- to three-year period when he was overseas in the military.  I can’t wait until he finishes so I can read it and see what life was like for him.  In one of Uncle Bill’s emails, he recalled a story of when his mother came to visit him and his wife back around 1975.  While she stayed with them, she went to go visit one of her husband Walter’s old friends from his time working at WMAQ, a Chicago radio station.  His name was Hal Totten, and he and Walter became very good friends over the years.  His health was in decline, and so my great-grandmother wanted to visit with him one last time.  Uncle Bill mentioned that Hal used to be a sportscaster for the Chicago Cubs, and was pretty well known.

I looked him up on the internet that night, and what I found amazed me.  1924 was the first year the Chicago Cubs began broadcasting their games on the radio, and he was one of those first sportscasters.  He continued calling play-by-play until 1935, when he moved to another station.  In 1933, he even interviewed Babe Ruth!  Just a year before, in 1932, the Cubs played against Babe Ruth and the New York Yankees in the World Series.  For anyone who is familiar with the Cubs, it will not come as a shock that they didn’t win that series.  But in this series was the infamous scene where Babe Ruth reportedly called his one homerun by pointing with his bat to the outfield.  And then he did just that!  But the interview refutes that story.  Babe Ruth was quoted as saying “Hell, no, I didn`t point. Only a damned fool would do a thing like that. . . . I never really knew anybody who could tell you ahead of time where he was going to hit a baseball. When I get to be that kind of fool, they`ll put me in a booby hatch.”

This was backed up by the opposing pitcher from that at-bat, Charlie Root.  Charlie told Francis Powers of the Chicago Daily News that “if he had made a move like that-well, anyone who knows me knows the Babe would have wound up on his posterior. He would have got my hard, hard pitch. I mean hard and I mean inside.”  Charlie firmly rejected the idea that The Babe pointed at the outfield for the rest of his life.  I looked more into this on Wikipedia, newspaper articles, and other internet sites, and found that Babe Ruth did appear to point his bat at something.  This can be seen on video.  The question is, what was he pointing at?

Some sources say he was pointing at the outfield, others at the pitcher, and many other theories.  It will remain a debated topic, but I guess I tend to lean towards believing the pitcher.  Even in today’s game, if a player was to showboat in front of a pitcher, he can probably expect to see a pitch being thrown somewhere in the vicinity of his head.  Fun stuff to ponder though.  And it’s neat to hear that a friend of my grandfather was somewhat involved in the legend!  I can imagine them hanging out on a porch one afternoon talking about it.  You can find this story at the following link:

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1992-02-25/sports/9201180336_1_babe-ruth-press-box-cubs

That’s all for me today.  Have a great week everyone!

Family Tree Firsts is an ongoing blog series featuring newbie genealogist Brian Parotto of Hampshire, Ill.

Here are some of the tools Brian is using to launch his genealogy education. Check them out:

• Ultimate Get Organized Collection
• Ancestry.com Search Secrets OnDemand Webinar
• Research Strategies: Finding Living Relatives

The post Famous Family Ties appeared first on FamilyTreeUniversity.com.

This week I tried to organize and review all that we had found from our research trip.  For starters, while we had a very productive trip with great finds, I am still a bit disappointed I didn’t resolve who my ancestor Nelson’s true parents are.  This is still my mission though, and will thus keep plugging away.  I have not exhausted all sources yet, so I’m trying to keep an optimistic attitude.

After thinking more about the information I didn’t find, I realized that I should try to narrow my scope.  Nelson was not in the Baptism records for the church his family attended, even though his older brother who was born two years earlier was.  But remembering from before that Nelson was not listed as a sibling to any of his “brothers and sisters” in their obituaries or FindaGrave.com memorials, and he was not listed as a son to Patrick or Eliza in their obituaries, this would lead me to believe that one of the following three theories is the answer:  (1) Nelson was born and baptized elsewhere, such as Canada. (2) Nelson was born out of wedlock to Harry and his yet-to-be wife, Nellie, and so he couldn’t be baptized in the church. (3) Nelson was born to Harry and Nellie, but they attended a different church than Harry’s family, so Nelson was baptized there.

