A Traveling Man
When the Immigration Collection at Ancestry was expanded late last year, I took a few minutes to play with it, and as is typical for me, I experimented with members of my own family. David seemed like an obvious candidate, so I entered the basic details I knew and up popped a few hits. David Shields (and variations) isn't a common name, but it's not a rare one either, so I ventured into the list of matches with no expectations. But there it was.

I found a 1929 entry for a seventy-year-old David Shields on the S.S. Laconia. "My" David should have been seventy-two, but I glanced across the page and spotted his address--136 Bright Street, Jersey City, New Jersey. Yup, that's where my great-grandfather lived. Better yet, there was a notation that he was traveling under passport number 57998 issued on 23 May 1929! This especially excited me since I knew that passport applications included photographs starting sometime in the 1920s. With a 1929 application, he must have submitted a photo, but could I obtain a copy of the record?

Who's Got the Passport Applications?
I've dealt with passport applications before so I was aware that those up to March 1925 are available through the National Archives, but where would one for 1929 be lurking? It turns out that they reside at the State Department. Not surprisingly, there are some restrictions for third-party requests, and the price is steep ($60), but a letter and two months of hoping later, a packet arrived in the mail.

Two precious pages of documentation. The application confirmed his birth date, birth place, father's name, and date of immigration--all details I had from other sources, but had always pondered the veracity of. Now I had all of them straight from the horse's mouth. Apparently, his son (my future grandfather, James V. Shields) had taken his father into New York City to obtain the passport and signed as his identifying witness.

I also learned that David was 5'11", had gray hair and blue eyes, and was still employed as an iron worker. He was going to Ireland to "visit relations," and had gone back to Ireland once before in 1888. In fact, the timing revealed that he had journeyed back to Northern Ireland immediately upon receiving his U.S. citizenship.

Most important of all, there was exactly what I was hoping for--a photo! (You can see a copy of that photograph on the blog.) He had suited up for the process, looked stern, and had the prominent ears of the Shields clan. Yes, definitely a Shields man.

Seeds of Truth
So as is so often the case with family lore, there was some truth to my nana's tale. She said that David had traveled frequently to Ireland, but in the context of the times, troubling to go back to the old country twice in a lifetime was enough to qualify as frequent. And the details of this single record confirmed Nana's claim of his fondness for the country of his birth. I was glad to know that he visited the family back home as soon as he had been naturalized, and again, as an older gentleman of seventy-two. That told me a bit about the kind of person my great-grandfather was, and I appreciated that almost as much as the photo.

If you haven't "worked" the Immigration Collection in a while, I strongly encourage you to spend a little time searching for your direct-line ancestors and collateral relatives. Just maybe you'll be fortunate enough to have a vagabond in the family who left a trace in more recent years--a trace that might lead to some valuable clues and even faces!

Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak is Chief Family Historian for Ancestry.com, co-founder of RootsTelevision.com, and co-author (with Ann Turner) of Trace Your Roots with DNA: Using Genetic Tests to Explore Your Family Tree. She apologizes for not having written in so long and can be contacted through rootstelevision.com/blogs/megans-rootsworld.php and www.honoringourancestors.com.

Upcoming Events Where Megan Will Be Speaking:
Details and links to upcoming events

• Ruth E. Lloyd Information Center (RELIC) for Genealogy and Local History
  (September 29, 2007, Manassas, VA)
• Loudoun County Public Library
  (September 30, 2007, Purcellville, VA)
• Iowa Genealogical Society Annual Fall Conference
  (October 4-6, 2007, Marshalltown, IA)
• Delaware Genealogical Society
  (October 21, 2007, Wilmington, DE)
• Wholly Genes Software 2007 Genealogy Conference and Cruise
  (October 28-November 4, 2007, Eastern Caribbean)

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by Sherry Irvine

A few weeks ago Ancestry added the Australian Convict Transportation Registers to its online collections. The collection has seven parts drawn from two classes of records (Home Office 10 and 11) at the National Archives (TNA) at Kew, near London, England.

