The Genealogy Bug

Once you’re bitten by the genealogy bug, it’s hard to stop. Finding records about your ancestors is like solving an intricate puzzle, and sometimes more questions arise from the information you discover. Why did that branch of the family suddenly change its heritage from German to English? How did my great-grandmother manage to raise nine children and run a boarding house? Why did my great-great-grandfather change his last name to Jones when he left Ireland? Some questions can never be answered, but the fun is in looking, and sometimes finding a clue!

The library subscribes to a genealogy database, HeritageQuest, and I’ll be teaching a class on it June 26, at 10 a.m.  Anyone with our library card can use HeritageQuest from home. It has census records dating back to 1790; city directories, mostly from the 20th century; and several other specialized collections.  If you'd like to sign up for the class, give us a call at 541-265-2153. 

In addition to HeritageQuest, other free databases have a wealth of information. FamilySearch draws from hundreds of sources, and includes copies of birth, marriage, and death ledgers, some census records, ships’ passenger lists, military draft records, enlistment records, and more.

(Click on Images to Enlarge)

World War I Registration Card

I have to give a disclaimer, though; many of the collections are for a limited range of dates, so not everything is available. But what you can find might be just the piece of the puzzle you needed, so it is worth investigating! Within just a few minutes, I found a record of my grandmother's birth, listing her parents' names, address, where they were born, and her father's occupation, along with a copy of a relative's World War I Draft registration, listing his age, hair and eye color, occupation, and current address.  All grist for the genealogist's mill!

Another free site is the Ellis Island website, which lists passengers who entered the United States through Ellis Island. The site is best used by creating a free account. Once you find a record, you can view a small image of it, and zoom in to see parts of it up close. If you want a readable copy, though, there is a fee.
 

List or Manifest of Alien Passengers

These are just a few places to try on your quest to uncover your family roots.  Again, if you'd like to register for the class on June 26, call us at 541-265-2153.

On a quest for your heritage?

If you do genealogy research, you know that you need to support your data with documents. These can include birth, marriage, and death certificates, family Bibles, news clippings, and census records. Our library offers a free database of census records called HeritageQuest, and we’re teaching a class on how to use it on April 1.

HeritageQuest has census records dating from 1790 to 1930. With the exception of records from 1930, records can be searched by name, census year, and/or state. Sometimes it’s fun to look up famous people, and see what information is on their records. Here is a basic search for Abraham Lincoln, narrowed down to 1860 in Illinois.

The results are a photocopied scan of the original record, complete with handwriting styles of the period. Capital ‘L’ used to look a bit more like capital ‘S,’ back when Lincoln was listed as a Lawyer. You can see that he was 51 at the time of the census, his wife, Mary, was 35, and they had three sons, Robert, Willie, and Thomas. This snippet also shows that Abraham and Mary were born in Kentucky and their children in Illinois, their real estate was worth $5,000 and their personal estate was worth $12,000. Besides the family members, an 18 year old servant and a 14 year old boy lived in their home.

Each decade, the questions asked on the census are different. Sometimes the birthplace and language of an individual’s parents are filled in. This can be useful for finding information another generation back. Some years the census asked how many children a woman gave birth to, and how many children were living. Back when families were larger and mortality was higher, this was often a poignant statistic. Samples of each census survey are listed on the Census website.

Again, we are offering a class on using HeritageQuest for genealogy research on Friday, April 1, at 9 a.m. If you’d like to sign up for the class, call the library at 541-265-2153.