About Kentucky Death Records, 1852-1953

This database contains the following Kentucky death records:

• Death certificates, 1911-1953
• Mortuary records, registers of deaths, and death certificates for Newport, Louisville, Lexington, Covington, and Jefferson County, up to 1911
• Returns of death, 1852-1910 (not all years are extant for each county)

Border Crossings: From Mexico to U.S., 1895-1957 – Updated

About Border Crossings: From Mexico to U.S., 1895-1957

This database contains an index of aliens and some citizens crossing into the U.S. from Mexico via various ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexican border between 1895 and 1957.

Caribbean Obituary Collection – Updated

About Caribbean Obituary Collection

The collection contains recent obituaries from hundreds of newspapers.

Canada Obituary Collection – Updated

The collection contains recent obituaries from hundreds of newspapers, and can be browsed by location:

Australia and New Zealand Obituary Collection – Updated

About Australia and New Zealand Obituary Collection

The collection contains recent obituaries from hundreds of newspapers.

United States Obituary Collection – Updated

The collection contains recent obituaries from hundreds of newspapers and can be browsed by location.

United Kingdom and Ireland Obituary Collection – Updated

The collection contains recent obituaries from hundreds of newspapers and can be browsed by the following locations:

England, Alien Arrivals, 1810-1811, 1826-1869 – Updated

About England, Alien Arrivals, 1810-1811, 1826-1869

This data collection contains lists of aliens (non-British citizens) arriving in England between 1810 and 1869. The records come from the following National Archives collection series. These records were primarily created as a result of various acts passed by parliament to regulate immigrants and other incoming individuals.

London, England, Land Tax Valuations, 1910 – Free Index

About London, England, Land Tax Valuations, 1910

This is a collection land tax valuation rolls in the City of London taken in 1910. The Finance Act 1910 included the taxation in the increase in the value of land and in order to tax the increase the land had to be valued to begin with. These rolls are the baseline valuations of land in the different districts of London. The work was done by the District Valuation Offices of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue. It involved the compilation of field books and maps that listed all property. The Domesday Books that comprise this collection is the summary of this information.

Source: Ancestry.com

You can read the full article here.  What I like in this list is that there are some that are free and I didn’t know about (Wow the internet is really expanding) with new resources all the time.

I always enjoy Kimberly’s articles because her research is timely and relevant.  Keep up the great work!

Have you found a resource for Irish Research not listed on our site or in Kim’s article?  Let me know below, I would love to list it and share with all our readers!

I had very little to go on, as usually happens and almost right away I hit a brick wall. It seems my friend forgot to mention that he and his family came here under political asylum.

So with that I did a little jump in an attempt to find the family name in Romania… Nope, it was far too big of a jump of one Generation, the currently living side here, and the no longer with us side in Romania. I was able to locate all the living individuals here in the US, but nothing in Romania.

The mystery deepens. My friend told me he was sure that the family was actually descended from the Spanish according to his father. In researching the family name there is not a single instance of the name to be found in Spain or even in Romania but France and Switzerland shows promise. So while I am not giving up on the search I find it incredibly fascinating where a single name can lead you.

It is fun to see where the name leads and I even smiled when he told me the reason I couldn’t find anything outside the US for his family because of the asylum. I guess the moral of the story is, ask the “right” questions before you begin your research so you know the stumbling blocks you may need to overcome.

If you are researching in Romania these links may be helpful for you:

Romania Genealogy Links Page
Romanian White/Yellow Pages (English)

Happy trails…

Irish Americans (Irish: Gael-Mheiriceánach) are citizens of the United States who can claim ancestry originating in Ireland. A total of 35,975,855 Americans (12% of total population) reported Irish ancestry in the 2006 American Community Survey.

In a two part series Feargal O’Donnell of RootsIreland dispels some of the myths of records available or soon to be and discusses some amazing nuances about researching your Irish family tree.

He also gives a few tidbits of information that you can work with that you may not have been aware of because of the knowledge that the “native” Irish who are transcribing the records have that you and I don’t.

If you are of Irish decent and have found all the records that you can through the most common sites on the web I would encourage you to take a look at the site. While the records are not free, finding that one person’s record that has you stumped may unlock the door to your Irish Roots.

Roots Ireland – Part 1

Roots Ireland – Part 2

Excellent System Of Managing Records

One of the hallmarks of the National Archives of Australia is that as a source to trace out Australian genealogy, it keeps an excellent system of managing genealogy charts and records which not only helps it in getting good business, but also helps in making some informed decisions and of course, preserves Australia’s rich cultural heritage.

