1920 census FREE from June 15-17!

Here's a scoop! From June 15-17 Ancestry is allowing FREE ACCESS to the 1920 USA census! That's right, it's free, no credit card required, and you heard it here first.

I've set up a special page for the free census

This isn't a free trial, it's totally free access (no credit card asked for) so enjoy!

San Francisco 1867 Great Register Online!

Sfgenealogy.com has a new TAG production, the San Francisco 1867 Great Register.

The Register is a voter registration index that contains information on approximately 16,365 individual males,including naturalization details for many of them.

Naturalization details include date, place and court of naturalization

http://www.sfgenealogy.com/sf/1867g/sfgr67.htm

For more naturalization records online see http://naturalizationrecords.com/

The ABCs of Immigration Research

Monday, June 20, 7 p.m.
Jewish Genealogy Society
Albert Einstein Residence Center,
1935 Wright Street,
Sacramento

There's the Ellis Island Web site but a whole lot more. Learn about recently computerized passenger records of other U.S. ports, including Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco, plus online passenger lists of those leaving Europe via the port of Hamburg. In addition to Internet resources, Lester Smith will discuss valuable immigration records that are not yet online or indexed.

The June 20th program can help you begin your personal research or discover more about those on your family tree. All are welcome. For more information about the Jewish Genealogy Society of Sacramento, visit their Web site
http://www.jewishgen.org/jgs-sacramento/, e-mail the JGSS at jgs_sacramento@yahoo.com or leave a message at 916-486-0906 ext. 361.

Castle Garden - Searching for New York passenger arrivals

Castle Garden existed as a processing station for immigrants between 1855 and 1890. There is no separate set of records for Castle Garden, as there is for Ellis Island.

Passenger lists for the Castle Garden time period are available on microfilm so if you know a date of arrival or a ship name you can order the microfilm or have NARA do a lookup for you.

Check the complete list of film numbers (NARA or FHC) for ships going to New York after 1820. Find your date (year, month, day if known) and write down the NARA
or Family History Centre film number you need

NARA & FLH Films for New York Passenger Lists

For more help with this time period see Castle Garden:Ships Passenger Lists to New York 1 Aug.1855 - 18 Apr. 1890

Finding passengers on ships lists to Baltimore Maryland

There are 2 separate indexes for Baltimore for the years 1833-1866. One lists passengers on federal lists, the second lists passengers on city lists. You can't just check one - if you check one and don't find your ancestor, you have to
check the other one.

For a list of Film Numbers for Ships to Maryland, after 1820, see
http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/filmnos_baltmd.shtml

For online Ships to Maryland see
http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/tousa_md.shtml

If you want to search multiple websites at once for passenger lists, there is a custom search engine for Ships going to Maryland at
http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/searchmdships.shtml

Filling in the 1847 - 1892 gap for passenger lists to New York

Check my free online project to fill in the 1847-1892 index gap for passenger arrival records in New York.

This project consists of 3 sets of records:

1. NY Times extracts for ship arrivals and passenger names

2. Images (and some accompanying transcripts) of actual passenger lists in this time period

3. NY Almshouse records for 1855-1858 (contains year of arrival and ship name)

The complete index of NY Times years and shipping news extracts is at
http://www.rootsweb.com/~ote/ships/nytimes.htm

Images of ships passenger lists for these Unindexed NY years are online at http://www.rootsweb.com/~ote/ships/

The Almshouse Records start at
http://www.rootsweb.com/~ote/ships/ny_alms1855.htm

Also check online ships and links to ships in this time period starting at
http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/tousa_ny182549.shtml

Steve Morse NEW IMPROVED Search of Ancestry.com

GOOD NEWS!!! -- You can now search on Ancestry.com without having to put in three characters for the name. Up until now, if you entered a partial first name or a partial last name, you had to enter at least three characters plus a wildcard character.

Steve Morse has written some new code that gets around this limitation by searching on all combinations of the letters that you left out.

For example, suppose you want to search for all people with first initial J and last name Smith. Steve's software will automatically search for all Smiths with first names starting with Jaa, then Jab, then Jac, etc. up to Jzz.

It might take as much as 5 minutes to get all the results, but it's automatic -- you submit one search and Steve does 676 searches for you. If you search for all Smiths with first name starting with Ja, Steve can do that faster (less than ten seconds) because he only has to do 26 searches in that case.

