Tuesday, September 30, 2014

1875 Scottish Valuation Rolls - FREE index searches

ScotlandsPeople http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/ is now offering free index searches on the 1875 Valuation Rolls.


Here is an awesome tip - I just learned this too!! Thanks to Chris Paton for sharing this on his blog British GENES.

"The 1875 valuation rolls index is free to use. As you know the index does not tell you who owned the property if your relative was a tenant, a good way to do this is to go to the box marked Place and put the name of the street or farm name etc. in, this will tell you who owned the property

For example I know my relatives lived at Broomhill in the Parish of Cawdor Nairnshire. I got to the county, put in Nairnshire, then parish Cawdor, and Place Broomhill. It states there are 5 entries. I then click to access the index and it tells me that Earl Cawdor owned all the properties and the the names of the tenants including my relative Charles Macarthur who rented the farm."


Cheers,
Pat

Monday, September 29, 2014

Translation Tools

Hope these help!

GOOGLE TRANSLATE https://translate.google.com/
This is an automated process so not all translations will be perfect.


CHARACTERS IN FOREIGN ALPHABETS http://stevemorse.org/#dealing



LIVEMOCHA for language learning http://livemocha.com/


Let me hear your experiences?


Cheers,
Pat

Thursday, September 25, 2014

TV Genealogy Program

Watch for "Finding Your Roots" which airs on PBS Sept. 2014. I just watched the first one and it was very, very good. In my opinion it's much improved from the "Who Do You Think You Are" series. They are not flying all over the place to get records they could have gotten from their own home computers for one thing. For another there are none of those annoying commercials and repetition after each commercial. Anyway, it's certainly worth searching for the "Finding Your Roots" series!!

Cheers,
Pat

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Classes - Fall 2014

Unpuzzling Your Past - Fall 2014

TAKE THE BEST JOURNEY OF YOUR LIFE - STEP BACK INTO YOUR PAST! Celebrate and preserve your own history by building your family tree. At some point in life, people feel compelled to learn more about the individuals in their family who came before them. What makes genealogical research even more interesting is seeing the impact that your ancestors had on history, and on your own life. And just what did you inherit from your ancestors? Your physical appearance, likes or dislikes, health, even your occupation may be traced back to your ancestors. Every person is a part of history. Just by living their lives, they created history. What about you? You, too, are creating history, even as you live it. While you are a descendant of the past, you are a parent of the future.

Records are history's best storytellers. It is therefore necessary to develop research skills and become a good 'detective'. It is also a great deal of fun! These classes are designed to develop your research skills & teach you to think like a researcher. The classes enable you to decide what records to search for, why you need each of these records, how to find them, and then how to use them.

Unpuzzling Your Past is the course you SHOULD start with - whether a beginner or a seasoned researcher! You won't believe what you've been missing! You will NEVER regret building a strong foundation!! What if you had to prove a major event in *your* life? How would you do it? With records. Your ancestors also created records. They did many of the same things you do. Later in their lives they may have married and had children. Some of them hunted for gold, others worked in mills or farmed, still others left their homeland to make a new life in North America. If you had to prove your ancestors had these experiences, that they actually lived, how would you do it? Well, you would become a family history detective.

This class is suitable for beginners and the advanced who’ve hit that ‘brick wall’. This is a good 'starter' class, and the one you should start with, but it is also designed to assist more experienced researchers who are at a stand-still with their current 'brick wall'. I will say again - You will NEVER regret building a strong foundation!!

For most of us the great fun of genealogy & family history research is in the thrill of the chase - the search for new details. We gather reams of photocopies. We have copious numbers of binders full of hard copy. We have too many notes scribbled on too many scraps of paper, and we carry impossible numbers of facts/dates/locations in our heads. Sometimes we are overwhelmed by the amount of information we have collected or inherited. Sometimes we have nothing. Obviously the more we know, the more we have to work with. BUT, Pat started with her parents and grandparents names, two locations (on two different continents), a couple unconfirmed dates, and that was it!! It *is* possible.