• Australian Convict Transportation Registers, First Fleet, 1787-88
• Australian Convict Transportation Registers, Second Fleet, 1789-90
• Australian Convict Transportation Registers, Third Fleet, 1791
• Australian Convict Transportation Registers, Other Fleets and Ships, 1791-1868
• New South Wales and Tasmania, Australia, Convict Musters, 1806- 1849
• New South Wales and Tasmania, Australia, Convict Pardons and Tickets of Leave, 1834-1859
• New South Wales and Tasmania, Australia, Settler and Convict Lists, 1787-1834

Until the nineteenth century, Britain had no large prisons managed by the national government and most offences carried the death penalty or were commuted to transportation. (See my article, Saving Their Necks: The Origins of Transportation to America)

Up until 1775 Britain shipped felons and criminals to the American colonies. For several years, during the War of Independence and just after, people convicted of crimes were held in Britain in old ships that were no longer seaworthy. Prison hulks were located at Portsmouth, Plymouth, and at Woolwich on the Thames near London.

In 1787 the first shipment of convicts left for New South Wales. Over the next eighty years about 165,000 men and women were transported to penal colonies there and in Tasmania, and to Western Australia. In the 1830s, the peak period, about 4,000 convicts were shipped out every year.

Transportation was abolished in 1857, though for some specific offences it did not disappear until 1868. Most went to New South Wales and Tasmania, but from 1850 to 1868 about 9,500 male convicts were sent to Western Australia.

Contents
The titles to the seven parts of the Convict Transportation Registers database tell you what is included. Lists of convicts on each ship are here, starting with the First Fleet and including ships going to Western Australia at the end. There are also various lists of convicts in New South Wales and Tasmania--some lists of those who received pardons and some lists of those who were recorded periodically in musters of convicts in the penal colonies.

I recommend you read the information about each database in full (always click on "more" when you reach the end of the short summary on a database's main page) to better understand what you are about to examine.

The databases include people who were convicted not only at courts in Britain and Ireland, but in many parts of the British Empire. I found locations in Canada and the West Indies, one reference to Bombay and several to the island of St. Helena.

Each individual ship register entry indicates the name, place of conviction, date of conviction and length of sentence. The table of search results gives the important facts, including the date the ship left England. A few entries may have a notation that the convict died. If you work your way back to the first page of each ship's list you will see the name of the vessel, the date it departed, and the number of convicts onboard (sometimes only a number in brackets, sometimes with a note).

Records of musters show names, year of arrival, sentence and employment; they may also indicate age. Records of pardons may contain interesting details, including the reasons for the pardon, such as many years in the colony with good behavior, or a specific act of assistance to the authorities.

Searching the Database
Searches in the seven Australian convict databases need to be carried out one database at a time. If you use the search box on the main landing page for the databases it searches Australian Convicts Transportation Registers Other Fleets and Ships, 1791-1868. The other databases can be searched individually through the links provided above, or collectively through the Ancestry.com.au website's advanced search page.

The basic search box has input for the first name and last name and the advanced search box offers several more options. When dealing with a rare name you can simply input that information, but most of you will want to view the advanced search options and at least include a range of years to help limit the scope of the search.

The advanced search tool gives you other ways to explore the data--by place of conviction, for example. You can search the data without any name at all, which means your results consist of every name that fits your search criteria. When searching by place of conviction, be aware that this must be entered as it was given in the registers. Entering "Canada," for example, will not yield every conviction in what is now Canada; there are separate entries for other colonies, such as Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.

Find Out More
The Convict Transportation Registers database is a wonderful new resource, but the subject has been of interest to Australians, and those with Australian connections, for a long time. Searches online or in books will reveal many interesting websites, other databases, and historical background information. Here are a few titles to expand your research.

• Brook, A. and D. Brandon. Bound for Botany Bay: British Convict Voyages to Australia. (London, 2005).
• Hughes, R. The Fatal Shore: A History of Transportation of Convicts to Australia 1781–1868. (London, 1987)
• New South Wales Archives (family history section)
• Tasmania Archives
• State Record Office of Western Australia (convict records information)
• Convicts to Australia

Sherry Irvine, CGRS, FSA Scot, is an author, teacher, and lecturer specializing in English, Scottish, and Irish family history. She is the author of Your English Ancestry (2d ed., 1998) and Scottish Ancestry (2003), and she is a contributor to several publications. Since 1996, she has been a study tour leader, course coordinator, and instructor for the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research at Samford University. Recently she served a two-year term as president of the Association of Professional Genealogists.

Online Classes
Sherry Irvine has teamed up with Helen Osborn for a new series of online courses. For more information, visit PharosTutors.com.