To use this feature, go to Steve's website at http://stevemorse.organd select any of his search forms that search on Ancestry.com (e.g., any of his passenger search forms other than Ellis Island, and his census search-by-name form for any census year).

Then enter less than three characters for either the first or last name, and Steve's new software will kick in, doing repeated searches on your behalf.

Have fun!

Pennsylvania German Pioneers by Ralph B. Strassburger & William J. Hinke - What It's All About

Pennsylvania German Pioneers by Ralph B. Strassburger and William J. Hinke, published in 1934 by the Pennsylvania German Society, Norristown, PA gives all available lists for each ship - the Captain's list, the list of signers of the Oaths of Allegiance and a third list which is supposedly a duplicate of the signers of the Oath but really isn't. It is signatures of those who signed a different oath.

To quote from the Strassburger book

"The order relating to the duty of the captains had three points. First, they were to make a list of all the people they imported. .... Not even the first point, that they should hand in lists of the names of the people they imported, was interpreted alike by all the captains. Most of them thought that to give the names of the male adults was all that was required. Only twenty-five captains have given complete lists of all the men, women and children.

Three captains have given the names of the men and women, but omitted the children, while sixty-four captains atoned somewhat for their remissness in carrying out the orders by giving the ages of the passengers, an item that they had not been asked to give, but which we are glad to insert, wherever they are found. Sometimes the captains give the total number of freights, children being counted as "half freights."

In two instances (Nos. 1-2) the totals in each family are given. Looking at the captains'lists as a whole, we must say, that they are of all sorts and descriptions. Each one made his list to suit himself, without any reference to the orders of the Council."

Family Tree Magazine Best 101 Undiscovered Websites of 2005

I'm very excited to announce that Family Tree Magazine chose my website USA and Canada Naturalization & Citizenship Records at http://naturalizationrecords.com/ as one of 101 Best Undiscovered Web Sites of 2005.

Go to http://www.familytreemagazine.com/101sites/2005/ and to see the sites chosen this year. NaturalizationRecords.com is in the category DOCUMENT DISCOVERIES

If you haven't explored NaturalizationRecords.com before,you might want to head for the Site Map at http://naturalizationrecords.com/sitemap.shtml after you read the introduction.

Marriage Bonds Ontario & Quebec 1779-1865 online

It is difficult to trace a marriage that took place in a Protestant church in Quebec(Lower Canada) and Ontario (Upper Canada) before 1867.

Marriage bonds were prepared for Protestant marriages by licence. After obtaining the bond, a licence was issued and the marriage took place a few days later.

Library and Archives Canada holds:

2960 marriage bonds for Lower Canada (Quebec) issued between 1779 and 1858

7899 marriage bonds for Upper Canada (Ontario) issued between 1803 and 1865

A typical search reveals:

~ Name of the future husband
~ Name of the future wife
~ Their place of residence
~ Names of the sureties (people who knew the groom and would guarantee that no legal reasons existed why the couple could not marry)
~ Date and place where the bond was issued

These bonds are now searchable online at Library & Archives Canada at

http://www.collectionscanada.ca/022/012/index-e.html

Terrace Lawn Cemetery Improvement Project - North Bay Ontario Canada

From Murray Pletsch, Chairman
Friends Of Terrace Lawn Cemetery Committee
North Bay, Ontario, Canada

Dear Fellow Researchers:

1. Terrace Lawn Cemetery is a large 91 years old cemetery near the centre of North Bay, Ontario.

2. The cemetery is slowly but surely deteriorating, mainly because the plots have been all sold and the maintenance of the cemetery is relying mainly on the interest from the Perpetual Care Trust Fund. Most of you likely know with the reduced interest rates over the past 10 years or so....the interest on these funds is also reduced and one does not need to be a banker to paint a clearer picture.

3. All the grave markers in the cemetery have been photographed and are accessable at the Link below.

4. This message is general in nature, but more specifically addressed to descendants of ancestors buried in Terrace Lawn Cemetery in North Bay and who are dispersed all over the world. Should you know a friend or family member who are
descendants, please pass the message to them.

5. The message? Please check http://home.cogeco.ca/~terrace for details about the project and how your help can really make a difference.

