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Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter
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Vital Records Index – North America |
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Click Here for Dick Eastman's Archive |
| August 03, 1999 |
- Vital Records Index – North America The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, often referred to as "the Mormons", recently released a set of seven CD-ROM disks called the "Vital Records Index – North America." I had a chance to use this CD-ROM set this week and can report that it is a winner. The "Vital Records Index -- North America" is an automated index of church, civil, and other records in the United States and Canada for various localities and times from 1631 to 1888. More than 4.6 million christenings, births, and marriages in the United States and Canada are listed on this set of CD-ROM disks. It is not an index of all vital records, however. A collection of all vital records would fill a lot more than seven CD-ROM disks. Instead, the Mormons have been collecting records for years and have now published a CD-ROM index to those records that have been collected and indexed to date. The actual number of records and the years covered varies widely from state to state. For instance, the CD-ROM set includes birth and christening records from 45 different places in Texas but no birth or christening records at all in California, Florida, Oregon, Washington or Wyoming. Likewise, marriage records were collected from 135 locations in Georgia but none in South Carolina. A chart showing the number of records collected in all the states and provinces is available on the FamilySearch.org website. Also keep in mind that this is an index, not copies or transcriptions of original records. Once you find a listing in this index, you will want to rent the microfilm referenced to see the original records and obtain the full details. The required software for the CD-ROM set is included with the data disks. There is no requirement to obtain any other software to use this data. The Vital Records Index – North America requires: Pentium Processor There is no Macintosh version available although I suspect that it will operate on a Macintosh that is running a Windows 95 emulator. However, I did not try that myself. I installed the software on a Windows 95 system with 16 megabytes of memory, a task that required about two minutes to accomplish. While the advertisements refer to this as a seven-disk CD-ROM set, the "Vital Records Index – North America" really has eight CD-ROM disks in the package. One disk contains all the needed software and the other seven disks contain the data. As usual, I first did a search looking for entries with my surname. You can search for marriage records or for birth/christening records. However, you cannot search both at the same time. I decided to start with birth and christening records. Within 2 or 3 seconds the program reported that it had found 110 matches. I decided to narrow the search a bit more, to quickly find the ones of interest to me. The Search Screen has four separate sections: the Search section, the Individual section, the Events section and the Relatives section. Only the individual name information is required to do a search. In the Individual section you must type either the given name(s) or the last name(s) of a person to do a search. All names have been standardized to help find most variations of last name spellings. For example, the last name Smyth, will be listed with Smith, Smithe, Smethe, etc. To limit your search to an exact spelling of both the given and last names, you click on the "Search exact spelling for this individual" box. You can further limit a search by providing the date and place an event took place. To further limit a search, you can enter relatives’ names in the Relatives (optional) section. For instance, you could specify "show the birth records of people named John Smith who had a father named William Smith." You can provide the names of the father and mother for birth/christening records and the name of the spouse for marriage records. You can use either the given name(s) or the last name or both. I did a new search, specifying all birth and christening records for anyone named Eastman in the state of Maine. This time 34 records were identified. Unlike many other genealogy CD-ROM databases from other companies, the "Vital Records Index – North America" allows you to cut-and-paste using the normal Windows commands. Here is a typical entry from the database that I pasted into this newsletter: EASTMAN, Jacob Birth Sex: Male Birth Date: 01 Apr 1826 Birthplace: Maine Recorded in: Civil Records for Exeter, Penobscot, Maine The above shows a birth record for Jacob Eastman, son of Hammon and Sally Eastman in the year 1826. The record was recorded in the town of Exeter, Penobscot County, Maine. The original record can be found on microfilm 10857, "Civil Records for Exeter, Penobscot, Maine." Of course, the original record, as viewed on microfilm, may contain more information than what was listed in the CD-ROM index. Armed with this information, I can now go to a Family History Center near me and order that microfilm. The rental fee is about $3.00 per roll of film. Once the local Family History Center receives the film from Salt Lake City, I can go back to view the original record on the local center’s microfilm viewers. Will the "Vital Records Index – North America" contain information about your ancestors? The 4.6 million records indexed on the CD-ROM obviously is a lot of information, yet it represents only a fraction of the records available on paper. Again, take a look at the list of states and provinces indexed