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I was at the FGS Conference in Fort Wayne, Indiana, this past week, and so I'm preparing this newsletter ahead of time. For this reason, the list of new databases and recent blog posts are not included. I'm going to try to put up a few posts while I'm in Fort Wayne, if I get some free time and can drag myself out of the library. (But if I make any major discoveries, all bets are off!) ;)

• View the list of new databases at Ancestry
• Visit the Blog

Ancestry Magazine--FREE?. If you have a paid, annual membership to Ancestry, you should have received your first complimentary issue of our new digital version of Ancestry Magazine. To view the magazine, just click on any of the links in the e-mail announcing its arrival. Then, click anywhere on the screen to enlarge the magazine's type, use the arrow buttons to move forward or backward, or hit the printer icon to print a single page or the whole thing.

While our new e-zine isn't intended to replace the twenty-three-year old traditional print Ancestry Magazine, it is intended to make it easier for readers to click directly through to important websites and to share Ancestry Magazine articles with other family history buffs. Plus, for annual subscribers to Ancestry.com, it's a bonus means of getting more involved--and more inspired--about family history.

If you haven't received the e-mail message announcing your FREE digital version of Ancestry Magazine, but you think you should have, visit Ancestry.com and select My Account. Be sure you're signed up for an Ancestry.com ANNUAL subscription and your newsletter and marketing e-mail preferences permit special offers from both Ancestry and from trusted Ancestry partners.

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Today's image (in the upper, right-hand corner of this newsletter) is from the Library of Congress Photo Collection, 1840-2000 at Ancestry.

Kungsparken, Malmo, Sweden
(Detroit Photographic Company)

from George G. Morgan

Genealogists researching their Channel Islands ancestry will revel in Alex Glendinning's Channel Islands Pages. The Channel Islands are located in the English Channel between England and France and consist of Alderney, Guernsey, Jersey, and some smaller islands.

Mr. Glendinning has compiled an impressive collection of materials including lists of place names; locations of parishes where registers may be located; how to obtain vital records copies; lists of archives services; information about land registry records, maps, seamen's records; and more.

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A Trip in Time
Would you like to make a trip around the area your ancestors came from, in the timeframe they lived there? If/when you learn where your ancestors came from you can take that imaginary trip. Over the years I have purchased antique Baedeker's travel books. I've researched how my ancestors might have traveled to reach their point of departure from Europe, what kind of transportation was available in that timeframe, and plotted possible routes to determine which books I should purchase. My specific ancestors came from Germany. This led me to explore multiple countries.

In these travel books are maps of cities as well as of buildings that existed in the timeframe the book covers (e.g., churches, cathedrals, etc.). Many are available in English as well as the native language. Copies of a lot of these maps are being sold on the Internet. They take you day-by-day from point to point, with sights you would have seen along the way. I have been lost in my reading of these travel guides for hours at a time--it is the next best thing to being there.

Marge Clark

Time Travel Via Disney
Here is another way to put your family in historical perspective. If you are traveling to Walt Disney World in Florida, see the show at the Magic Kingdom called "The Carousel of Progress." It follows an audio-animatronic family through the last century as they show how times have changed due to the many modern inventions. It's one of the oldest attractions in the park, and often operates only seasonally during busier times.

Terri Walker

North Carolina Gazetteer
Thanks for a great newsletter. The article by Mr. George G. Morgan in the newsletter of July 29 will be very useful for those searching for old names of towns and places.

I grew up in North Carolina and wanted to mention a book, The North Carolina Gazetteer, A Dictionary of Tar Heel Places, by William S. Powell. It was first published in 1968 by The University of North Carolina Press and the fifth printing, noted in my copy, was in February 1982.

On page, 309, it states: "Madison, town in west Rockingham County at the junction of Mayo and Dan Rivers. Alt. 577. Authorized to be laid out in 1815; settled 1818; incorporated 1851. Names for James Madison (1751-1836), President of the United states when the town was authorized." I have found places in this book that I have been unable to find elsewhere.

Nancy J. Fenner

If you have a suggestion you would like to share with other researchers, send it to: Juliana@Ancestry.com. Thanks to all of this week's contributors!

Quick Tips may be reprinted, with credit to the submitter, in other Ancestry publications, so if you do not want your tip included in a publication other than the Ancestry Weekly Journal please state so clearly in your message.

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The year was 1886 and Chicago, Illinois--at the time only fifty-three years old--had grown to become an important trade center. But as in other parts of the country, divisions between capitalists and labor coupled with economic instability to cause friction. Unions were pressing for an eight-hour workday.

On 3 May, following a national eight-hour walkout, violence broke out at a union rally, and clashes with police resulted in the deaths of two workers. Another outdoor meeting was planned for the following evening at the Haymarket on Randolph Street near Desplaines Street. The police and government officials were worried that the assembly would turn violent and as the meeting was winding down, police marched in and ordered the attendees to disperse.