I checked the birth records on FamilySearch.org to see if anything showed up for Windsor, Canada or Detroit, but nothing did.  Then I stumbled across their Probate collection, and found the references to the case for Eliza Blake’s estate after her death in 1896.  There were individual indexes for her husband, each of her children and several of her grandchildren.  They essentially just stated each person’s relationship to her and the case number.  But Nelson was not included in the index.  This was troubling to find because even if he did turn out to be Harry’s son instead of Patrick’s, that would still make him Eliza’s grandson, and so I’d assume he would be included in the estate like the other grandchildren.

This opened up two new possibilities for my hunt – (1) Did Nelson have some kind of following out with his family? He left for Chicago sometime between 1890 and 1900, so maybe it was on bad terms? (2) Was Nelson potentially an orphan who was raised by the Blake family, but not an actual Blake? In referencing back to Eliza’s obituary from the Detroit Free Press, it says “..she raised several orphan children at her own expense and afterwards made it possible for them to earn their own livelihood.”

I’ll consider this last possibility, but am still leaning more towards Nelson being Harry’s son who may have been raised by Patrick and Eliza.  If only the story that stated he was born to Harry was sourced!  I still have a few more ideas to investigate, so hopefully one of them won’t be a dead-end.  I still need to find Harry’s obituary and probate record for his will.

On a more positive note from our trip, my mom and aunt found a 3-page story on Patrick Blake from the Detroit Society for Genealogical Research Magazine, volume 66.  It basically is an interview with him where a reporter is asking him questions about his life and undertaking career!  It’s a very neat story and very well written because I can visualize the interview in my mind as I’m reading it, and it almost helps me to get to know my ancestor a bit.  It says that on average they did 600-800 funerals per year, for almost 30 years.  For quite a few years, in addition to the business they got from families who chose their firm, they would also get all of the city and county appointed funerals.  In total, he estimated 20,000-24,000 funerals in all.  I previously thought this figure to be an exaggeration because I thought he mostly just sold coffins for the first 5-10 years, but apparently he did funerals during those years too, in addition to running his furniture business.

He also told of a story where a man was leaving town and wasn’t sure if he would ever be back.  He prepaid for his mother’s funeral since she was elderly and not in good shape, and he wanted to ensure she would be taken care of.  It turns out that a little over a year after he left, he was killed.  His body was returned to Michigan, and they did the funeral for him instead of his mother, who was still living.  What a story!

Well, I’m off to enjoy the rest of this holiday, have a great week everyone!

Family Tree Firsts is an ongoing blog series featuring newbie genealogist Brian Parotto of Hampshire, Ill.

Here are some of the tools Brian is using to launch his genealogy education. Check them out:

• Using Probate Records On-Demand Webinar
• Brick Wall Busters Value Pack
• Brick Wall Busters: Finding Parents

The post A Case Study in Brick Wall Busting appeared first on FamilyTreeUniversity.com.

For those who did file, the process was twofold: First, the newcomer would have filed a declaration of intent for citizenship (referred to as “first papers”). After fulfilling the residency requirement, he could then file his petition for naturalization. He had to sign these “final papers”—so if you can find that petition, you’ll have the added treat of seeing your ancestor’s John Hancock. When male immigrants were naturalized, their minor children also automatically received citizenship. Between 1855 and 1922, their wives did, too. Here are some keys to finding your ancestor’s naturalization records:

1. The federal government standardized the naturalization process (including the paperwork) in 1906. Since your ancestors arrived before that, they could’ve filed for citizenship in any court—they might even have started the process in one location, then completed it in another. To cover all your bases, you’ll need to hunt for records at the local, county and state levels.

2. Fortunately, naturalization indexes and record collections on websites such as FamilySearch.org, Ancestry.com and Fold3.com include some applications from before 1906. It’s easiest to start by searching online collections. If you find your ancestor in a naturalization records index, use the source information provided to track down the original record.