that is available on the FamilySearch.org website. The "Vital Records Index – North America" sells for the very low price of $19.00 U.S. funds. That’s a bargain price for seven CD-ROM disks containing an index of more than 4.6 million records! The "Vital Records Index – North America" is a nice example of important genealogy records that have been indexed and made available to the general public at low cost. If you have a significant number of North American ancestors, you probably will want to add this set of CD-ROM disks to your collection. To order by telephone within the United States or Canada, call 1-800-537-5971. In other countries, dial your international prefix plus 801-240-1126 to learn of the distribution center that serves you. Ask for Item number: 50029 For more information about the "Vital Records Index -- North America," look at: http://www.familysearch.org/OtherResources/NorthAmerican_vital.asp - Western Pennsylvania Genealogical Society Quarterly on CD-ROM In last week’s newsletter I published a news release from GenQuest about a new CD-ROM disk. This week I had a chance to use the actual product for a while and found that it does live up to the claims published in the press release. The complete name of this disk is the "Western Pennsylvania Genealogical Society Quarterly. 1974-1997, and Other Select Publications." Those "Other Select Publications" include 7 volumes of Allegheny county naturalizations, 1798-1906, and 3 volumes of Lists and Indexes to the Legal, Court and Municipal Records of Allegheny County. Upon opening the CD-ROM, the first thing that I noticed is that GenQuest has inserted a nice 10-page user’s guide inside the jewel case cover. This booklet is written in a bit of a light-hearted manner. Under the heading of "How to Use the WPGS InfoBase," the user’s guide says, "Slow Down Nelly" and then gives a few quick instructions on how to launch the program and do simple searches. Later pages give more detailed instructions. Installation took about two minutes and was simple. The Western Pennsylvania Genealogical Society Quarterly CD-ROM requires: an IBM compatible running Windows 3.1,Windows 95 or Windows 98 - both 16-bit and 32-bit Windows software is included on the CD-ROM disk The included software is Folio Views 4.11, one of my favorite CD-ROM "engines." Folio Views also supports Macintosh systems, but there was no mention of Macintosh included with this particular CD-ROM. Obviously GenQuest is only guaranteeing its operation on Windows systems. Operation of the software was simple: I found that I could search all text for names, places or any word. Once I found a "hit" I could view a graphic of the original page. I also found that it was simple to "cut-and-paste" data to other applications. For instance, here is a "cut-and-paste" from "Metzgar, Thomas J. & Stewart, Rev. Dr. Reid W. "PRESBYTERIAN COLLEGES AND ACADEMIES IN WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA" WPGSQ 21 no. 4 (Spring 1995): 22": DUNLAP'S CREEK ACADEMY We are indebted to Atty J.B. Adams of Uniontown who writes, "I am herewith sending you a photo-static copy of the ROLL OF SCHOLARS AT DUNLAP'S CREEK ACADEMY in the winter of 1866-67, copied from the original which has been in our family since that time. It was copied on 4 pages of double sheet letter paper. Names have been deciphered." Lillie Blackford I printed the complete page of the above record. The first few lines printed listed the full name of "Western Pennsylvania Genealogical Society Quarterly" and then the volume number and page number. The printed documented was therefore fully documented as to where it was found. Western Pennsylvania Genealogical Society Quarterly on CD-ROM contains every word from each of the documents listed. The Folio Views software allows for simple or very complex Boolean searches. In the above example I simply searched for one word: my own surname. However, with a common surname, this could be quite tedious. You can invoke a more complex search to quickly identify records of interest. For example, say you have an ancestor William Adams who married on May 16, 1837. You do not know the bride’s name. Your ancestor lived and died in Beaver County, so you suspect that his marriage ceremony was performed there, too. You can enter the following search: "1837 adams william beaver"/100 This says to look for all occurrences of the words 1837, adams, william and beaver as long as they all occur within 100 words of each other. Ignore any words that do not occur within 100 words of the other three. Click on OK, and 2 or 3 seconds later you will see the following: 7 Jun 1837 ADAMS, William of Little Beaver Twp. to Eliza GREER of the same place 16 May 1837 by Rev. George SCOTT Simple? Well, not at first. But if you spend a bit of time reading the instructions for Boolean searches, you will be able to construct similar searches easily. Once you find text of interest, you can highlight it for future use. This is almost the same as using a highlighter on paper; you electronically mark the text of interest to you. The next time you return to that page, the text is still highlighted. You can even have different highlighted colors. You could highlight your mother’s ancestors in yellow, your father’s in green, and your spouse’s ancestors in still another color. You can also bookmark spots in the CD-ROM so that you can quickly return to them anytime.In addition, you can write notes in the margins and save them for future use. All of the highlighted areas, bookmarks and margin notes are actually saved on the PC’s hard drive and then applied the next time that particular page is opened on that computer. Obviously, you cannot write these highlighted areas, bookmarks and margin notes directly onto a read-only