Colonial Genealogy Research - How to find early American ancestors

[Music] good morning good morning or a good afternoon or good evening depending on where you are hi this is elevens is with lisa and i am lisa louise cook and um elevenses is kind of a traditional tea time around the world and no matter what time of day it is for you you can come and bring your favorite beverage i think these days it's kind of warm and join us here for a conversation about our favorite topic which is of course family history and today i am really excited about what we're going to be talking about we're going to go in search of our american early american ancestors and and let me just say even if you currently don't have early american ancestors to research or maybe you're in a different country here's the thing really smart genealogists have so much to share and so many of the strategies and methodologies for genealogical research are applicable across the board so we're going to be talking about some unique resources today that are specific to the colonial era here in america but i think some of the methodology some of the things to to be looking for you can translate that into wherever you are researching whatever time frame whatever location so keep that in mind if by chance uh you don't have early american ancestors at least not right now in your tree and since we're heading back to the 17th century new england uh i thought it would be important to call upon lindsay fulton she is of the new england uh historic genealogical society which is also known as american ancestors and you can find american ancestors at americanancestors.org now lindsey fulton is with american ancestors and she leads the research and library services team as vice president at nehgs she's a frequent contributor to the nhgs blog and she's been featured in the emmy winning program it's called finding your roots the seedlings and that was a web series inspired by the popular pbs series called finding your roots so grab your tea and your bonnet and let's head back to the 1600s with lindsey fulton [Music] hi lindsay thank you so much for being here on the show today great to see you thank you lisa i'm happy to be here to talk about uh you know 17th century new england it's it's yeah do it american ancestors so uh you know we're happy i'm happy here to be here today to chat about it me too because this is not my area of expertise i am really excited about bringing your expertise uh and everything that you do there at nehgs to the show today and i know that you have a presentation you've done on colonial research before and i'd love to invite you share your screen and tell us a little bit start us off what time frame are we talking about and what kind of records can we look forward to so right so we're going to talk about some of our you know the go-to resources once we do you know we're gonna go pretty quickly through through some of those those commonly used resources um but you know there's a lot of them because it is 17th century new england they're the most studied people on the planet when it comes to doing genealogical research and that's actually really encouraging because many people i think will shy from colonial research that era thinking oh there just must not be much but like you just said it's the most researched time frame so that's great correct i'd rather do research in in the 17th century in new england than in 1810 in new york interesting okay great well um let's see if we can have you share your screen so today we're going to talk about the most commonly used resources uh for for 17th century new england research uh like i said before there's there's a whole lot of them that are available uh that have been that have been published that are available on on multiple websites there are many of these resources that are available at americanancestors.org which is the uh the website of the new england historic genealogical society so like i was saying before 17th century new englanders are the most looked at people um in terms of of genealogy there are hundreds and thousands of resources that are available to us so that's what we're going to run through really quickly what i want us to talk about first though is putting your ancestors into the context of a historic uh era so when did your ancestors arrive in new england and where did they migrate to all of that is very important for you to understand where you should be looking for your particular ancestors so this is a map this this comes from a book that i'm going to talk about in two seconds uh but this is a map that's done in 1675 of new england and as you can see there there are many settlements at this particular time now 1675 is an interesting date for us because that's right before king phillips war so when king phillips war happens everyone starts to come back to the the um primary settlements so if you were out in western mass in deerfield or westfield for example then once kingfield war starts then you start coming back towards boston and plymouth colony but this is how far everyone had spread as of 1675. so this is something to keep in mind if your ancestors are here during that very early period so if they arrive on the mayflower in 1620 um or just during uh the great migration uh which we'll talk about shortly uh all of it's important to understand exactly where they went or where they may have gone um and then so this this map here can help you with you know where someone may have have um have come to now when i say great migration this is something we're going to talk about over and over again throughout today's presentation what i mean is um folks who are arriving in new england between 1620 and 1640 they're arriving mainly the the peak of this period is from 1633 to 1640 or actually 1638. um once the civil war starts in england a lot of folks will go back to england or they won't you know they won't keep coming to new england but we see a huge amount of people that are arriving in new england during this particular uh very short period of time so the book that i was showing so that example the map that i was giving you that's from the expansion of new england and the expansion of new england is actually a really old book i mean it was published in 1909 originally but it's still relevant all of the information in there is still relevant there's 30 or 40 maps that are included and it's not it's not just helping us with new england but it's also helping us with those those folks who migrate out to the to the western states or midwestern states i use this book all the time when i'm working in ohio or indiana um wisconsin michigan what the author has done is they've created she's created a map that you can look at so say you're so you say you're looking in ohio