3. If you don’t find your ancestor online, your next step is to run a place search of the FamilySearch online catalog for locations where your ancestors might have petitioned, then look under the naturalization heading to identify records available on microfilm. You can rent the microfilm for viewing at your local FamilySearch Center.

4. If your online and microfilm searches are fruitless, check archives at all three levels. The records may still be with the court where your ancestor filed, or they may have been sent to a state archives or other repository. Some archives and other official stewards of naturalization records have posted indexes and documents online. A Google search could turn these up, and NaturalizationRecords.com is also helpful.

5. US Citizenship and Immigration Services has copies of all post-1906 naturalization records. To request those, use the agency’s online Genealogy Program.

6. Naturalization records can be a gateway to finding your ancestor’s passenger arrival list, as they often tell port and date of immigration (though the earlier the records, generally the less detail they contain). In fact, that’s how I confirmed the family story of my great-grandfather Henry Essel’s 1888 arrival through Philadelphia, enabling me to locate the ship manifest recording him and his family.

7. You can learn more about the naturalization process in They Came in Ships by John Philip Colletta (Ancestry). Download our step-by-step guide to finding naturalization records in ShopFamilyTree.com.

8. Library and Archives Canada provides information on Canadian naturalizations.

Learn to research genealogy records

A genealogy class a day keeps the brick walls away! Take part in FamilyTree University’s weeklong summer workshop to get more research mileage out of essential genealogy records. The event includes eight pre-recorded video classes, plus message board discussions. Think of it like your genealogy summer “staycation”: You can study a different record group each day or focus on just a few over a long weekend, and immediately apply what you learn to your own genealogy. You make your own schedule, so you can log in and participate anytime that’s convenient to you!

Sign up today for Family Tree University’s One-Week Workshop: How to Research Genealogy Records.

Sign up today

The post 8 Tips for Finding Naturalization Records appeared first on FamilyTreeUniversity.com.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

•    How much information on you is line, from public records to social media
•    Who’s watching you online
•    How to set up secure online accounts, such as email and banking
•    Online searching privacy
•    Online family tree website privacy tips
•    Guidelines for posting info on living relatives
•    Best tools to manage your internet privacy

WHAT YOU’LL NEED: REQUIREMENTS & SUPPLIES

• This course assumes you understand the basics principles of genealogy and have done some investigation into your family history. If you are a total beginner, consider taking the Discover Your Family Tree course before enrolling in this class.

First Steps:
Internet Privacy

The post First Steps: Internet Privacy appeared first on FamilyTreeUniversity.com.

Brian at Mt. Elliott Cemetery in Detroit.

Mental overload!  Last Sunday I returned home from my whirlwind trip to Detroit with my mother and aunt to investigate our Blake roots, and my brain is full of new knowledge, leads and questions.

It was roughly a 6-hour drive to Detroit, so we left around 1:00 am, on what was technically Friday, although it felt like Thursday had barely finished.  This meant that we would have a few more passengers joining us for the trip – coffee and his cousins, iced latte and Red Bull.  We made great time on the drive, and by 8:00am we were in Detroit.

The first stop was Mt. Elliott Cemetery, where many of the Blake’s were buried.  We quickly found the section we knew them to be buried in, and we split up to search for the headstones.  After 10 minutes of searching with no luck, I started to worry that this may end up like my cemetery visit back in December to search for my Parotto ancestors.  Maybe my ancestors’ headstones were long since covered by grass, and we would not be able to find them unless we scraped the dirt and grass off every headstone.

Just as I was getting ready to check with the office again, I stumbled across Catherine Blake’s headstone.  On it, she was listed as “Mother of P. Blake”!  A wave of excitement rushed over me as I yelled to my mother and aunt to come take a look.  I continued walking down the row of graves, discovering more Blake headstones!  In total, we found about 15 headstones that consisted of Blake’s, and several “in-law” families.  We found my Third-great grandparents Patrick and Eliza, my Fourth-great grandmother Catherine, Eliza’s parents, Felix & Helen O’Rafferty, six of Patrick & Eliza’s children, and a few more.  They were all buried together in a small plot. We also found that in front of their family lot, they had a small concrete step that had P. Blake inscribed on it.  He must have reserved this large area back when he was on the Board of Trustees of Mt. Elliott Cemetery.  We paid our respects to our ancestors of long ago, and headed back to the car.