CD-ROM. If you do take the CD-ROM to a different computer later, the highlighted areas, bookmarks and margin notes are all lost. I suspect you can copy them to a floppy disk and take them along. However, that would require familiarity with the Folio Views software. I bet that most people will not do that. The Western Pennsylvania Genealogical Society Quarterly contains marriage records, family histories, church membership rolls, church histories, marriage and death notices from area newspapers, family Bible records, land records, tax lists, cemetery transcriptions, articles pertaining to Revolutionary War, War of 1812 and Civil War combatants and Pennsylvania regiments, etc. from the various counties comprising Western Pennsylvania. A map of the counties covered can be found at: http://www.genquest.com/wpgsmap.html The same CD-ROM also contains the "Lists and Indexes to the Legal, Court, and Municipal records of Allegheny County." Some of the contents are naturalizations in the Mayor’s court of Pittsburgh, birth and death records for the Allegheny county and Allegheny City Homes. There are other records from Allegheny County as well. Finally, the CD-ROM also contains 3 volumes of Allegheny county naturalizations, from 1798 to 1906. The "Western Pennsylvania Genealogical Society Quarterly" CD-ROM is a winner. It contains high-quality genealogy data from a wide area of the western part of the state, an area that has produced millions of descendants. The software is easy to use although exploring its many options will keep you occupied for some time as you keep discovering new search methodologies. The "Western Pennsylvania Genealogical Society Quarterly on CD-ROM" sells for $99.95 U.S. funds. Members of the Western Pennsylvania Genealogical Society receive a twenty-dollar discount. For more information, look at: http://www.genquest.com/catalog.html - "The Family History Show" To Be Discontinued It is with sadness that I announced that Michael Matthews’ "Family History Show" on Texas State Network Radio will soon be discontinued. Michael is stepping down, probably after the September 26th broadcast. After some 250 broadcasts over the past 4 years and 8 months, the program has been considered a success in talk radio, being top-rated in all Texas radio throughout most of the program's Sunday evening broadcasts. Recent cancellations by KPRC Radio in Houston, KFYO in Lubbock, and partial preemption by KTSA Radio in San Antonio, along with decreasing participation by listeners in the North Texas area on KRLD 1080, were cited as major considerations in Matthews's decision to resign. "The eventual failure was my own", Matthews stated. "I was unable to hold the audience despite featuring many of the best authorities on the topic in America. Callers used to pack the phone lines, but I don't want to waste the time and effort of state archivists and other notable authorities without adequate callers." "The Family History Show" was the first interactive radio talk show on a major radio network in America devoted to genealogy. At one point, some 26 radio stations in Texas carried the program, but some would cancel after only three months if local listeners did not participate right away. Many stations continued to carry the program for years despite a lack of local callers, such as KGNC Amarillo, KEYS Corpus Christi, KKSA San Angelo, KSST Sulphur Springs and others. The late hours of 10:00 PM to midnight were often cited as a primary deterrent by many potential listeners and participants. "Unfortunately, the late Sunday night time-slot was the only opportunity offered, so I gladly took it", Matthews said. "It was better than nothing!" The lack of advertisers sponsoring the program prevented any possibility of an earlier broadcast time. "Overall, it was a success by lasting nearly five years on commercial talk-radio", according to the host, "and it inspired and helped many family historians. The guests and I had a lot of fun, but I guess it finally ran its course, and caller participation decreased." Michael Matthews also described one of the most memorable experiences of his five-year run: "A couple years ago, one fella asked about my favorite all-time question . . . It wasn't so much the question, but the result. It was from a young sounding voice, and after the guest and I answered the best we could, I asked, ‘Jim, I rarely ask, but how old are you?’ He said, ‘I'm thirteen.’ And I asked, ‘Well, what got you interested in researching your family history?’ ‘Listening to you’, he responded. That phone call, and many others that were similar, made the whole five years worth it!" Many of us have listened to Michael over the past five years, both on the air and on the Internet. He has consistently produced a high-quality genealogy talk show. I hope that we hear from him soon, perhaps in a different arena with a larger audience. The following was written by Megan Smolenyak: Several months ago, many of you kindly submitted your stories for the upcoming PBS "Ancestors: The Family Search" series that will air in early 2000. Unfortunately, we could only select about a dozen stories from the more than 1,000 that we received. We'd like to thank every one of you who took the time to share your tale and assure you that every single story was read and considered. And now, we'd like to ask for your help again. The series will have a companion book which will complement the show itself. At this point, it is tentatively called "Honoring Our Ancestors: 101 Stories of Serendipity, Kindness, and Connection." As you can tell from the title, we're looking for slightly different stories than the ones we solicited for the show. Here are the categories of stories we're looking for this time out: What Were the Odds? Almost all