and you know that your people came from new england the the map of ohio will give you shaded areas that will tell you where in new england those settlers came from so if you're thinking oh you know they're all around dayton ohio where where are all these people coming from because again everyone's going to chain migrate together you don't just come on your own you're probably going to come with your neighbors and your family members so the the map will tell you you know i'm making this out but you know if you're from dayton ohio you probably came from connecticut originally so then when you're trying to make that leap back you have a little bit more information and you're not just kind of grasping at straws the expansion of new england also includes uh it was it was a master's thesis so it also includes uh socio and economic um conversations as well as religious conversations so there's there's a lot of uh information in this book so even though it's a it's an older book i still recommend it for folks some of the research we're going to talk about a few resources and again we want to think about geography that's really so important when we're when we're trying to think about you know to really start listing out all of the resources that we're going to look at so you need to know where you're researching one of the books that we use daily at american ancestors is this genealogist handbook for new england research uh it's currently in its fifth edition and it's a very detailed uh walk through of each of the states so you'll see here this is uh the first page for maine so you can see that we have uh on the the left of the screen there information about the county you know what's the phone number what's the url for the the town clerk what are their hours if you need to fax them can you do that all that information is included there but then on the right side this is something that i use on a daily basis is information about the town when it was incorporated the county that it currently is in and then these are the key this is the key information is any parent town or any daughter town so a lot of times in new england towns are born out of each other because they'll start as a big huge town and then they'll start getting divvied up records don't really move around to that new town so it might be with the older town so if you're some of the the most recent uh immigrants to new england it might be in some of that earlier those earlier town records so you need to be really cognizant of what the geography looks like and the historiography of that particular um area so and of course i always like to say that there's a lot of maps and so so there's 50 or so maps that are included in this uh and it can really help you to understand where those county lines are where those county boundaries are because again just because your ancestor lives in a particular place doesn't mean that they're not getting married over a county border so you know you want to make sure that you're you're uh thinking about all of the different record groups that could exist for your particular ancestor well that's just invaluable isn't it just knowing that history that's all about where the records end up yes they have a lot of headache yes and i the amount of brick walls that we've broken down at american ancestors just thinking about geography yeah and the historic context you know you might think like oh well you know i know they were of this particular religion but that church wasn't in the town where are the other churches that they may have gone to and you might might be able to do it that way um so again it's always really important to to know where you're looking and why you should be looking at a particular place so something that's available for free on the american ancestors website is this town these town guides and again this is for the new england states connecticut maine massachusetts new hampshire and rhode island um we don't have vermont on here but we do have new york so and a lot of times people will confuse if new york is part of new england new york is not part of new england any red sox fan will tell you that new york is not part of new england so but these are available for free and the information that's included is similar to what's in the that fifth um edition of the new england guide that i was showing previously so again you'll see the name of the town when it's established that the county that it's currently in and then any parent towns of that of that particular uh town so if we're looking at abington the first town that's listed there it's established in 1712 it's currently in plymouth county but it was at one point part of bridgewater so if you have some really early folks that are living in abington you should probably be looking also in bridgewater and then this is a lovely little feature this is just for massachusetts um it's called it's a very long title it's called historical data relating to counties cities and towns in massachusetts it gives a historia um it gives a chronology of a town when it's established and then when any of the borders changed this is really significant for massachusetts because the borders change so often um so this is what you'll find if you go if you go to the american ancestors website this is what you're going to find if you're looking specifically in massachusetts so they can find this kind of information right there on the website yes fantastic we've made a lot available and i'm going to talk today about all that's available on the american ancestors website great without going to um the library um so we we call this next group of records call we call them finding aids um it's the best way that we can describe it so it's not uh it's not transcriptions of records but it's a place that you can go to find where all of like if you're looking for a particular person where are all of the resources for that particular person located um so i'll show you an example so this is something that that those that are doing new england research know very well it's called new england marriages prior to 1700. a lot of people were referred to it as torrey or torres new england marriages clarence torre was a nhgs member he was not a employee uh but he did a ton of work looking at new england couples he also did some in long island uh but he was looking for those who were getting married prior to 1700 and it's important to know that mr tory lived to uh to the year 1962. so everything that's included in in this particular uh manuscript which later became a searchable volume which is again available on the american ancestors website um everything is going to be for the scholarship that was done prior to to 1962. so i'll i'll walk through what we should be looking at later but this is really