New Jersey Naturalization Records

There are new free records online for New Jersey Supreme Court & Burlington County Court, Clerks Office for Naturalization records 1818-1898 (P Surnames)

These are found at NaturalizationRecords.com website

New York Naturalization Records

I have just finished uploading several more files of surnames in the free online New York Naturalizations records at http://naturalizationrecords.com/
These new records consist of the following additions to the previously uploaded files:

New York Naturalization Petitions Indexes to Books 10-12, 1844-1851. The new additions today are for surnames D, E, F, G, H, J, K, L, & M. The total number of names of individuals in the new uploads is 1,015.

The start of this project is at
New York Naturalization Petitions

The new database is Naturalization Petitions Indexes. New York. Books 3-9, 1834-1844. The surnames completed today and uploaded are M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V Total number of names uploaded today for these years is 1,556

The start of 1834-1844 project is at
Naturalization Petitions for New York 1834-1844


That brings the total number of new names online today to 2,571 (hopefully one is an ancestor!)

The rest will follow as my volunteers finish transcribing and indexing these records. A huge thank you goes to Clinton, Laura, Peggy and Sandy for their hard work on these records.

As always, these naturalization records are FREE for all to use. Just let each page load completely and then scroll down to read the names or choose other pages.

Rootsweb Plus! Steve Morse's New SSDI Search Tool

If any of you have done extensive lookups in the social security death index (SSDI), you'll know that there are several SSDI websites and each one has a different set of
limitations. Several years ago Steve Morse made it easy for us by developing a single search form that could search any SSDI site that you specify. That way you could go back and forth between the different sites without having to reenter
you data on a new form.

Steve has now come up with a single search method that combines all the desirable features of the various sites. He did so by using the rootsweb site as his starting point and then wrote code to get rid of the following limitations in rootsweb:

Rootsweb requires at least three characters for partial names
Rootsweb does not allow you to search on a range of years
Rootsweb does not allow you to search on age
Rootsweb does not allow you to search on a foreign last residence
Rootsweb does not allow you to specify day of month for death

Steve calls his search method "RootsWeb Plus" and it is now the default choice on his SSDI search form. If you'd like to try it, go to Steve's site at http://www.stevemorse.org and
select "Social Security Death Records" in his "Births and Deaths" section.

Ships to Lousiana Online

14 new ships sailing to the Port of New Orleans, Louisiana, have been added to Olive Tree Genealogy's free set of ships passenger lists.

You can view the list of passengers for each ship by starting at the index to Ships Arriving in New Orleans 1820 and later, at

http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/tousa_la1820.shtml

Let the page load. Then scroll down to the list of ships,and click on the links provided for each.

The ships are:

• Ship June Anni Bordeaux France to New Orleans Louisiana 1820
  
• Ship Missouri Bordeaux France to New Orleans Louisiana 1820
  
• Brig Commerce London England to New Orleans Louisiana 1820
  
• Brig Monitor Port of Port au Prince Haiti to New Orleans Louisiana 1820
  
• Schooner Cadmus Port au Prince Haiti to New Orleans Louisiana 1820
  
• Schooner Brisk Campeche Mexico to New Orleans Louisiana 1820
  
• Schooner Thorn Campeche Mexico to New Orleans Louisiana 1820
  
• Schooner Atheman Port of Pensacola FLorida to New Orleans Louisiana 1820
  
• Schooner Mary & Sally Port of Pensacola FLorida to New Orleans Louisiana 1820
  
• Brig Alexander Dublin Ireland to New Orleans Louisiana 1820
  
• Brig Mary Ann Port of Havana Cuba to New Orleans Louisiana 1820
  
• Brig Gustave Port of Martinez, California to New Orleans Louisiana 1820
  
• Galliote Fortuna Bremen Germany to New Orleans Louisiana 1820
  
• Schooner Brutus Port of Havana, Cuba, to New Orleans Louisiana 1820
  

I have also re-indexed the Custom Search Engine on
http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/tousa_la1820.shtml so it now has 33 more ships added, and will search over 500 ships to Louisiana currently online on various websites.

This Search Engine is labelled "Search FREE Ships Passenger Lists to Louisiana" and it searches multiple websites for ships passengers arriving in Louisiana.

Have fun, and I hope you find an ancestor or two!

Feel free to pass this message on to anyone or any lists you think would be interested.

