52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy - Week 2

Week #2 – Paid Online Genealogy Tools

Week 2 – Paid Online Genealogy Tools: Which paid genealogy tool do you appreciate the most? What special features put it at the top of your list? How can it help others with their genealogy research?

Hands down, if I had to pick one online source that I pay for to assist me in genealogy, it is Ancestry.com.  While certainly not the cheapest, it is by far the best online genealogy assistance you can purchase. With records from around the globe, and of every imaginable style [census, birth, death, social security, tax, estate, military, newspaper, and even other's family trees for comparisons,etc.] your money works out to the best bargain you can find.

Of course, that's not my entire list of genealogy help online. But it is the one which I appreciate the most.

To round out my paid subscriptions, I have two others that fall relatively close to my favorite: NewspaperArchive.com  and Footnote. Both of these have given up records and articles that I could not find on Ancestry, and I highly recommend them as well.

52 Weeks To Better Genealogy - Challenge #23

Thanks to GeneaBloggers for the following Challenge in the 52 Week Challenge!

"Description Week 23: Come up with a personal genealogy challenge of your own. Each person has different research goals and experiences. Use this week to come up with your own challenge, and then take the steps to accomplish it. Genealogy bloggers are encouraged to share their ideas and challenge their own readers."

This week, my Genea Challenge for you is to visit Footnote. This is a website that offers documents that cover everything from the Revolutionary War right up to the Vietnam Conflict. I've been able to locate records here that we've been unable to pinpoint at NARA!!! I rely on Footnote nearly every single day!

Play around with the names of those individuals you would like to learn more about on this site. And then write about it on your own blog.

I'd love to hear from you and if you were able to locate something new in your research!!!

Footnote Adds More To Collection

The following announcement came from Footnote yesterday:
"Over 100,000 Photos And Records From The National Archives

Footnote announced today the release of its Vietnam War Collection. This collection, highlighting activities of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, includes:


Army Unit Service Awards
Army Photos
Marine Corps Photos
Marine Corps Photos (b/w)
The Interactive Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Footnote will continue to work with the National Archives to add more Vietnam War content. "

To view the Vietnam War Collection click here.

Footnote Posts Native American Records Online!

The following announcement was written by Footnote.com:

-Original records dating back to early 1700s become available on the Internet for the first time-

Lindon, UT – November 19, 2009 – Footnote.com announced today the release of their latest interactive collection of historical records: the Native American collection. Working together with the National Archives and Allen County Library, Footnote.com has created a unique collection that will help people discover new details about Native American history.


The Footnote Interactive Native American Collection features original historical documents including:

•Ratified Indian Treaties – dating back to 1722
•Indian Census Rolls – featuring personal information including age, place of residence and degree of Indian blood
•The Guion Miller Roll – perhaps the most important source of Cherokee genealogical research
•Dawes Packets – containing original applications for tribal enrollments
•And other documents relating to the Five Civilized Tribes

Footnote’s Native American microsite creates an interactive environment where members can search, annotate and add comments to the original documents. Additionally, visitors can view pages for many of the Native American tribes that include historical events on a timeline and map, a photo gallery, stories and comments added by the community.

“Much like putting a puzzle together, Footnote.com brings pieces together in the form of historical documents to create a more vibrant picture of the events and people of the past,” says Justin Schroepfer, Marketing Director at Footnote.com. “Together with the online community we are discovering a side of history that you cannot find in text books.”

Footnote.com also provides a free service where visitors can create their own web pages for their Native American family. “Native Americans have a rich oral history,” explains Russ Wilding, CEO of Footnote.com. “We hope that the online community will use Footnote Pages to preserve these stories, which will help ensure that they do not become lost to future generations.”

Visit http://www.footnote.com/native_americans to see how Native American history has become an interactive experience.

My Favorite Genealogy Web Site

Genea Challenge #29 is to Write about your favorite genealogy web sites.

I actually have several favorite sites. Probably number one on mine, and many others, list is Ancestry.com. I've had a $299 membership with them for years, and will continue to do so as long as I can scrape together the money every year! The plethora of documents available on this site alone has saved me literally thousands, [I mean in the tens of thousands] of dollars in travel and research expense. That has far more than paid for the yearly membership cost! For anyone who is unable to travel to the source, I highly recommend this site!

Another site I have used over and over is Footnote. This is another pay site. But I have obtained military records for Civil War era family members, and client research, that I was unable to retrieve when sending to NARA for! And this site just keeps right on growing and expanding! The clarity of their scans at times far-exceeds even that of Ancestry!

NewspaperArchive.com is another pay site. But it literally paid for itself in the very first day that I purchased it! My husband's family has a very notorious "Old West" outlaw in it. I would have had to travel to Texas and Oklahoma to get copies of the newspaper articles that were printed about him back in the day. And then, I would have had to have known which papers to research, or spent days and days in local libraries searching through microfiche! However, in one single afternoon I was able to uncover over 40 articles on this old rascal! What a find! I wouldn't be without this site!

I am a big fan of Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites on the Internet. Whenever I hit a roadblock, and don't know where to turn to next, I inevitably head over to Cyndi's List. And I would feel safe in saying that 9 out of 10 times I go there I am at least headed in the right direction when I leave. Cyndi has literally THOUSANDS of Internet sites for you to head out to check on research material. What a treasure!

Family Search is another great site. While I haven't had alot of luck in utilizing their numerous family trees that are posted, they have often guided me in knowing what area I should be researching, or in giving me clues on how to continue my research. Family Search has also been quietly expanding, and adding numerous records to their site. As a big Texas researcher, I was especially pleased when they added the Texas Death Certificates to their site!

West Virginia Division of Culture and History has a wonderful WV Vital Research Records site. Here you can find Birth, Death and Marriage records for most all of the counties in West Virginia. Many dating back to 1800 and moving forward into the 1960's. The majority of my personal research has been in West Virginia and Virginia, so this has become my personal treasure trove!

The Library of Virginia is another hidden treasure for those researching Virginia ancestry. Here I have uncovered Land Grants, and Bible records for my own family, and many I've been researching. While the site does not allow you to print off these documents, it does allow you to order them at a modest fee. And believe me, there's nothing like holding these documents i your hands!

I have also become a huge fan of genealogy blogs. Most of them I receive daily in my news reader [I utilize NewsGator]. There's a few without an RSS feed, and those I go to directly, having saved them in my "Favorites" folder.

I am especially fond of Dick Eastman's Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter. Dick offers his free daily newsletter [usually having more than 5 posts per day!!!]. And he offers a paid subscription which includes the free and a weekly newsletter that when printed out will make a small book! [Last week's was over 30-pages!] [Incidentally, I don't recommend printing it out! How about saving it instead, and reading it later? You can save the Plus Edition in a PDF format, and view it at your leisure.]

I also like the Ancestry.com blogs. These are very informative. You won't find them any better!

And I could go on and on! [I think I subscribe to about 125 genealogy blogs!]. But for a really good over view of genealogy blogs, and to get a great insight to writing a genealogy blog, you can't find a better reference than GeneaBloggers. Here you'll find a comprehensive list of blog sites. [If you look close enough, you'll even find the ol' Mountain Genealogists listed!]

Hope you've enjoyed my tour of my favorite genealogy web sites. This is only a small taste of the many I utilize on a daily basis. But these, as far as I am concerned, and in my humble opinion, are the BEST!!!