From the cemetery, we headed over to the Detroit Public Library to check out the Burton Historical Collection.  The Burton Historical Collection houses old church baptisms, marriage records, city directories, biographies, city histories and more, so we knew we would be spending quite a bit of time here.  Unfortunately, the parking meters only allowed two hours at a time, so that meant I would make a few trips back out to replenish the meter.  But on the positive side, I wasn’t able to get a run in this weekend, so my parking meter jaunts would at least be some type of exercise.

Once inside the library, we got our bearings on where everything was, and divided the responsibilities up.  I would search the old church records on microfilm, my mom would go through the Detroit history books, and my aunt would look through the city directories and other sources.  I was hoping to find a baptism record for my Great-great-grandfather Nelson Blake so I could finally solve the mystery of whether he was Patrick’s son, or Patrick’s grandson (mentioned in a prior post).

Unfortunately I did not find any baptism record for him, so that mystery remains unsolved.  However, it did raise a few new questions for me.  Was Nelson born to Patrick’s eldest son Harry and his wife Nellie before they were married, and so the church wouldn’t baptize him? This would support the idea that Harry and Nellie had to give him to Patrick to raise.  Or another option is that perhaps Nelson was not born in Detroit? Maybe he was born in another city of Michigan, or possibly even Canada. While I was very disappointed I didn’t solve the mystery that I hoped would finally be solved, I was happy with the other information we found.  We narrowed down Patrick’s relocation from Canada to Detroit to within a few years.  We found some old articles on Patrick in a local genealogy society’s newsletters, and we also found quite a few obituaries on the Blakes.

Around 2:30 pm, we still had plenty of resources to search through, but we decided to head over to Amherstburg, Ontario, Canada, to see if we could find any proof of where the Blakes actually stayed.  We made it just in time before the Marsh Collection closed.  This collection houses information on the local history of Amherstburg.  Since I had called a few weeks earlier, the lady who was working had a folder set up for us with the information specific to our group.  We found many old articles on the Rosebank Farm, and best of all, we viewed a 1901 Amherstburg tax collections roll.  On this file was none other than Patrick Blake!  So he did, in fact, own a summer home here.

Truthfully, I don’t even know all that I’ve gathered so far because we found so much. I’m so excited to go through it all and see what new facts, clues, etc. we can gather.  Hopefully next week I will have sorted through the mess.

Thanks for reading, everyone!

Family Tree Firsts is an ongoing blog series featuring newbie genealogist Brian Parotto of Hampshire, Ill.

Here are some of the tools Brian is using to launch his genealogy education. Check them out:

• Canadian Immigration Records video class
• City Guide: Detroit
• US Vital Records independent study course

The post From Detroit to Canada: A Genealogy Whirlwind appeared first on FamilyTreeUniversity.com.

The How to Research Genealogy Records workshop features eight video classes, including encore presentations of some of our best sessions from Family Tree University Virtual Conferences. If you’ve attended one of our past Virtual Conferences, this event is a great way to catch up on great classes you missed—plus get involved with the discussions happening over the course of the week.

Video Sessions

3 Cool Tools to Help With Your Newspaper Research
Host: Lisa Louise Cooke
You know that newspapers can reveal fascinating facts and details about your family, but how do you actually find those nuggets? This class gives you the scoop on tools that help you search papers of the past.

Finding Land Records Online
Host: Diana Crisman Smith
Ahoy ye web-lubbers: Lay anchor on the Bureau of Land Management’s General Land Office website to search a wealth of federal land patents. If your ancestor purchased a plot from the US government, this class will teach you tricks to locating your kin’s digitized land record.