Lorine

Philadelphia Passenger Records 1883-1945

I hope everyone knows about Steve Morse's new one-step search engine for Philadelphia Passenger Records (1883-1945). Steve's One-Step Search Engines are quickly becoming the most popular genealogy search engines online.

http://stevemorse.org/ellis/philfolder.html

To view all Steve's One-Steps, see http://stevemorse.org/

New for TheShipsList Website

*new* for TheShipsList website
http://www.theshipslist.com/

posted by Sue Swiggum

All the new and updated files and databases have been placed
on their own page(s) Find them on the front page in between
the big arrows --------------> <---------------

At the bottom of each of these pages I have placed links
named " previous month " and " next month " so you are able
to navigate back and forth between the monthly *new &
updated* pages, as I only keep three months of *new* page
links on the Home page. New for April 30 2005 find . . .

o Passengers:
o ship Gipsy, from Southampton to Port Adelaide 15th
August 1853 o ship Magdalena, from Southampton to
Port Adelaide 25th August 1853 o ship Standard, from
Plymouth to Port Adelaide 13th October 1853

Three more lists 1853 passenger lists of assisted immigrants
to South Australia. We only have three left to complete the
year . . Neptune, Olivia and Epaminondas. Each of these
next three 1853 ships carried some of the Highlands &
Islands Emigration Society emigrants from the ill-fated
Hercules voyage.
http://www.theshipslist.com/accounts/hies_hercules.htm We
have already seen Calabar carry 10. The Neptune will have
63 more, the Olivia 25 and the Epaminondas 12. The David
Malcolm in 1854 will be the last to carry Hercules,
Highlands Society passengers to Adelaide. Others embarked
upon ships to Melbourne, with one ship to Geelong. One
ship, the Caroline, even carried 10 to Moreton Bay. Once
1853 is complete, I will begin 1849 . . with 27 passenger
lists

Immigrants to South Australia, (UK, assisted passage)
1847-1886 index page
http://www.theshipslist.com/ships/australia/SAassistedindex.htm

Please share this *new* for TheShipsList website email, with
any other list to which you belong if you think it might be
of interest or value to those list members (in other words,
on-topic).

Sue
--
TheShipsList Website
http://www.theshipslist.com/

Canada Census Campaign: Post 1901 Census - Help needed for Fax blitz

From: "Gordon A. Watts"

Greetings All.

A couple of years ago we conducted a short, concentrated
effort by fax machine to bring the Post 1901 Census issue to
the attention of then Industry Minister Alan Rock. It did
not then give us the immediate public access we sought to
Historic Census records, but it did get his attention.

We hope that in the next few days we can duplicate the
success of that effort, but this time by faxing the Prime
Minister, Minister of Industry, Minister of Canadian
Heritage, and all House and Party leaders. If you have a
fax machine at your disposal you can help to encourage the
rapid passage of Bill S-18 in the House of Commons.

Your message should be short and to the point, entailing no
more than a single page. It must be sent separately to the
individuals listed above, and your own Member of Parliament.
For those who would entail long distance charges, rates are
normally lower in the evenings, and possibly even lower
after midnight.

I copy below the message that I myself will be faxing. I
have printed it off in larger than normal font size, in this
case 16 point, to make it stand out. Feel free to use the
wording here for your message. Make sure to date it, and
include your full name, mailing address, and telephone
number as I have done here. Otherwise your fax will likely
be ignored.

--------------------------------
30 April 2005

To:

Prime Minister Paul Martin
Industry Minister David Emerson
Minister of Canadian Heritage Liza Frulla
All House and Party leaders
All Members of Parliament

Greetings

We urge all House and Party leaders, and all Members of
Parliament, to please join together to expedite passage of
Bill S-18, An Act to amend the Statistics Act, by foregoing
Committee and Report stages. We seek your cooperation to
immediately pass Second and Third Readings of this Bill in a
single day. We are concerned that this Bill must be passed
and given Royal Assent prior to the possibility of an
election being forced upon us.

An estimated 7.5 million genealogists and historians
(voters) in Canada wish to spend their summer, and beyond,
researching the long overdue records of the 1911 Census of
Canada, rather than having to continue the fight to see them
released.

Thank you.