This course has been thoughtfully developed to help those with too much or too little information. If your research has progressed over a long period of time, do you still have some spaces you've had to leave blank or are uncertain about? Learn how to start, organize, document and cite your source(s) properly. Discover those missed clues or miscellaneous errors, and learn about new sources recently made available to the public (including many on the Internet - some that are available only on the Internet). Learn how to do all this in the most cost effective manner possible! There are times when you must pay for an official search. There are many *more* times when you can perform that search yourself, if you just knew how. This course will teach you those 'how's'.

Experienced genealogists
Take a look at all the work you've done or inherited and think of what you might yet accomplish! Is part of the reason you do family history research so it will be preserved, passed on and added to? Is your work clear, concise and presented in an organized, understandable format? Will the next person who looks at, or inherits it, be able to understand exactly what you found, and exactly where you found it? Will they be able to, and want to, continue your work? Do you have any recorded information, but are unable to remember where you found it or who told it to you? Have you been given any names, dates, locations but you have no idea where that information was found? If you knew, you could go back to those records, double check for accuracy and perhaps add some new details the original researcher, or story-teller, missed, misread or misinterpreted!

Only you know how much time, expertise, money, frustration, and intense happiness you will or have invested in researching and preserving your family history. Wouldn't it be terrible if it was all disposed of because it's value was not readily apparent? It happens every day. How many precious old photos, books or other memorabilia have you seen in second hand shops or garage sales? Your talents and your hard work need to be preserved and your descendants will thank you - after all, how much would you appreciate even one piece of well documented research?

If you are just getting started, congratulations, as you have no bad habits to break and this class will teach you all the good habits. For those of you who have spent decades doing research, isn't that research worth the investment of a little more time in order to preserve it for future generations? Do not despair if you're body of work needs attention - you are certainly not alone - but Do Not Delay any longer. Get into this class - quick! Student enrollment is kept low to accommodate student/instructor interaction. Students work on their own family research.

These courses are not designed to be the cheapest in the world - we all know that you usually get what you pay for. They *are* designed to be the BEST. Pat is most concerned with giving you the best and most recent tools available [including those on the Internet], and equipping you with the knowledge you need to take your research as far as you'd like. She also believes in having fun, and there is always much laughter shared by all. Additionally, following each one of the four class sessions, you will receive a set of complete and comprehensive notes covering the details taught and discussed in that class. This means you will not have to attempt to take notes during the class. Instead, you can devote your full time and attention to listening, learning, participating, and sharing in your own successes. By the end of the Unpuzzling Your Past course, you will have about 75 pages of notes filled with the most important details discussed. Additionally your notes contain live hyperlinks to all the websites we dealt with during the course. This is so helpful because you just need to click on the hyperlink and you are taken directly to that website! No chance of making an error typing some of those very long URL's (location addresses) into your web browser.

I know Ancestry runs these wonderful ads telling you all you have to do is enter one name and your whole ancestry will appear before your eyes. Hahahahaha ... if only it were that simple!! Ancestry is only one resource we use. It can be very helpful, although it is rather expensive, but it's impossible for any one resource to 'do it all'. Oh yes, and there are numerous other places to use first that are FREE! Anyway I couldn't resist mentioning this ... just in case you think it will be that easy. It is not, but it is so much more fun to find 'stuff' all by yourself AND to know that what you've found is actually YOUR family and not just someone with the same name.

Students continually express their gratitude and appreciation to Pat. They do this in words, and by continuing to enroll in Pat's more and more advanced courses, and by staying in touch throughout the years sharing their success stories. They realize her knowledge is vast, and that she goes 'above and beyond' for her students. They also realize that her notes alone are worth many hundreds of dollars - and appreciate that they can continue to refer to those notes, forever! Pat clearly loves what she does ... and it shows. Instructor Pat Ryan has completed numerous genealogy certification courses, and has been teaching courses since 1999. Contact her by email pryan@sasktel.net or call 695-2241 or her cell 533-3941. You can pay your registration fees at the office inside the front doors at Jack McKenzie School, 3838 Buckingham Drive East IF you miss the Community Association registration date. McKenzie School is Regina, on the corner of Buckingham & Windsor Park Road. It is however, a very good idea to contact Pat before the course begins, either by email or phone. Cheers!

Regina
Jack McKenzie School Multi-Purpose Room (upstairs)
Sept. 16, 23, 30, & Oct. 07 .............. 7:15 - 9:15pm