Excited to be speaking at the Northwest Genealogy Conference in August.  Hope to see you there!

Hi Everyone,

I had a great time last Wednesday evening presenting my class on The Battle for Bountly Land – War of 1812 to the Mexican American War.  It’s a fabulous slice of American history and genealogy treasures well worth investigating.

Legacy Family Tree makes the webinars available, free to the public for a week after the event. So, you can listen to it at your convenience through next Tuesday.  Follow the link here.

Here are a few of the very kind comments from those who attended:

Another AWESOME webinar – very meaningful – and will be very useful!!! Really enjoy the live immediate usage of presentation concepts and tools!!! THANKS TO ALL!!!

Beth really laid it out in an understandable and concise manner! I’m ready to research:-)

Beth was great! Gave new information I hadn’t heard previously. Thank you, Beth and Geoff!

Beth was terrific. She clearly explained the types of records, where to find them, and how to use them in conjunction with other records. Thanks so much.

Excellent presentation! This was the first webinar by Beth that I have attended. I will be looking at her other webinars in the Legacy library. Thanks again for a pleasurable and informative webinar.

I am delighted to be presenting at the upcoming Northwest Genealogy Conference in Arlington, Washington.

I have the honor of presenting the opening day Free Beginner Classes – Introduction to Genealogy, Secrets of Ten Record Groups, and “If I’d Only Known – Beginner Mistakes.”  These three classes are packed full of tips, tricks, techniques, and the all important resources to get you off to a running start in your genealogy research – or a great refresher if you have been at this awhile.

Additionally, I’ll be presenting two of my most popular classes – Problem Solving with Timelines and Problem Solving with FANs.  Here you’ll find excellent tools to climb over even the most daunting of brick walls.

But to be sure, the conference isn’t about me.  Headlining are three of the best genealogy speakers in the business – Claudia Breland, Lisa Louise Cooke, and Blaine Bettinger.

The Conference is August 17th to August 20th, hosted by the Stillaguamish Valley Genealogical Society at the Byrnes Performing Arts Center in Arlington, Washington.  All of the details and registration forms can be found at www.NwGC.org.

Hope to see you there!

The last I heard, Ancestry.com has north of 10 BILLION records online.  Anyway you slice it that’s a LOT of records, and it’s certainly far more than my humble search skills can comfortably navigate.

That’s why I’m tickled to see that they have introduced Research Guides. Tucked in their free section (no membership required) is a portfolio of subject-specific research guides for anyone and everyone to use.  The guides help you navigate the 10 billion records and tens of thousands of databases on Ancestry.com, which is great in and of itself.  But they also give you subject-specific helpful insight such as history, key terms, abbreviations, and other information far and away beyond a simple description of a database.

Quaker Research

Guide to Finding Quaker Records by Ancestry

One of their research guides is the Research Guide to Finding Your Quaker Ancestors.  It’s an eight-page, well written and designed cheat sheet to understanding the nature and complexity of Quaker research.  Naturally, they explain who the Quakers are with a little blurb on Quakers and Slavery.  Then they break down the nature of Quaker Records – the meeting hierarchy, they explain the birth and death registers and the marriage records.  Then they explain the uniquely Quaker certificates of removal, disownments and apologies.  Finally, there is a discussion of uniquely Quaker terms to help you unpack this world.  I’m surprised that they don’t list the Quaker databases on Ancestry.com.  Maybe there are just too many to list.  (You can go to the SEARCH drop-down list and search the card catalog for the keyword “Quaker,” and probably get the vast majority of the databases.) Nonetheless, it is a very helpful guide.

Loyalist Research

Loyalist Resources on Ancestry

Another interesting guide is the one on Loyalists.  It’s my understanding that one-third of the Colonists were actively supporting the Revolution, one-third were Loyalists (supportive of England), and the last third weren’t interested and had better things to do such as tend to their farms.  No doubt there are plenty of Loyalist descendants looking for information and records.  This guide offers a brief history to understand the Loyalists, then it gives an extended list of hyperlinked databases for your researching pleasure.  Just click on the database of your choice and start searching.  Just follow this link (Loyalist Resources on Ancestry) to get started.

These are just two of the guides you will find.  There are about two dozen at the moment and it looks like they are adding more regularly.  Here are a couple more.

• Search Strategies on Ancestry
• Using Religious Records
• African American Research on Ancestry
• Finding your Immigrant Ancestors on Ancestry
• Find them in WWII
• Black Sheep: 10 Things to Know

Again, this is just a sampling.  Go to the main page for Research Guides in the Learning Center – you can access it here – for the full and updated list.  And check back often, as I mentioned they seem to be adding more and more.  Indeed, you can even submit a suggestion for a new guide.

I’m glad to see Ancestry offering help navigating their vast collection to genealogists.  I hope you’ll find these research guides helpful as I have.

Happy Researching!

The Kansas State Historical Society has a wealth of Kansas archives.  Further, they have built an amazing, user-friendly website with links to indexes and databases that provide easy access to many of the collections – not the least of which are the Kansas Civil War Soldiers Records.

I’ve listed and linked with their brief descriptions to the Civil War soldier records indexes they have available for free online.

• Index to Kansas Adjutant General’s Report – The Kansas Adjutant General’s Report, 1861-1865, lists the names of troops who served in the Kansas volunteer regiments during the Civil War. This index includes the name, regiment and company, and place of residence for each soldier. 
• Kansas Civil War Militia Index – During the Civil War, the Kansas State Militia were mainly called upon to help repel Price’s Raid on the Kansas-Missouri border in October 1864.   This index points the user to the ACTUAL muster roll pages, which have been digitized and saved online.  Here’s my ancestor, Jonas (JC) Greenwood, on the muster roll (partial view only).  It gives his unit, where he mustered (Topeka), when he joined and was discharged and his rank.

Jonas Greenwood – Kansas Civil War Muster Roll

• Civil War Veterans in Kansas – This database currently contains over 28,000 names of Union veterans of the Civil War who lived in Kansas after 1865. The names are from rosters or reunion proceedings at the KSHS Library. Many of the rosters were based on the 1889 census of veterans that was authorized by the state legislature. The list of the sources included in this database is listed below. This information was input by KSHS staff and volunteers and includes the name of the veteran, the state in which he served, place of residence when the list was compiled and the source of information.
• Kansas Members of the Grand Army of the Republic – The Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) was a volunteer organization, with membership limited to Union veterans of the Civil War, that supported and advocated for veterans’ rights and pensions. This index to members of the GAR, Department of Kansas, is based on the membership lists from northeast Kansas GAR posts published in the 1894 state roster and the 1917 state roster, with additional names added from the annual reports and records of individual posts dating from circa 1880 to 1943. The index was created by donor Robert Wandel.  The index currently includes about 100 of the more than 500 Kansas posts, mostly those in northern and northeastern Kansas.

If your ancestors lived in Civil War Era Kansas – or were on route elsewhere from 1861 to 1865, it’s worth your time to check out these databases.  Who knows what you may find.

Happy Researching!