the first place that you should be looking this is the first place that i go when i'm looking for any um new england a person who is um settling in new england prior to 1700. this is the first place that i go so the this is what what a normal entry will look like um for a couple so it's always a couple that's marrying in new england prior to 1700 or sometimes long island so if we look at walter dean here we'll get information about his birth and death in this case just his birth so we know he's born in 1612. we don't know when he dies he's married to a woman named eleanor um eleanor's not her maiden name but her married name is either coogan or cozen um and that we know that it's her uh her first married name because it's in those brackets if it wasn't in brackets then that would be her maiden name so she is we don't really know when she's born but we know that she dies after the year 1693. there's another little note there that says that william that um we know that she was william coogan's wife we know that they probably got married in england in 1634 but you see how there's a little question mark there so the question mark means we're not really sure but we're pretty sure which is why we included it in in why mr tory included it in his uh in his entry here walter and eleanor they originally go to dorchester and then later on to taunton uh in massachusetts so that's where they're residing once they once they get married and once they come over to new england and then you'll see afterwards all of these what seems to be fairly random um explanations of well it says strong and then there's a semicolon snow st's one colon 387 so i've looked at this long enough in my life where i know that the snow estes is a particular genealogy it's from volume one it's page 387 but you don't need to know all of this you don't need to memorize all of this um we've included a full description of all of tori's source references um which you can see here this this read this guide tutorial source uh source references in pdf format and it will look just like this it's an alphabetical order and it will give you the abbreviation that mr torre used and then the actual full the full citation for that particular item so if you're looking for a particular couple and the the description is is ta tag that's from the american genealogist it's something that will be described in um in that that list of abbreviations now if you cannot find your people in tory the next place to look is the founders of early american families this is done by meredith colgate and it was done and there were subsequent editions done so this is actually going to take us a little bit further than 1962. it also includes people who are not from new england so while we're including early american families from new england it's also going to include it includes everyone from the 13 colonies but it only covers that first 50 years um and this and the first 50 years starts at 1607 1607 is the founding of jamestown so it goes from 1607 to 1657. that's the years that it's covering for for this group of people and it's a little bit different than what um mr tory did as you can see here there's a little bit more of a description there's there's some more details that are that are provided here for a particular family but it doesn't focus on the the lady as the as tori's new england marriages does it it does however so like if you're looking at the dean family you can see that there's brothers john and walter that are included but then there's also john samuel and walter that that's that's part of that so depending on which which individual you're interested in um you know you could could look to see what's available there as you'll as you'll as you can see by looking at this uh there's not none of this is really footnoted or or referenced uh this is something that is that's why we really like using tori because tori is at least telling you where everything is coming from whereas colgate is is a little bit more um secretive about that [Music] and then finally so if you're if you're looking for individuals you don't find them in torah you don't find them in kolkat you might find them in this last thing to look at this last finding aid which is called new englanders in the 1600s it's also referred to sometimes as co as a holic because it's written by martin holick this is going to cover all of the the research that's been published from 1980 to 2010. um which when i first started i thought this was very recent but now it's 10 years old but it's the best we've got for right now i believe that we are actually working on an update to this let's see i i imagine this is a lot like people who work in foreign language like church records and they're in german and you feel you look at it at first and you get kind of intimidated you think i don't understand what this is meaning but i am i correct that after you start working with this kind of material for a while pretty quick you pick up on what they're referring to and who the main authors are and what these little footnotes your players are yeah yeah you learn the main players you you learn so there's there's kind of like a a system that you go through so someone will ask you a question and almost the the first place that i go to is tori that's the first place that i'll look just so because it gives me an idea of what's already been done right big thing about 17th century research is that like i said at the beginning the most studied people on the planet so don't reinvent the wheel you know don't drive yourself crazy trying to trying to find all this information on your own you have to stand on the shoulders of those that have come before you so there have been all these people that have done all this research before please please look at it first now always look at it with a little bit of hesitation because there's always possibilities that mistakes were made but at least take a peek at what's already been done first that's so important and i hope everybody watching uh really keeps that in mind and realizes that they will become comfortable and familiar with this it takes a little bit of time but that's a great great point yes yes exactly so new englanders in the 1600s is done fairly kind of like it's a combination of um of tori and of uh colgate it's only going to list uh the the mail head of house and just give information on on the mail um but you'll see also that there's just some quick references that are that are given um so like for example this one for richard card he dies jamestown rhode island before one july 1674. the reference is in tag which is the american genealogist uh volume 58 page 40 through 42. now again you don't have to remember what all of these abbreviations mean there is at the beginning of this