So, if your ancestors or other family members were from Australia or you are an Australian who wants to learn about Australian genealogy, this is a good source to find out more about your family history, or about various persons of interest and even about other topics related to Australian people. There are some useful tools that you can use and it will also help you to first of all be properly informed about the kind of records held by the National Archives of Australia, and the manner in which they have been arranged.

Thus, using the National Archives of Australia will help you find particular people, though it will help you more in your search of Australian genealogy if you knew whether the persons had migrated to Australia in the twentieth century, served in the Australian armed forces or served in the civil services, were under government surveillance, were of Aboriginal extract or were Torres Strait Islanders, were naturalized in South Australia or colonial Victoria following the year 1904 and whether they have worked for the Government of Australia, or even worked or lived in Australian territories including Papua New Guinea and Norfolk Island.

To help you with your Australian free genealogy search, there are also some DIY tools that you can use including name-based self-service tools, using the finding families guide, and using fact sheets as well as research sheets that help in a more general sense. In addition, there is also a RecordSearch that you can check out as well as a PhotoSearch that will provide images of more than one hundred and ten thousand photographs contained in the Archives collection. Also, the National Archives of Australia has one reading room in each of Australia’s different capital cities, which makes it easy to learn up about Australian genealogy from different parts of the country.

Mass Immigration

Ireland, until recently, has always been a poor nation. When most of Ireland converted to Catholicism, they also eschewed birth control (which was available in herbs that brought on menstruation well before the pill). But Ireland never had enough food to feed all of her millions. When the Great Potato Famine hit in 1845, it was the last straw for most Irish families. There was no work, no food, and no safe place to live. 2.2 million Irish died of starvation alone in five years. Those who lived had no choice but to immigrate.

In one sense, this makes Irish genealogy tree easier in that there are still records of many of the boat registers and records of places like Ellis Island in New York, where the boats landed. Many Irish, however, in order to become more “American” or to escape a blackened past, changed their names on the boat. No proof of ID was needed then – all you had to prove who you were was what came out of your mouth.

Records Meeting

Many studying their Irish genealogies find all information about their ancestors may come to an abrupt halt once the boat left Ireland. When researching in Ireland, they have a hard to nearly impossible time finding any kind of record that their immigrated ancestors were ever born, let alone lived in Ireland.

Then, you need to get creative with your Irish genealogy tree. The immigrants tended to have lively stories of their home towns. Check the towns and then check first names (and often the middle baptized) to find the ancestors’ previous generations. Many name alterations were also very small, even to just spelling Sean in Ireland to Shawn in America.

There are many free Irish genealogy websites you can use for research, which includes lists of cemetery headstones, birth records, execution records and even orphan record listings.

No Monopoly

One of the attractive aspects of the genealogy hobby is that no one person or group has the sole monopoly of information. Everyone pretty much has to share what they’ve learned with everyone else. This means many gaps in family history trees can be filled because of mutual information sharing. With German genealogy, this is even more apparent. While you might want to discover about your ancestors, those you may be related to in Germany are trying to find out about those who left for America.

Get That Mouse Clicking

The best (and most cost efficient) place to begin tracing your German roots is online. Just type “German genealogy” in your favorite search engine, and a whole virtual world of resources come to your fingertips. One of the best places to start is The German Heritage and Genealogy Home Page http://www.daddezio.com/germgen.html, which includes a huge database of German family coat of arms, mourning cards and the New England Naturalization Petitions, which includes the names of a lot of German immigrants.

You can also use the web to find out other information about German genealogy and the times your ancestors lived. Despite the terrible ravages of two World Wars, some records still survive the centuries. These public genealogy records have been mostly transcribed to online sites. You can search marriage certificates, cemeteries for the resting places of your forbears, and the meticulous military records that survived the World Wars.

Other resources about German genealogy that can be found on the web include, believe it or not, online auctions such as eBay. They often have old journals or, even more importantly, family Bibles for sale. The Family Bible was, for centuries, the main record of European and American families. Often, the two or more blank front pages were the only pieces of blank paper in the home.

NOTE: There is an exception. I am told that Samurai families in Japan do have family coats of arms although they do not resemble British or European coats of arms. In any case, if your ancestry is 100% Japanese Samurai, the rest of this article does not apply to you.

