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Genealogy

A reference guide to sources, indexes, databases, and other content to help researchers and family historians conduct their research. This guide was assembled in 2019 and is by no means exhaustive.  The guide’s sections provide both reference information pointers and subject heading information to aid the researcher in quickly meeting their specific information needs.  The guide provides information on conducting searches, keywords derived from subject headings, as well as providing a list of e-books, databases, and websites where one might start their search. 

Table of Contents

Guide to Getting Started on Genealogy

Periodicals about Genealogy
Conducting a Search
Electronic Resources
International Resources
Browsing and Call Numbers
Additional Websites

Periodicals

National Genealogical Society quarterly
Since 1912, the National Genealogical Society Quarterly has published material concerning all regions of the nation and all ethnic groups including:

• compiled genealogies,
• case studies,
• essays on new methodology and little-known resources,
• critical reviews of current books, and
• previously unpublished source materials.

Journal of Family History (JFH)
Published quarterly, the JFH has been a leading resource for scholars interested in the history of the family for over three decades. Today, JFH continues to be the most important forum for international research on family, kinship, and population. Its focus encompasses work from a variety of perspectives, including gender, sexuality, race, class, and culture.

Family Tree Magazine
This is one of the best known genealogical magazines out there. It is definitely written for more casual genealogy audiences because it is not about scholarship so much as stories and practical how-to’s. You will find articles in it on things like family reunions and how to plan them, putting together genealogy scrapbooks, taking family history research trips (and making those trips fun for kids), and what makes all the different ethnic heritages special. It is for beginning and intermediate genealogists, but even experienced ones will find Family Tree Magazine a fun one to read.

Internet Genealogy
Internet Genealogy is a magazine that focuses on keeping today’s family historian up-to-date with the vast and ever-growing collection of genealogy-related resources, software, tools, products, technologies and more. With each new issue, you will find website reviews, social networking strategies, as well as tips, and stories from a wide variety of seasoned professional authors who share the benefit of their many year’s experiences of doing traditional and online genealogy research.

Guide to Getting Started

If you are just starting your genealogy research, talk to as many immediate family members as you can and collect names, dates, and places that relate to your family. Make note of everything they tell you; you never know what might prove useful. Dates and places are valuable to help you find published information. Copy any family documents you can, including family listings in Bibles and other resources, as well as birth, marriage and death certificates, and obituaries.

• Genealogy Search Advice
• Visiting a Family History Center
• NYC Genealogy

A guide from NYC that introduces a number of resources for those beginning to do genealogical research and and for those looking for good sites to carry out genealogical research. (Covers a wide geographical range–not just focused on NYC.)

Conducting a Search

The LIbrary of Congress provides a set of keywords and a controlled vocabulary one might use when searching electronic resources.  The primary term to use is Genealogy.  The lists below outline the other, less preferred terms associated with Genealogy

“Genealogy” should be used for (instead of) these topics:

• Ancestry
  
• Descent
  
• Family history (Genealogy)
  
• Family trees
  
• Genealogical research
  
• Genealogy—Handbooks, manuals, etc.
  
• Genealogy—History
• Genealogy—Methodology Genealogy—Research
• Genealogy—Sources
  
• Pedigrees

A list of “Broader Terms” for Genealogy would include:

• Auxiliary sciences of history
• History

A list of “Related Terms” for Genealogy would include:

• Biography
• Heraldry
• Precedence

A list of “Narrower Terms” for Genealogy would include:

• Aerial photography in genealogy
• American newspapers—Sections, columns, etc.—Genealogy
• Cemeteries—Recording
• Daimyo—Genealogy
• Families of royal descent
• Genetic genealogy
• Indians of North America—Genealogy
• Interviewing in genealogy
• Jesse trees Jesus Christ—Genealogy
• Jews—Genealogy Kings and rulers—Genealogy
• National socialism and genealogy
• Newspapers—Sections, columns, etc.—Genealogy
• Newspapers in genealogy
• Nobility—Genealogy
• Photographs in genealogy
• Probate records
• Registers of births, etc.

Subdivisions of Genealogy include:

Bibliography

• Related term: Genealogical literature

 Charts, diagrams, etc.

• Narrower term: Genograms

 Handbooks, manuals, etc.

• USE subdivision Genealogy–Handbooks, manuals, etc. under names of countries, cities, etc. and classes of persons
• USE Genealogy

 History

• USE Genealogy

 Law and legislation (This may be subdivided geographically)

• Narrower Term: Recording and registration

Methodology

• USE Genealogy

See Also:

subdivision Family under names of individual persons; also subdivision Genealogy under names of countries, cities, etc., names of individual corporate bodies, and under classes of persons and ethnic groups; and names of individual families

Primary Genealogy Databases

Search Tips
In almost all cases, keywords will be family name, given name, location, age, birth location, birth date, marriage date, spouse, and death.  

FamilySearch

Free resource. Created and maintained by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Family Search also provides an online wiki, in addition to several locations where people can visit directly and work with a docent for their research. 
The user interface is very simple to use.

One major note: FamilySearch’s architecture presumes to track people as the primary object and their associations to one another as a tree.  This is different from the Ancestry.com’s approach to genealogy, which is to track the tree, and assume that family trees have people attached to them. 

Ancestry Library Edition

from ProQuest/ancestry.com

Using the University of Kentucky Library system, one can access the Ancestry.com system.  If outside the University, this website requires a fee.  This website allows one to use stemming, phonetic spelling, and to filter or limit search scope to specific areas, such as birth or marriage records or census data. 

The site provides a number of guides on using the search system and the rest of the website.  One major note: Ancestry.com’s approach to genealogy is to track the tree, and assume that family trees have people attached to them.  This is different from the FamilySearch architecture, which presumes to track people as the primary object and their associations to one another as a tree. 