book there is uh a key that you can look at to find out where all of the original uh sources are perfect so now we're gonna move on to study projects study projects are like it's what everyone likes to do with with our new england folks um again because there's so much material out there it's a nice way of us being a little bit more concise with all of the resources that are available and kind of putting it all in one place because you know we don't want to look all over the place for particular individuals you may have heard of this this is a kind of our flagship study project it was started in 1988 it was done by uh well it's still being done by robert charles anderson and what he's doing is he's looking at the genealogical and biographical information of those individuals that come to new england between 16 20 and 16 40. he's done 14 published volumes of for these particular individuals he runs tours and education programs but we've also made this a searchable online database at american ancestors these are some of the volumes that he's done they've been broken up into and what's interesting is um so the great so the great migration begins with what he first started with he was covering 16 20 to 16 33 that was in three volumes so three volumes covers 13 years then we did 16 34 to 16 35 that's seven volumes so seven volumes covers just one year well two years two years in seven volumes so that shows how many people arrived during that those particular years so we we saw earlier that little that spike that we saw and then there was a plateau back to 1640. so this 1634 is when we start to see that spike so there's a lot of people that are included in that oh yeah and then when we're getting all the way to 1640 we're going to look at the great migration directory which is what's on your screen right now so i'll just show you a little bit of an example of what's included in these in these records so um robert charles anderson has a has has three things that he's looking for if someone's going to be included someone gets included if they appear in a record between before 1640. so if we find them in new england between 1620 and 1640 they're they're in they get they get included in the study project um if there's a director in direct implication of arrival uh what do we mean by that if um if someone's made a freeman in 16 in like the the in january of 1641 they had to have been there before 1641 because they they would have been an established member of the community so we're going to say that they most likely were there before well by 1640 so they should be included the other is the appearance of an immediate family member of a person known to arrive so if we find a birth record for someone so someone's child then we can infer that that that couple was likely there and for the birth of their child right so so we can include them as well so here's just here's uh just the position of of a really in-depth record and then our not so indifferent based on what we what we have for documentation so if we look at alice ashby all we really have about her is that she was 20 she was a maid to william holman she came on the defense and she's not really found anywhere else after that she's still included because there was a record a record done for her so we know she's a passenger on the defense but that's really it so that's why she just gets a little tiny um entry there john ashwood on the other hand is incredible there's a lot of detail for him we can see we know where he comes from he's coming from um pepper shire he comes on the hopewell in 1635 he arrives first in roxbury then he goes to milford he actually goes back to england in 1654 we know his occupation we know his church membership we know all sorts of stuff about him his birth his marriage is deaf he even gets married three times all that's included on there um mr anderson does a great job of including incredible detail um about these individuals so if your ancestors arrive in new england between 1620 and 1640 this is the most important um collection for you to be looking at because this is where all of the most recent information is the best scholarship uh for those individuals it's hard to wrap your head around somebody who's willing to make that trip twice like you said he went back to england yeah is that very common back then i mean i know we see it but it's it's not i mean it's not common but we do see you know a handful of folks that are that are going back and forth wow it's especially true for individuals that had um property still in england that left and needed to deal with an estate at some point uh folks that were heavily involved in um religious freedoms in england they might have gone back especially during the english civil war they might have returned for that um and then there's just some adventurers that would come what we call adventurers so they weren't coming for religious freedom as we tend to think folks coming to new england were there for um they were just coming to make a buck and then they might go back uh there there was a like um uh one of the one of the members of the uh the mayflower one of the passengers on the mayflower stephen hopkins he actually went to jamestown first jamestown virginia was like not my cup of tea went back to england and then decided in 1620 to to make the voyage over on the mayflower individual that was in two of kind of our our founding um you know colonies so he's a rock star there so you'll also see the um the children listed in addition to the immigrant themselves so you see samuel and hannah that are included on here as well um and then one of the the lovely things that that i like that mr anderson did was he includes um a comment section and the comment section can include everything from um information about that particular individual but what he'll also do is admit when he can't find something or doesn't like a reference or you know he's very honest about uh some of his research in these comment sections and that can actually be helpful for you if this is one of your ancestors the second study project we're going to talk about is early new england families and this is just an extension of what's done with the great migration project it starts in 1641 and it comes to 1700. and what alicia crane williams is doing is she's looking at she's starting in 1641 she's using tory's new england marriages as a guide and she's going through systematically and then including um sketches for those individuals and they look just like very similar to what's included in uh great migration right so it'll look like this it's a it's a little bit more dense looking uh but again it's the same type of information where they're coming from who their parents are their birth their marriage their death the names