To begin with, coats of arms are never issued to families; they are issued to individuals. Coats of arms are issued by heralds and there are different heralds in each country in the United Kingdom and in Europe. A coat of arms is granted by the King of Arms in England and in Ireland, while the court of the Lord Lyon King of Arms grants that right in Scotland.

England, Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland have the most rigid system of heraldry (coats of arms). Other European countries do record and permit coats of arms, but do not restrict their use as much as do the English and the Scottish heralds. A repository called the College of Arms holds an official register of all granted coats of arms that exist in England and Wales.

The United States has never accepted the concept of nobility and therefore has no officially-recognized heralds. Several American organizations claim to be able to issue coats of arms but any such arms issued by an American organization have to be considered as “unofficial.” There is no official issuing body in the U.S. Most Americans who wish to obtain legitimate coats of arms apply first in the name of a foreign-born ancestor with the heralds in the country where that ancestor lived. The American descendant may then apply to use the ancestor’s coat of arms as his own as his “inherited right to arms.”

Throughout history, an individual could apply for a coat of arms and the heralds would decide whether or not to approve it. Coats of arms generally are issued to men although there are numerous exceptions. The Queen of England always has a coat of arms, as do many high-ranking officials. For instance, Margaret Thatcher was issued a coat of arms when she was prime minister.

In medieval days, coats of arms were issued only to knights and to noblemen as an emblem to be displayed on shields and on various banners for use in battle. After all, it was difficult to see through the eye slits in the helmets they wore and every soldier wanted to make sure he was swinging the broadsword at the enemy, not at his commanding officer. The brightly painted coats of arms helped identify the combatants back in the days before uniforms.

As the years passed and the battles decreased, a wealthy merchant class began to flourish and many merchants obtained coats of arms as well. So did clergymen, elected officials, and a few others. In every case, the coat of arms has always been issued to an individual, not to a family. You might find a coat of arms issued to someone with the same family name as yours, but that doesn’t mean that you are entitled to use the same arms.

When a man is entitled to display arms, his sons also may apply for coats of arms. Note that granting of coats of arms is not automatic, each person must apply. Sons usually are granted coats of arms that are very similar to their father’s but are changed slightly, to add some small detail that shows that this is the shield of their own branch of this particular family. If a man has multiple sons, each son applies for his own coat of arms with slight differences, even different from those of his brothers. The use of slightly modified coat of arms is called “differenced arms.”

When the father dies, the eldest son may then apply to use exactly the same coat of arms that his father used. Once granted, he stops using his differenced arms. His younger brothers continue to use their differenced arms, however.

Obtaining permission to use your deceased father’s coat of arms is not automatic. For instance, each King of England traditionally uses his own design and does not use that of his father.

There have always been a few instances in which women could inherit a coat of arms and to use them. However, a woman can not pass them along to her children unless she has no brothers. If this is the case, the woman owns the coat of arms, to pass along to her children, and she is considered to be the heraldic heiress to the coat of arms.

The wearing or display of coat of arms is restricted in most countries that recognize the ownership of coats of arms. There are no such restrictions in the United States; you may wear someone else’s coat of arms, if you wish to. Even the countries that do restrict usage rarely enforce such laws. Therefore, the sale of bogus “family coats of arms” is rarely stopped by the authorities.

In the countries that do restrict usage, only one person may use any particular coat of arms although a grantee’s sons or younger brothers might be using similar, but differenced, coats of arms, assuming they have applied for and received permission to use those differenced arms.

Did you ever receive an ad for “your family’s coat of arms?” That ad isn’t worth the paper it is printed on or the electrons used to display it on your computer screen. Regardless of your last name, you should display a particular coat of arms only if (1.) you have applied to the heralds for permission to display the particular arms and (2.) if such permission has been granted. Once that happens, you are the only person in the world authorized to display that coat of arms.

Displaying arms without proper authorization is a form of impersonation; you are trying to identify yourself as someone else. Legal or not, such impersonation is always in bad taste.