USGenWeb

Genealogical research resources organized by county and state, created and maintained by volunteers throughout the nation.

USGenWeb uses the FreeFind search engine.  While there are no controlled vocabularies, you can build boolean searches and or use stemming in your search – just click on the ‘Advanced’ link above the search box. 

Family Tree Searcher

Search family trees in nine online family tree databases.

GeneaNet

About two million members share more than 400 million entries for free in their family trees, archival records, indexes, and family picture and postcard collections.

CASTLE GARDEN

The castlegarden.org site no longer exists. This resource has been removed. All of the information that was on their site is accessible from the following resources:
Ancestry Library Edition and FamilySearch

Castlegarden.org was a free database developed and funded by The Battery Conservancy. It contained and made available eleven million records of immigrants who arrived at the Port of New York from 1820 – 1892.

Enter as much information as known.
The documents in this database reflect spellings of the time and may differ from family records. For the most complete results, use asterisks in your search to yield multiple spellings.
For example, searching Jo*n* Smith will yield results for Jon Smith, John Smith, Jonathan Smith, and Johnathan Smith.

Ellis Island

Conduct a Passenger Search of over 65 million passenger records

Begin by typing in the first name or initial and the full last name on the Passenger Search page. You can modify your search on the Passenger Result page by using the filter button and selecting among the six options. Your results will appear by category (e.g. Exact Matches 25, Alternate Spellings 54, etc.), with the names listed reflecting the category highlighted in blue. Click the next category to display those results.

If you wish to further narrow your search results, choose either the Wizard or One page form. You can scroll through the Wizard’s three pages by clicking < or > or the navigation circles at the bottom to make your selections. Some elements are chosen by clicking on the desired boxes, others by moving the sliders, and others by typing in the desired information. To lock in your search, click the Results arrow to the right of the Last Name box. Clear your Wizard choices with the Reset arrow in the upper left-hand corner of each page. If you use the One page form, erase your choices with the Clear button in the upper right-hand corner.
Your search results will appear in list view, but you may also select tiles view. The manifest displays with two options. You can rollover the image shown to enlarge sections of the manifest or select the Full Image pop-up, which features the entire page but is smaller in size. If you discover the record isn’t the person you are looking for and want to return to your list of results, click the Results arrow to the right of the Last Name field at the top of the page. Do not use your browser back-button.

To start a new search, click Clear just below the Results arrow on the Passenger Result page or click the Passenger Search button in the upper right-hand corner of the webpage.

If you don’t find the passenger you are looking for right away, don’t give up! Many names were misspelled or spelled differently than the familiar modern name. Try experimenting with the six filter options for last names. And on the One page form or Wizard, try removing some choices or adding new ones. Success is just one click away!

Additional Websites:

In addition to the resources from Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org, these websites can help with further research:

WorldGenWeb Project

The WorldGenWeb Project divides the world into 11 regions, which are then further broken down by country, province, state or county. Each country project site is coordinated by volunteer researchers familiar with the genealogical resources for that country. Check out WorldGenWeb’s getting started page for tips on making the best use of the project sites. Each country project page identifies available online resources and provides a listing of the country’s libraries and archives, as well as contact information for government registrars and clerks in record offices. Most project pages have query boards and mailing lists for users to help one another, as well as maps and a history of the country.

National Library of Ireland (NLI)

The NLI has announced plans to post images of its collection of Catholic parish register microfilms, more than 400,000 images from more than 1,000 parishes and dating from the 1740s to the 1880s—for free. These records, according to the NLI website, are “the single most important source of information on Irish family history prior to the 1901 census.” Start looking for these records online this summer.

JewishGen

Here you’ll find records and research tools for tracing Jewish and Eastern European ancestors. Databases include the Family Finder for ancestral towns and surnames, a Holocaust Database and a burial registry. The Family Tree of the Jewish People database provides a global collection of trees. The Communities Database, useful for anyone with Eastern European roots, has data on about 6,000 communities in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, including translations of place names and name changes over time. It’s wonderful for identifying a village whose name handed down through family history differs from what’s on a modern map.

Kirchenbuchportal

America’s most common ancestry group has many websites devoted to its records.  Now in beta, the Kirchenbuchportal (“church book portal”) offers digitized records of all state protestant churches—an estimated 140,000 individual church books. This should help fill in gaps in FamilySearch’s collection of digitized German church records, such as in Hesse. The site is in German, but you can use Google Translate to translate it.

Electronic Resources (ebooks, etc.)

Title	Publisher
Preserve Your Old Family Photos	Family Tree Magazine
Trace Your African-American Ancestry	Family Tree Magazine
Trace Your Native American Ancestry	Family Tree Magazine
How to Find Military Records	Family Tree Magazine
Cyndislist.com has over 300,000 links to resources	Cyndi’s List
Dear Myrtle, an institution in genealogical blogging	Pat Richley-Erickson
Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter, a very popular resource for news in the genealogy field.	Dick Eastman
Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center	Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, ID
Library of Congress Research Guide for Genealogy	Library of Congress
National Archives Resources for Genealogists	National Archives and Records Administration

Browsing

Below are the LCC and Dewey Decimal codes for relevant call numbers. Use these to find resources in your library

LCC	LCC Range	LCC Caption	DDC	DDC Caption
CD	CD	Diplomatics. Archives. Seals	929.1 – 929.3	Genealogy; Family histories; Genealogical sources
CS	CS	Genealogy	929.1 – 929.4	Genealogy; Family histories; Genealogical sources
CT	CT	Biography (General)	920	Biography & genealogy
CT	CT	Biography (General)	920.1 – 920.7	Biography of specific classes of persons
CR	CR	Heraldry	929.6	Heraldry