of their spouse if they own a property what their occupation is did they go to church really detailed information biographical information and also genealogical information about these individuals so again if you have new england ancestry uh these are kind of the two places uh to go looking and just like we did with great migration it's not just about the individual who's listed at the top of the page the children are also included there so you'll see uh you know the children deborah deborah allen john allen daniel allen isaac allen and elizabeth allen are all also included on here so those are our study projects and we have compiled genealogies there's millions of them i'm just going to talk about three of them uh these are one these are ones that i usually will say to look at once we've looked at torrey and culkit and holik and that we've already looked at great migration and um and early new england families these are specific to uh particular states so there's pioneers of massachusetts that covers 1620-1650 it's done by charles henry pope these are some of like the uh tried and true resources that have been out there for a very long time just because they're about for a very long time doesn't make them bad um i i think honestly especially the genealogical dictionary of made in new hampshire that's something that we use on a on a pretty consistent basis so we have the pioneers of massachusetts we have genealogical notes these these old genealogies always have these really long titles that are very descriptive but the genealogical notes covers connecticut and massachusetts those first settlers there and then the genealogical dictionary made in new hampshire cover is made in new hampshire again these look like publications are they also available on the website these are publications they're not all available on the website those three are available only in book form got it um but it's something that is referred to in tori so if you want to know your ancestors are included in one of those things if you find them in tory they're most likely going to be referenced um as being in one of those three publications this is just a quick entry just to kind of show you an example this is for this is from the genealogical dictionary of maine in new hampshire this is for the dearborn family uh the first dearborn to come was god-free dearborn there was all that information that's included about about him and then also his children and then it's running through it's taking his children and then bringing them forward so henry is listed as number two you know who he marries and then his children and so on it's just really kind of compact and dense but it's still definitely worth looking at absolutely periodicals there's again millions of them um some of the ones that we like to use when we're doing when we're thinking about new englanders early new englanders is of course the new england historical and genealogical register that's something that's been published by the society by american ancestors since uh 1847. uh there's the new york biographical and genealogical record the mayflower descendant the uh and the american genealogists those are the ones that i use the most often they're also available to be searched on american ancestors so if you go to a database search you can just include here on the drop down you can go to categories journals and periodicals and then you can scroll through all of the journals and periodicals that we have available and then they're fully searchable so you can put in you know a name a first name a last name the years that you're looking for or the location here's just an example if if something is included as a um as a periodical you'll be able to see the actual page so if you get a hit on our website you'll be able to view the actual record so this is just what it would look like it will tell you that i'm coming from volume seven and then what page it is and if you want to download it you can do that using this button here and it wouldn't be 2020 if we don't talk about mayflower absolutely so um mayflower resources that are so the what's referred to as the pink books or the silver books the silver books is what we you know use the most often those are the ones that have been um you know stamped with the seal of approval these are done by the general society of mayflower descendants it's looking at those passengers with known descendants so it starts with the passenger themselves who they marry their children and that includes their children grandchildren great-grandchildren great-great-grandchildren it's all included in these silver and pink books these are only available as books currently um but this is what it looks like this is just a sample page so um this is joshua sewell joshua is the grandson of george sewell george sewell is one of the passengers on the mayflower um you can see here that he marries joanna studly and then all of the information about there's usually a little bit of biographical information it's not as detailed as what's included in um bob anderson's or alicia crane williams study projects but it's still a good chunk of information and then it also includes their their children as well if you're applying to the mayflower society if you're interested in applying to the mayflower society this is something that they take as an original record um you know they consider this to be their bible so you can just cite these pages you don't have to go running around for that original source we do have available on american ancestors that last generation that's fully searchable so if you're trying to find if someone is connected to a mayflower passenger you can search our databases for that it's all everything's been indexed for that fifth generation both their spouses and their children i would recommend going to our website and then um searching by database name and i usually just put in mayflower and then it will bring up all of the mayflower databases that we have we have many of them and if you search this mayflower family's fifth generation [Music] will bring you to a search page you can search again by first name last name years if you know the specific volume you want to look at you can do that with this drop down here once you do a search it will bring up all of the um all of the the possible records that are available so we see here if we looked for nathan snow nathan snow is actually a descendant of two mayflower passengers so that you'll see that the information is identical nathan snow born on uh 510 1751 he's born in abington which is in plymouth county in massachusetts he's a descendant of both uh peter brown and john alden who twice happened to be yes if you happen to be a descendant of of mr snow then you get you get two passengers under your