avid genealogists experience serendipity in their research. A book just happens to fall off the library shelf and provide the missing clue that has been sought for years. The bed & breakfast inn chosen at random for a research trip coincidentally turns out to have belonged to the researcher's family 100 years ago. In a roll of microfilm with a thousand unindexed pages, the genealogist magically scrolls to the exact page that contains great-granddad's information. Please share any experiences you've had like this. Trusting Your Intuition Genealogists are great detectives, and like the police variety, learn to trust their hunches even when there is no logical reason to do so. We'd love to hear about any times when you "trusted your gut" and were rewarded for listening to that inner voice. You know, those "something just told me . . ." stories! Connecting with Kin One of the most addicting experiences in genealogy is the thrill of finding long lost cousins, or in some cases, parents, children, or siblings -- and one of the most wonderful aspects of genealogy is how it rebuilds the severed bridges that have separated so many families over the years. Please tell us about your reunion tales or how you connected with distant cousins. The Kindness of Strangers Genealogists are some of the most generous people on this planet. Many members of this extended community have helped countless strangers over the years "just because." Some rescue family photos and bibles from antique stores or flea markets and reunite them with descendants of the original owners. Volunteers at historical societies will often take a personal interest in a query from a stranger and take the extra step of publishing it in a local newspaper or seeking out living relatives for the writer. Some Americans have benefited from the generosity of unrelated Europeans who have helped them in their research simply to show their continuing gratitude for the United States' role in WWII. We want to hear about the random and not-so-random acts of genealogical kindness you've experienced or performed. Breaking the Time Barrier A good genealogist strives to get past the "just the facts" mode of research (i.e., just names, dates, and places) to discover what his ancestors were like as living, breathing people. In fact, many serious family historians find themselves drawn to a handful of ancestors that seem to call to them. Learning about a great-grandfather's survival in a shipwreck or meritorious service in the Civil War is often a source of pride and strength, and even those inevitable black sheep are amusing and show a family's ability to rise above circumstances. We invite you to share stories that show that even the passage of time and death itself are not strong enough to break family ties -- of how you feel connected to that ancestor, even though he/she passed on 100 years ago. If at First You Don't Succeed . . . No one can ever accuse genealogists of lacking creativity and persistence in their search for roots. A family bible has been passed down through five generations of maternal lines and is now in the possession of a person who has no clue how he's connected to the family in the bible? No problem. A genealogical sleuth will track him down and prove they're cousins. Please take this opportunity to show off your doggedness, ingenuity, and perseverance! If you're interested in having your family's tale appear in the book, please write a brief summary and send it to 76163.1402@compuserve.com We'd appreciate it if you would use the category your story fits into as the subject for your message. As with the last time, we regrettably will not be able to respond to all messages due to the anticipated volume, but since we need 101 stories, the odds are certainly better this time! Also, please submit them no later than August 18th. Thanks and best of luck! Genealogists often go looking for old grave sites, but archeologists in England are looking for one that is 900 years old. A British and U.S. archaeological team believes it has found the grave of King Alfred, the great Saxon king, best remembered for fighting off the Danes in the ninth century. As then befitted a king of great piety, Alfred was buried in 899 at the New Minster church in Winchester, 65 miles southwest of London. His remains are thought to have been moved 200 years later to Winchester's Hyde Abbey, one of the great medieval monasteries. But the abbey was destroyed in 1538, and the site believed to be Alfred's tomb now lies next to a parking lot. The full story is available at: http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2560395945-3f1 My thanks to Michael Babcock for letting me know about the search for King Albert’s grave. The following is a list of some of the genealogy-related World Wide Web home pages that have been listed recently on http://www.rootscomputing.com. Some of these sites may charge a fee for their services: Diaries of John Stoner Beidler (1841-1917): Society of Mayflower Descendants in Connecticut, a society to commemorate the spirit of the original passengers of the Mayflower: The Arender Family Roots website summarizes the life & times of Private Sampson Arender (1827-1919), Company G, 46th Mississippi Infantry Regiment, C.S.A. It also examines the early history and origin of the ARENDER family in America: North Collin County (Texas) Genealogical Society: Day Family Genealogy - Built by many Days and Day descendants and includes many different lines of Day families: To submit your home page to this newsletter, enter the necessary information at: http://www.rootscomputing.com/register.htm. Due to the volume of new Web pages submitted, I am not able to list all of them in the newsletter.
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