For authoritative information about heraldry (the display of coats of arms), I suggest you look at the following:

Polish Genealogy and Heraldry Society: http://www.feefhs.org/pol/frg-pghs.html

Luxembourg Society of Genealogy and Heraldry: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/hotel_claravallis/genealog.htm#genealogy

Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies – Encompasses all aspects of genealogical and heraldic research, art and practice: http://www.ihgs.ac.uk

Heraldry Society of Scotland: http://www.heraldry-scotland.co.uk

Heraldry Australia, Inc. – Australian Heraldry Society: http://www.heraldryaustralia.org

Heraldiska Samfundet – Swedish academy for the science of heraldry and related subjects: http://www.heraldik.se

The Birmingham and Midland Society for Genealogy and Heraldry: http://www.bmsgh.org/

Scandanavian Heraldry Society: http://www.heraldik.org/

Office of the Chief Herald of Ireland: http://www.nli.ie/en/heraldry-introduction.aspx

The Augustan Society – An international genealogical, historical heraldic and chivalric society: http://www.augustansociety.org/

South African Heraldry: http://www.geocities.com/heraldrysa/

Heraldry Society of Sweden: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/1284

Cambridge University Heraldic and Genealogical Society: http://www.cam.ac.uk/societies/cuhags/

Russian College of Heraldry: http://www.armorial.ru

Slovak Genealogical-Heraldic Society: http://www.genealogy-heraldry.sk/

Heraldry in South Africa: http://freepages.family.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~heraldry/page_optima.html

South Australian Genealogy & Heraldry Society Inc.: http://www.saghs.org.au

Royal Heraldry Society of Canada: http://www.heraldry.ca

The American College of Heraldry – a non-profit body with the aim of aiding in the study and perpetuation of heraldry in the United States and abroad: http://www.americancollegeofheraldry.org

Croatian Genealogical and Heraldic Society – CGHS: http://feefhs.org/cro/frg-cghs.html

CUHAGS – The Cambridge University Heraldry and Genealogy Society: http://www.cam.ac.uk/societies/cuhags/

The Heraldry Society – The Heraldry Society exists to increase and extend interest in and knowledge of heraldry, genealogy, ceremonial and allied subjects: http://www.theheraldrysociety.com

The College of Arms – England. Holds the official register of all Coats of Arms or heraldry in England and Wales. Also grants arms to individuals and organizations: http://www.college-of-arms.gov.uk

The following article is from Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter and is copyright by Richard W. Eastman. It is re-published here with the permission of the author. Information about the newsletter is available at http://www.eogn.com

If you happen to retrace your roots to Ireland, then the Ireland genealogy forum is a great place to find out just where you came from. On the Ireland genealogy forum, you’ll meet other like minded people who, just like you, are wondering where you came from. You may even be related in some way to some of these people. You can trade stories, compare notes, and you can hopefully get deeper and deeper into your family history. That makes the Ireland genealogy forum an invaluable resource for your search into your family tree genealogy.

Rich History

Ireland’s rich history has much to uncover. If you are in fact from Ireland, then it’s worth it to trace your roots into that very history. When you sign onto the Ireland genealogy forum, you can introduce yourself and tell the others on the forum that you think you’re from Ireland, or that you know you’re from Ireland, and hopefully you’ll make a connection. By comparing notes with others and by sharing stories and histories that you’ve found, you can dig deeper into your family history. This is a great resource for discovering just who you are, and who your ancestors were, and how you came to be and how you arrived at where you live today.

Meeting Others

The best part about the Ireland genealogy forum is that you’ll meet other like minded people. Digging into your family’s history can be a very long and tedious practice, but it’s also very interesting. It can be a very lonesome process, as well. However, when you meet others who are into genealogy just like you, it’s very liberating and you can possibly uncover more history that you wouldn’t have otherwise.

Sometimes, when retracing your roots, you may hit a wall. You may find that you can’t dig anymore because of lack of records, or some other reason that prevents you from finding out just who your early ancestors were. However, when you sign onto a forum like the Ireland genealogy forum, you can possibly meet someone who has dug further from you and you just might meet a cousin or other relative of yours that you never knew existed. That’s what’s so fun about retracing your roots.

Stephen Morse has an incredible site he calls “A One Step Portal for On-Line Genealogy” on which he has built some very advanced search pages to search the following records:

Ellis Island, Other Ports, US Census, Canada/UK Census, New York Census, Vital Records, Calendars, Maps, etc., Foreign Alphabets, Holoc & East Europe, Genetics (DNA), Creating your own Search Applications

And More…  bookmark this one and make sure to read the How to Use this site file he has.

Even if you have searched some of the sites on your own you may want to consider giving it a try again, especially if you have come up “blank” in the past and feel confident that your ancestor should be listed.

Happy Trails..