belt once you decide you want to look at something you can look at the so this is coming from the the silver books that we were talking about previously this is the the page from the silver books you can download one of the images if you'd like using this button here or there's a shortened url at the bottom you could save if you wanted to bookmark that you could do that as well and i love the copy citation button there that's pretty convenient very helpful in addition to this the the five generation uh database we also have the membership applications and these are the membership applications that have uh been submitted uh if the person was born before 1920. it's about 30 000 applications that we're gonna have wow most of them are available first to be searched now but they're not all up there yet we're currently i think we're going to be done next month um so if again you think one of your ancestors may have applied to the general society of mayflower descendants this is definitely something that you should be looking for and just to re-emphasize for somebody who's fairly new to genealogy or hasn't thought about a lineage society before you're really talking about um kind of tried and true the application process is rigorous they had to prove how they were related so you're really kind of jump starting your way back to the to this era right yes yes just like i was saying before about the the um you know the the tried and true uh resources that are available you know you guys on those that have come before you so if if someone you know went through all the motions of filling out one of these applications which again can be very rigorous you have to um provide birth marriage and death information for every generation from you to that particular ancestor so if we're talking about mayflower that's usually anywhere between 12 and 15 generations from from you to that particular person so that's a lot of research to to get done so it's really important to just take a peek because again you might as well stand on the shoulders of those that have come before you absolutely they again if we want to look for a mayflower database usually just search for for the database by name put in mayflower the general society of mayflower descendants membership applications is the name of the database you can search by name so in this case harry whitman is um is actually the ancestor of one of my colleagues so he was looking to see if his if his great-grandfather had applied and so he was putting his name in but you can also search if you knew someone's general number by happenstance um you could put that in there as well or if you were searching for a spouse you could do that too but this is the the search that we did was for harry whitman so we found that he did he applied in california in 1913. the mayflower society's been around for a while um i think 1896. wow i might be slightly off on that but it's been around for quite some time so uh you might find an older application like something like something from 1913 we might find something a little bit more recent but this shows that harry whitman is the descendant or a descendant of peter brown so he can apply through peter brown and then you'll also see an image of the actual application so all that detail is included there with the source app you know the source citations as well and you can print that as a pdf and are these all applications for people who were accepted or would there be some that maybe they said you don't have enough here they would be everyone that's been accepted and there's a little caveat to that if something's been found to be incorrect from you know from then until now we do not take them down so there could be a little bit of a problem it's usually something that's a lot older um you know if something's more recent then you're probably all set um but you always of course want to want to double check the the you know the references that are given to you right now there's there's many more things that are available on our website that have to do with mayflower uh what we're doing is a facebook live event on friday november 20th it starts at three o'clock um so if you follow us if you follow american ancestors on facebook you can um you can see when that goes live and it's going to be an expert from our web team that's going to walk you through how to use the applications database um the mayflower descendant which is a publication that we do that we um that we publish and of course the fifth generation of the silver books and then of course many more um so if you want kind of a run-through of how to use the website and how to search for these particular mayflower folks then i would highly recommend uh taking a peek at that great and then finally really quick we're not going to go through where all the records are because they're in many different places and there's tons of them um if you if you're looking at new england resources there are church records to find there are vital records to find cemetery probate court um town records uh military records there's notarial records there's so many things that you can find original material that you can find for your new england ancestors you're going to be looking mostly at the town level um for these individuals um the recording practice at the time was was done very locally so you really that's why it's really important to kind of come full circle um to know where your ancestors are living and then what the place was called at that time you know your ancestors might not have ever moved and in 200 years your ancestors might have been from the same place but the town border might have changed a few times around them uh so you just want to be sure that you're you know that you're looking in the right place and then finally if you need some additional help on our website we have a 17th century new england research subject guide it was done by david david dearborn david uh worked for the society for 40 50 years somewhere something like that um he's an expert in 17th century new england research there's so many tips and tricks that are included on here that i might not have covered today so definitely go and um and check that out [Music] wow fantastic so and then this your last slide kind of brings me to um one of the questions i have which is somebody might be watching and now they're excited to try americans ancestors.org but a consultation tell us about the kinds of personal service that you provide as well yes so we have um consultation services which is done with a expert genealogist from our staff and what they'll do is they'll help you navigate any research problem that you're having um so it might be um you know i'm having trouble breaking down this brick wall to find my fourth great grandparents