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Genealogy Updates for VGS September 27, 2011 Migration Trails Recently at our monthly VGS breakfast, we talked about the Migration Trails of our ancestors. Here are some useful websites for information about Migration Trails. http://www.appalachianamericangenealogy.com/migrations.htm http://www.understandingyourancestors.com/ http://www.migrations.org/links.html http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~gentutor/migration.html Excellent http://www.family-genealogy.com/tracingfamilyhistory.html Migration and Family Roots - Why did your Ancestors move? The early colonists established settlements along the seacoast and migrated up and down the eastern seaboard. The first roads were trails used by Indians, explorers, and traders. In the early 1700 s some people were fortunate enough to have carts and wagons to move between the small villages. Many had to travel by foot. Ferries, steam boats, and sailing ships remained the primary mode of transportation between the colonies well into mid 1700 s. Where possible, trails, traces, and roads, were made to follow along waterways which helped to make travel a lot easier than by foot and less time consuming. Movement by waterways was much easier than walking. In the early days, not everyone had the luxury of owning horses and wagons. The oldest known land trail is The Boston Post Road and was used to carry the first

mail. Anyone who wanted to leave Boston usually made the journey with a post-rider. The first trip back in 1673, took four weeks to travel 250 miles. It was divided into three routes: Lower, middle and upper. Part of the route from Philadelphia to Alexandria was called Great Coastal Road and from Alexandria to Norfolk, called Potomac Trail. The King later called it Kings Road, but was not favorable during the Revolutionary War. Why did your Family Migrate? People moved for many reasons that are wrapped around push and pull factors. Pull factors included: adventure, land bounty awards, home stead acts, motivation to establish new churches, and wanting a better life provided by economic advancement. Push factors, which are negative reasons include: due to soil was depleted of nutrients due to poor farming techniques, natural disasters, trouble with the law, relatives, or neighbors; lack of jobs, and not free to practice a religion were some of the main push causes. Trace your Family Roots and Where they Traveled After the revolutionary war several factors spurted the westward migration. New and improved migration routes were developed. Also Bounty land grants were given to those who served in wars from (1775-1855). Depending on what time frame you are researching; where your family stopped along the way, what they did for earning money, and knowing approximately where they lived will influence what trails they used. Creating a timeline of what you know can help narrow down your genealogy research. And find your family roots in records they left behind. Look for clues from previous residence and any possible recorded information census records, deeds, etc. It might be an arduous task, but use the major points along the migration path and find repositories that have any information that might be useful. Early books and diaries might be left a genealogical society documenting part of your heritage, adding more roots to your family tree and validating their history.

Footnote is now Fold3! Fold 3 (formerly Footnote) is focusing its efforts on gathering the best online collection of military records and stories, and wanted a name that would reflect military history and honor. Traditionally, the third fold in a flag-folding ceremony honors and remembers veterans for their sacrifice in defending their country and promoting peace in the world. KHS will continue to offer member s access to Fold3.com in the Martin F. Schmidt Research From the Fold3 blog: You will still be able to access the great nonmilitary records previously found on Footnote, but we'll be adding millions of U.S. military records, like these that we've already begun work on: World War II "Old Man's Draft" Cards War of 1812 Pension Files Mexican War Service Records World War I Officer Experience Reports! Confederate Casualty Reports Remember you can still access FOLD3 free through the Saline County Library website: http://catalog.saline.lib.ar.us/polaris/search/misc/esources.aspx?ctx=1.1033.0.0.1&category=15 4 Ancestry Errors Wiki is picking up steam Michael Hait, CG(sm) August 21, 2011 at 7:36 pm Categories: Online Genealogy, Records Access URL: http://wp.me/p1ctnq-7t Just a short note about the progress of the Ancestry Errors Wiki. Since its creation on 1 August 2011, quite a few errors have have been added to the Wiki. There are now pages available for counties in ten states! While quite a few of the errors concern missing or misplaced locations in census enumerations, there are also entries for place names being misspelled and document pages being out of order, missing, etc. If you have not already done so, please take a look at the Ancestry Errors Wiki. Explore a few of the pages to see if you have anything to add! If you are aware of any database errors on any of the online sites--ancestry.com, Fold3.com (formerly Footnote.com), or other noncommercial sites--please feel free to create a page and write it up. Don't worry if it is not perfectly written--there are editors on hand to help you out. You can also post questions to me on this blog post, and I will try to help out. Only with the help of the whole community can we turn this into a resource that will help all of us search more effectively! The Ancestry Errors Wiki can be found at http://ancestryerrors.wikia.com/wiki/ancestry_errors_wiki

FAMILYSEARCH.ORG If you have not logged onto the https://familysearch.org/ recently, you have missed a lot of information. They have added all kinds of records and images. So what do you need to do first to get this information? The first thing you do is register for a FamilySearch or an LDS account. To do this, go to their website at Click on Help at the top right corner of your screen and you should find the words Register for a FamilySearch account or LDS Account; click on that and the instructions are very simple. After you receive your account and are logged in, your search may begin. You may go back to their main page and either type in a name or (my preference) click on USA, Canada, and Mexico and then look through the vast records that will help greatly in your research without spending a penny. FamilySearch Adds to Civil War Records Posted by Diane FamilySearch.org added millions of new records this week of both Confederate and Union soldiers who served in the American Civil War. Those include veterans applications for military headstones, records of headstones for deceased Union veterans, Confederate POW records, registers of homes for disabled soldiers, service records and more. Also newly added are notarial records from Canada, church records and civil registrations from Mexico, and a variety of records from England. You ll find a chart here listing the new collections and linking to the individual databases. Note that not all of the collections are searchable. Indexes haven t been completed for some, such as U.S., Records of Confederate Prisoners of War, 1861 1865. In that case, you ll need to browse collections by date or place. New Italian Vital Records Projects at FamilySearch Indexing Tuesday September 13, 2011 FamilySearch has been collaborating with archives across Italy to bring new vital records (stato civile) free to FamilySearch.org. From what I can tell, most of the new FamilySearch Indexing projects appear to be records already available on microfilm from FamilySearch, but the indexes and images online will be much easier to access and utilize, especially for those with limited experience with the Italian language. These new Italian vital record indexing projects are marked Urgente (urgent) in the FamilySearch Indexing projects list and they are asking indexers currently working on other Italian language indexing projects to transition to these new projects for the time being. The goal is to have 750,000 new Italian records online by the end of 2011.

VA PENSION PAYMENT CARDS, 1907-1933 Available on Internet Archive http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=payment%20cards%20and%20mediatype%3atexts The database is titled Veterans Administration Pension Payment Cards, 1907-1933. This microfilm was digitized by the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, IN. This database consists of images of two million cards that list payments made between 1907 and 1933 to Army and Navy pensioners and to Army and Navy widows who qualified for a pension Here s the bad news: the two million cards are not searchable. Here s the good news: Arne Trelik has created a finding aid for all 2539 roils, with the names covered in that roll. Arne s finding aid is at: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ohwarren/military/pension1907_1933.htm There are images of two cards on each page. The images are read across two pages, rather than top to bottom. Book Reviews Abstracts of Obituaries in the Western Christian Advocate 1834 1850 Lands of the German Empire and Before http://www.genealogyblog.com/?p=14310 Upcoming Genealogy Events Arkansas Genealogy Events for September and November. Don t miss Mark Lowe s presentation on November 6. He is a very good genealogy speaker. http://www.agsgenealogy.org/events/default.html#agsspringworkshop Happy surfing and hunting for those long lost ancestors! Jeanette Frahm VGS Newsletter Editor Vol 1 Ed 1 Sept 27, 2011