City Directories: Key to Your Family’s Past
Host: Maureen A. Taylor
Unlock answers about your ancestors! This class shows how you can track your family year by year, explore their neighborhood and use the clues you find in city directories as a springboard to other genealogical sources.

Getting Creative with Death Records
Host: Diana Crisman Smith
When working with death records, many researchers stop at obituaries and death certificates. When those can’t be found or don’t provide enough information, where else can you look? Discover how using other records can help fill in the gaps.

Making Sense of Pre-1850 Censuses
Host: Maureen A. Taylor
Don’t get tripped up by tick marks—this class will teach you techniques to tease useful clues from the early US censuses where all residents names weren’t recorded.

Using Guardianship Records in Genealogical Research
Host: Marian Pierre-Louis
Answers about your brick wall ancestors may be hiding in guardianship records, generated in court cases involving orphaned children, inheritances, adoptions and other circumstances. Discover how tracking down these court records can pay off for your research.

Using Naturalization Records
Host: Lisa A. Alzo
Follow your ancestors’ path to citizenship toward new ancestral discoveries. This class walks you through how and where to find naturalizations, and how to use the records as a springboard to your ancestors’ life in the old country.

Using Criminal Court Records
Host: Judy Russell
The bountiful paper trail of a criminal court case can be a key resource in your genealogy research, whether your ancestor was a witness or felon, police officer or judge. Bail bonds—which guaranteed the appearance of an individual in court—could even provide the only proof that your ancestor was living in a specific area. The Legal Genealogist blogger Judy Russell will lay out essential strategies for Using Criminal Court Records. This webinar comes with a free PDF download: a copy of Family Tree Magazine’s guide to courthouse records.

DOWNLOAD FREE RECORDS FORMS HERE.

The post One-Week Workshop: How to Research Genealogy Records appeared first on FamilyTreeUniversity.com.

• where records were created and stored
• migration paths
• locations selected for settlement
• division of farms and property in probate

And because land doesn’t move, it’s one of the few elements of our ancestors’ lives that we can always count on. Consider an old photograph. The depicted buildings may have changed, but the surrounding landmarks, such as hills, valleys and rock formations, should still exist today and can aid in identification.

Although there are geographically oriented computer applications geared toward genealogists, one of the most powerful tools can be found outside the genealogy community.

Google Earth is a powerful mapping and viewing program available for free download at http://earth.google.com. Here is an overview of a few of its coolest features:

Locating Ancestral Homes and Locations

For most researchers, it just isn’t financially feasible to travel to all of the locations where one’s ancestors lived. The good news is that Google Earth can provide you with a virtual experience that is as close to being there as your computer can take you.

Get a Closer Look

While it is certainly interesting to locate an ancestor’s home on the globe, you can’t see much detail from the virtual sky looking down over the area. To get an up-close-and-personal look at a location, you can employ Google Earth’s Street View function.

Street View offers you a panoramic view from various positions on the street. Launched in May 2007, Street View was available for only a few major US cities. Today, Google offers images of nearly every street in America, and its coverage is spreading quickly around the world.

Just how does Google do it? A fleet of cars equipped with nine directional cameras drive up and down each street and snap photographs from all directions every few seconds. When faced with narrow streets, such as those in Rome, similarly equipped Google Trikes (tricycles) make the journey.

Get your bearings

Getting your directional bearings can be difficult once you’re in Street View. To locate an address, you can hover your mouse over the camera icons that appear along the street. If unsure which particular house is your ancestor’s, look for addresses on buildings as well as on the curb. To get a closer lookat a particular area, double-click on the spot on the image, and Google Earth will slowly zoom in.

Find your ancestors on Google Earth

Most of us never get to travel to all the places our ancestors lived, but you can follow in their footsteps—virtually. Google Earth, a free software program, lets you experience faraway locations from the comfort of your own home. In Google Earth for Genealogists, you’ll tap into the program’s robust features to bring depth and a new perspective to your family history research.

The post 3 Reasons to Map Your Ancestor’s Hometown appeared first on FamilyTreeUniversity.com.