May 14, 2009

A Medium Mouth: What Will the U.S. Passport Applications Collection Reveal About Your Ancestors?

Passports became common in the 1840s, but were not required until after World War I. The U.S. Passport Applications Collection contains more than 2 million passport applications filed by residents of the U.S. Of those, around 300,000 contain photographs of the applicant. Information can include date and place of birth, residence, naturalization, and other biographical information...

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May 3, 2009

Russians to America, 1850-1896

Americans of Russian or Jewish heritage will find this searchable collection of passenger list information invaluable. "This collection is extremely important to people whose Russian ancestors came to the U.S. in the 19th century," states Gary Mokotoff, leading expert on Jewish immigration. Search passenger list information for approximately 430,000 individuals, largely those of Jewish heritage. This is the only electronic index for passenger arrivals from Russia prior to 1896. Now researchers have an "excellent chance" of finding their ancestors' passenger arrival information, says Mokotoff. Produced alongside the Balch Institute, the information you can obtain from this data set can help you create a well-rounded picture of your ancestor's arrival in America.

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I Hate Leftovers!

I needed a vacation. (A professional genealogist's definition of vacation is "working on my own family.") I picked a family that I hadn't worked on in about fifteen years. I didn't expect to find new ancestors, although I hoped for leads on one of the wives. This family had been "done" decades ago. THE BOOK was typical. It had a coat of arms, twenty-eight generations of probably fanciful European origins, and no documentation. However, it seemed fairly accurate when it came to American descendants. Nothing I had found in the course of correspondence or in records I had encountered thus far contradicted the lineages in THE BOOK.

But I had found some minor inconsistencies that bothered me, often related to chronology. For example, THE BOOK said my ancestor John moved in 1765, but I had found a record showing he had acquired land in the new locality in 1744. In fact, there were several persons of the surname who came into general area much earlier and who weren't accounted for in THE BOOK...

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Opening up Dead Ends

Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (10th ed.) defines a dead end as, “1. an end (as of a street) without an exit,” or “2: a position, situation, or course of action that leads to nothing further.”

Dead ends are frustrating. (Yes, I am Queen of Stating the Obvious.) But, if we accept the given definition of a dead end as “leading to nothing further” or “without an exit,” we may be tempted to just shelve our family history project and find something else to do.

When I actually get time to sit down and do some work on my family history, for some perverse reason I am typically drawn to those dead ends. It's almost like they are taunting me--challenging me to find them. And when I do manage to find a way past a dead end--well, let's just say that this is the stuff obsessions are made of. (Yes, I know there is therapy for people like me, but rather than “obsessive traits,” I like to think of them as “persevering qualities.”)

Today I thought we'd take a look at some ways we may be able to deal with these so-called “dead ends.”

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