or i don't know where my ancestors came from in ireland um i'm having trouble applying to the mayflower society and i can't find that last document document that i'm looking for there's really a whole gamut of things that we can help with um but what we'll do is we'll have you ask a very you know a specific question that you're that you're trying to answer and then we like to see anything that you've looked at prior you know prior to so that we're standing on your shoulders so that we know it's already been looked at um and then you can meet anywhere between 30 minutes and two hours um either over zoom or um or over the phone currently we we were doing in person um but now during covid we're just doing uh zooming over the phone and we can kind of help you with some suggestions we might even find things for you while we're while we're doing that particular consultation um it's a really lovely service and you know people have been working at american ancestors for 20 30 years so you might as well hear what they have to say about uh you know problems is there a fee for that yes yes so if you are a member um the fee is 85 an hour if you are not a member then it's um 105 an hour wow when you think about the the headaches it might solve in a short period of time talking to somebody who knows the records and has already been down that path that could be a huge help exactly exactly and if you do assume um if you do a zoom consultation with us we send you that entire recording um so you can kind of so if something happens too fast or you know you want to see you know what a person was doing on a particular website you can definitely go back and uh and review that again wow a ton of great tools i i love the fact that you emphasized the compiled histories um the periodicals so much has been done i know way back when when i was young and started doing my own family history i had heard somebody talk about compiled histories and i kind of thought oh yeah but that's not going to be something that would be of my family and absolutely i found one that was comprehensive sourced oh my gosh it was just so well done uh for one particular line so it's a wonderful jumping off place and of course americanances.org tell us i know that you have a membership so there's tons that they can do for free and then there's also a subscription there's also subscription yes so um to to get all of the full benefits so all of the database searching uh capabilities uh the ability to well we do uh 25 free photocopies of material that's in our library every year for our members so if you can't get to newbury street in boston then you know that's something that we can help you out with you'll get the opportunity to ask a genealogist any questions you'll have access to our chat service uh education programs a whole litany of things that will be available to you if you became a full member the full member price is 89.95 for the year um but we usually run a special during black friday i was guessing i know there was last year so well keep an eye on americanancestores.org then and lindsay thank you so much for coming on the show and giving us that that kickstart to get going on some much earlier ancestors it looks like there's a lot of exciting things to discover yes don't be afraid just because it's really old doesn't mean that it's not findable again those early new england folks there there's a lot of material about them available fantastic thank you of course thank you [Music] my goodness she is a wealth of information isn't she and i think it's um so encouraging that there are so many compiled histories um back there during that era if you haven't really looked into compiled histories and we were talking about them at when we were talking to um the allen county public library there's just so many so much to tap into and finding aids you know have you ever really taken the time to track down some finding aids for some of the areas and time frames that you're researching it can save so much headache in terms of what's available and what's not i don't know is your mind is your head spitting yet mine was a little bit but i felt so encouraged to take on i've got one family line i can kind of jump into right away i'm going to have everything for you in the show notes for this episode so this is episode 33 and um this one will have um all the things that that lindsay talked about uh as she mentioned there's probably going to be a black friday type sale coming up and oftentimes there is so we'll make note of that on the show notes and in our newsletter and of course you know these days check with your your local library they may very well have access or you may be able to find a larger nearby city with a uh free subscription to american ancestors so you can tap into it and sometimes you can do that from home so lots and lots of resources but my goodness if that's your area of research it's worth even if you have to make a small investment to get the assistance that they can offer it's just tremendous so check out the show notes elevens it's genealogy gems dot com slash elevenses you can find it uh when you go to our website under videos click on elevenses with lisa and i want to switch gears for a second because i have an update that just landed in my email box yesterday and it's a follow-up to our conversation about google photos remember in in uh elevens is with lisa episode 23 we did kind of a introductory tour to google photos and talked about that well if you have an account you may have already received this but it's interesting you know things always change we know there are no promises so they start out by saying gosh they have now over 4 trillion with a t photos and videos in google photos and they said that literally every week 28 billion new photos and videos are uploaded it that'll make your head spin that's for sure but it's important to understand june 21st or june 1st of 2021 so we're talking seven eight months from now um all new photos and videos backed up in high quality so i know it gets a little confusing but high quality is the regular quality which is slightly compressed from the original quality of your images we talked about that in episode 23. so from that date june 1st 2021 um everything that you upload to google photos is gonna count towards your 15 gigabytes of storage that you get with your google account for free so you would have to purchase additional storage if you want to have more than that so what that means is if you're using google drive if you're using gmail um other services that require the storage of your content that all goes towards this uh total so you want to be aware of that and you can check your my activity to see what your current total is i believe that's where you would look or you