A bomb was thrown into the gathered police, setting off a wave of gunfire in the panic that ensued. Seven policemen and at least four workers were killed in the Haymarket Riot, and more casualties would follow. Anarchists were rounded up and arrested. Eight men would be charged with conspiracy, although the actual bomb thrower was never discovered and it was never proven that the eight men had planned the bomb throwing. They were convicted on the grounds that their speeches and actions had incited the mob actions. Four of the men were hanged, another condemned to die committed suicide, one was given fifteen years in prison, and the other two--originally condemned to death-- had their sentences commuted and were eventually pardoned in 1893. To learn more about the Haymarket Riot, the conditions that led to it, and the aftermath, visit the Chicago Historical Society's online exhibition, The Dramas of Haymarket.

In Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada, workers on the Canadian Pacific Railroad lost control of a fire set to clear some land when a sudden blast of wind blew up. The flames spread quickly consuming buildings and people in their path. In less than forty-five minutes, the two-month-old city was in ruins.

On 31 August, a magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck Charlestown, South Carolina. The strong earthquake devastated the city leaving 90 percent of the buildings damaged or destroyed, and sixty people dead. Damage was reported within a radius of about one-hundred miles, and the quake was felt in thirty states and Ontario, Canada. Images of the damage can be found on the Earthquake Center at St. Louis University website.

Drought plagued the western U.S. that year, and the 22 July New York Times reported the following:

FLEEING FROM DROUGHT
Fort Worth, Texas, July 21.--Throughout the day wagons loaded with families and their effects from the western counties have been streaming through the city. They are fleeing from the drought prevalent in the western counties and have come here in the quest of work. They give most gloomy accounts of the condition of crops and the lack of water for stock. It has not rained in some of these drought-stricken counties for over a year. Hundreds of families are abandoning their cattle and homes and going eastward to keep from starving to death. The situation is critical. Rain seldom falls in this drought-stricken district during August, and by that time there will be nothing left in the country.

If you were parched in Georgia, there was a new way to relieve your thirst. 1886 was the year that an Atlanta pharmacist, Dr. John Pemberton, came up with the syrup that would be combined with carbonated water to become Coca-Cola.

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If you'd like to see your ancestor's photograph in the Ancestry Weekly Journal, send it to Juliana@Ancestry.com.

Contributed by Debbie Demeester This is a picture of the granddaughters of Joseph and Adeline Stoliker of Leeds County, Ontario, ca. 1900. Bottom right is Blanche "Babe" Stoliker next to her sister Myrtle Ann Stoliker, both children of John and Elizabeth Reed Stoliker. Top left is Eva May Courtney, daughter of Joseph and Mina Stoliker Courtney. Top right is Florence Abigale Stoliker, daughter of Frank and Abigale Haynes Stoliker.

Contributed by Steve Nazigian This dashing young man is my great-grandfather John Minor who was living in Caroline County, Virginia, when he married my great- grandmother, Blanche H. Penney. Our family tradition describes him as a lumber mill boss who died in the forest while chopping wood after the revolver in his waistband accidentally discharged. Shortly afterwards, his only child, John Arthur Minor, my grandfather, was born in 1897.

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Has Ancestry helped you make a significant breakthrough with your family history research? If you have an Ancestry success story you'd like to share, please send it to us. We'd love to hear about it! Click here to share your story.

Map of Southeast Australia: 1875

If you are tracing the path of your family through Australia, this reprint of Edward Weller's 1875 map of Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria will be most useful. Originally issued by Blackie & Son, this map offers a detailed look at railway lines and small towns, and provides an abundance of political and geographical information.

Normally this map retails for $6.95, but for one week you can buy it in the Ancestry Store for $5.95.

Creating Junior Genealogists
by Karen Frisch

When family historians discover the value of their heritage, they naturally want to share it with their children and grandchildren. In Creating Junior Genealogists, the author offers ideas to help family historians infuse the next generation with an appreciation of their heritage, including how to use family activities, visits to historical sites and museums, scrapbooks, heirlooms—and much more—to captivate and create lasting memories for children.

Author Karen Frisch offers numerous suggestions that range from watching historical videos together to creating a family scrapbook. You'll learn how to teach your children basic genealogical tasks such as starting a family tree, exploring cemeteries for names and dates, and finding records on the Internet.

Normally this book retails for $12.95, but for one week you can buy it in the Ancestry Store for $9.95.

For more family fun and activity books, check out the Family section of the Ancestry Store.