Gordon A. Watts
Co-chair, Canada Census Committee
1455 Delia Drive
Port Coquitlam, BC, V3C 2V9

Tel: 604-942-6889
Cel: 604-312-7447
Fax: 604-942-6843

------------------------------

Fax numbers for the Prime Minister, Industry Minister,
Heritage Minister, House leaders and Party leaders are as
follows: Where more than one number is shown the first
number shown is their personal office fax, while the second
number is their departmental fax number where available. In
some cases they are one and the same, or only one fax number
has been found for them.

Prime Minister Paul Martin
(613) 941-6900

Tony Valeri - Government House Leader
(613) 992-7764 - Department fax (613) 952-4940


David Emerson - Minister of Industry
(613) 943-0219 - Department fax (613) 992-0302

Liza Frulla - Minister of Canadian Heritage
(613) 995-6404 - Department fax (819) 994-1267

Stephen Harper - Leader of Opposition (Conservative)
(613) 947-0310

Jay Hill - Opposition House Leader (Conservative)
(613) 947-4527

Jack Layton - NDP Leader
(613) 995-4565

Libbie Davies - NDP House Leader
(613) 995-7412

Gilles Duceppe - Bloc Quebecios Leader
(613) 954 2121

Michel Gauthier - Bloc Quebecios House Leader
(613) 992-9954

Parliament resumes sitting on Monday 2 May. To make this
effort effective, it is important that your faxes be sent in
the next couple of days. Should you experience a problem
connecting with the receiving fax machine it probably means
that it has run out of paper. Try again the next day to
give staff a chance to replentish the paper. Thank you all
for your support.

Happy Hunting.

Gordon A. Watts gordon_watts@telus.net
Co-chair Canada Census Committee
Port Coquitlam, BC

http://www.globalgenealogy.com/Census
en francais
http://www.globalgenealogy.com/Census/Index_f.htm

Permission to forward without notice is granted

Return of Emigrants Landed at the Port of Kingston Ontario, Canada 1861-1882

Just want to let you know that I have the start of a new database online. It is a Return of Emigrants Landed at the Port of Kingston Ontario, Canada 1861-1882

The column headings for each individual are Date of Landing; Name of Emigrant or Head of Family; From what Country; Via what Seaport Town; Destination; Condition,
general appearnace, health; No. of male adults; No. of Female adults; No. under 6 years; No. over 6 years and under 12; in what Township Employed as Servants; In what Township settled, or bought land; Amount of passage tickets issued; Amount of provisions; Amount of Medical aid; amount of Capital brought by them; General Remarks.

The ledger pages these names were taken from consists of two pages facing each other containing information provided for each individual recorded. I have only extracted partial information from the left side of the facing ledger pages. There is still much detail on each individual to be found on the facing (right) side pages and in comments inserted on both sides.


http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/kingston1861oct-1862may.shtml


A big thank you goes to Kathy Baker for transcribing this hard to read set of records, and to Laura Freeman for proof-reading them

This is an ongoing project of Olive Tree Genealogy so be sure to check back often to see how much more has been done.

Lorine

New Orleans Passenger Lists 1820

I have just uploaded 10 new ships passenger lists to Olive Tree Genealogy

These are names of passengers on ships sailing to New Orleans Louisiana in January 1820.

You can start at the index to ships going to LA 1820-1840 at http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/tousa_la1820.shtml or
click on the links below to go directly to each ship:

http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/1820williamjohn.shtml
Willam & John St. Domingo to New Orleans Louisiana 1820


http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/1820thomasgordon.shtml
Thomas Gordon Amsterdam to New Orleans Louisiana 1820

http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/1820junius.shtml
Junius Puerto Rico to New Orleans Louisiana 1820

http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/1820hero.shtml
Hero Havana to New Orleans Louisiana 1820

http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/1820forest.shtml
Forest Havana to New Orleans Louisiana 1820

http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/1820johannacatharine.shtml
Johanna Catharine Amsterdam to New Orleans Louisiana
1820

http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/1820isabella.shtml
Isabella St. Thomas to New Orleans Louisiana 1820

http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/1820atalante.shtml
Atalante Nantz to New Orleans Louisiana 1820

http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/1820esperance.shtml
Esperance (L'esperance) Bordeaux France to New Orleans Louisiana 1820

http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/1820alexandre.shtml
Alexandre Havre France to New Orleans Louisiana 1820

If you know of anyone else who might be interested in these new ships passenger lists, please pass this email on to them.

Enjoy!
Lorine