could just do a google on google one so it says here that anything that you uploaded in high quality and again that's not that's just the slightly compressed version anything that you have uploaded between now and june 1st of 2021 is going to be exempt from this so it says here on june 1st 2021 we're going to be launching a new storage management tool which will help you easily find and delete dark blurry otherwise unwanted content and that can happen if you are doing automatic synchronization with your phone for example you could end up with a lot of stuff on there that doesn't really need to be there and of course by getting rid of those things and duplications you are saving your storage so i want to re-emphasize if and when you get this email and you're aware of it here's a couple of pointers lisa's tips on this which is one as i said in episode 23 i use google photos as a tool i don't use it myself personally as a complete storage and you can control that by whether or not particularly on your phone or your tablet you allow it to synchronize automatically i don't so uh not to say you couldn't it's certainly if you want to use it you want to put absolutely everything and not have to think about it you can do it but you might have to eventually purchase storage i actually do already because i use gmail so much for genealogy gyms and i've been doing that for you know 13 years 14 years almost the other thing is is that you can know that you can manually drag and drop content that you want to add so while you're not synchronizing in order to slow down how much volume of storage you're using you can individually pick what you'd want to put in there so if you want to use it just for the uh search capability which we talked about in that episode that we did um then you would have particular items that you want to include so that they're captured in your search or if you want to create certain projects with the for you feature where they make little videos and other types of items for you you can hand pick what you're adding so i want to put that on your radar you know it's not great news but it's not that surprising either as with everything everything well free is not always free forever we know that okay now next up i want to mention that my plan for the next few weeks okay i put in the chat at the beginning of the show in the live chat a link to sign up for my free email newsletter and i'll have that also as a link in this video and if you're on the genealogy gyms website watching this later after the live event then go over to our homepage because there was a button there sign up for the newsletter because we're going to make be making some announcements of upcoming projects and things will be happening here at elevens is with lisa if you're a premium member it's absolutely essential because it's also where we let you know what the new content is that's coming out that's just available for you one of the things i'm working on is another viewers voices episode where i'm going to be sharing some of the really cool things that you guys have sent in and if you have something that you're just dying to have me look at maybe even put together a little video about you know we've done that in the past send that to me um through the contact form on our home page or genealogygemspodcast gmail.com so looking forward to putting that together we'll probably see the viewers voices uh episode part two in december of 2020. i'm also looking at now this is kind of a wild and crazy idea but i have a game show and i think it'd be really fun to do a game show as the holidays approach i was also even thinking about a holiday brunch okay so many ideas we're gonna have some fun together here be sure you're on the newsletter okay and i'm going to be reaching out to premium members specifically to see if they would like to do some participation in some of these activities perhaps as contestants you never know so stay in touch with me through the genealogy gems newsletter and i'm not sure about next week we're going to skip the week of thanksgiving but because i want you to spend that with your family but next week there might be a best of show i'm not sure so lots of things in the work the newsletter will give you all the updates and um you know not there's a lot of moving parts when it comes to putting this show together um and i tend to sometimes be the most problematic moving part in the whole scenario and i just want to share with you um that became an issue in today's excuse me episode uh here's a little blooper from today so we see here um samuel and hannah are awesome sorry hang on how'd i do that one second well you got a another first i knocked over a whole glass of water that was brilliant oh no jeez we're talking with our hands too much i know that'll be on the blooper reel all right i'll settle down go ahead oh for goodness sakes it's amazing that this thing comes off every single week i'm so glad that you show up here and um all of you who participate in the live chat i so appreciate it um we just try to keep things dry around here if we can keep things above board um if you have a comment a question so how about this um when this video the live show is over you're gonna be uh have a comment section down below here on youtube and if you're watching from our website there is a definitely a comment section down there i'd love to have you leave a comment what is your favorite 17th century resource maybe there's one that we didn't talk about today you know we crammed in as much as we possibly could do you have a question for lindsay i saw a couple in the chat i'm gonna be answering those specifically or lindsay will be answering those in the show notes for this episode so get those into the comment section and um do you have a new england success story inspire the rest of us leave a comment here um on the youtube comment section below we'd love to hear it and that's really good because it helps youtube know that you enjoy this show and that they should show it to other people so i so appreciate that um so with that let's just say you need to have a good day it's a good day to have a good day there's a tree out there to climb and um stay smart stay brave and thank you so what so much for watching my friends i'll talk to you soon [Music] you

Channel: Lisa Louise Cooke's Genealogy Gems

Views: 11,244

Rating: 4.9915433 out of 5

Keywords: lisa louise cooke, elevenses with Lisa, privacy, genealogy gems, NEHGS, Lindsay Fulton, New England Historical, colonial ancestors, early American genealogy, New England, New England Historic Genealogical Society., american ancestors, americanancestors.org, colonial genealogy

Id: AG1TzZ79buQ

Length: 62min 11sec (3731 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 12 2020