[or-roots] Useful links and other hints

[Leslie Chapman]

I just ran across this and thought I would share it again in case some of
you have missed some of these. I checked and they all work, though you will
have to search out the actual search page on the New Brunswick link. Also
Vital search is now pretty much all a pay site, but still can get a little
bit out of them free.

Les C

Researching Government Records

Local government record sources  vary by size of community and general
variations; County seats and other administrative centers are going to have
more information. Smaller communities may have no organized official records
at all.

How well records were kept varied a great deal over time and by areas.
Massachusetts has many small communities where excellent records were  kept
from fairly early in their history and have been compiled into easily usable
books. Conversely the deep South has many communities where almost no
records exist before 1865 as a result of the War of Rebellion.

Unfortunately even areas where the norm was to keep good records there have
been lapses. One set of records near and dear to me is the Concord,
Massachusetts Vital Records as  nearly every page has Kin on it and half of
some pages are in my family file;  Concord Registers Book 1 page 7: "From
the date (September 17, 1659) when Simon Willard made the foregoing return
until February, 1654, no record of Births, Marriages and Deaths in Concord
is to be found    .     .    ."

The most common repository of records in the U.S. is in County seats, or
similar government levels, this is commonly where almost all probate records
and land records will be found. Often these are the only records that are
available with any useful information, especially in 18th century and
earlier.

Again there is a wide variation in how helpful county governmental bodies
are concerning requests for information. I recently visited the Douglas
County Courthouse and found the staff very supportive of my quest which was
very different from my previous visit where I seemed to be "imposing" on
them to be there at all. Perhaps my previous visit I just caught them on a
bad day. Some county seats have a very good system for finding records and
on the other hand at PLSO conference a few years back the County surveyor
for one of the smaller Eastern Oregon Counties mentioned that his records
were in two or three cardboard boxes under a desk in is office.

States have a wide degree of variation, not only in what they will share,
but how easy it is to get.

Getting anything out of the Federal Government usually involves paperwork,
patience and money in about equal amounts.

On the following pages you will find some examples of currently available
information from various sources.

For specific locations my best recommendation is to google the location name
and "search within results" for genealogy to get some relevant listings. I
have often located specific postings for people of interest by following
with another  "search within results" for surname.

What the good web sites you find this way will have is listings of where
lookups may be available, what online information is available and most
important,  who and where to contact city, county or State offices for
copies of original documents.






First some of my favorites;

For the state of Missouri for starters;

http://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/resources/birthdeath/

This is a somewhat complex site, but it provides you with pdf's of actual
birth and death records for the 19th century as they have them available,
and also index entries for some of the 20th century, these indexes are quite
helpful, much more info than your usual "name and date and county of birth
if your lucky, these have mother's maiden name and some other details though
they are very insistent that you should order the actual document cause they
can't guarantee the info. A lot of the birth entries do not have child's
given name, it seems to me even some of the original certs don't, and as I
said the person you are looking for might or might not be available.

Closer to home for me;

http://www.deathindexes.com/oregon/index.html

some of the information on this page is fee based, but the Oregon Death
Index 1903-1930 is a freebie and some of the county info is also. For those
with specific Oregon requests they should contact me off list as I may be
able to connect them to resources for lookups in some areas that aren't
obvious.

California;
Rootsweb death index;

http://vitals.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ca/death/search.cgi

   http://www.vitalsearch-ca.com/

the worst of that site are the pre 1940 death indexes which are poor quality
scans of the index pages, if you have some skill at digitally enhancing them
they become a little easier to read, but i am sure I have a dozen or so
misread dates in my data file, but am too cheap to order the certs. (you may
notice a pattern here, I pretty much only pay for folks in my immediate
ancestry, or where I can find a real bargain, unless I am getting stuff out
of county courthouse records or for someone else)

Illinois;

http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/departments/archives/databases.html

very good for indexes of death and marriage, no birth info. One of the
eccentricities is some states won't give you birth info, some won't give you
marriage, but everybody figures after your dead your info should be
available.

Also in Illinois;

http://jersey.ilgenweb.net/         granted this is mostly just one county,
but if you happen have kin there, or if they ever were there for any period
of time this site may have something on them.

New Brunswick;

http://genealogy.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.gnb.ca/Arc
hives/e/Default.asp

yes, I know that isn't part of the Western United states, but thought I'd
throw it in.

Washington Vital Records; Washington (the state) is making the most
comprehensive effort to make vital records available, the key to using these
however is to click on the "show all records" link for the record type you
are interested in and then you can come back to this page when you are
through, if you just click on the record type you have to go back and start
a new search when you finish that type and clicking on the "open in a new
window" just gets you an error message.

http://www.digitalarchives.wa.gov/default.aspx

here is what Wheeler nets in that database; oops, never mind that! I've
never done that before, the page I meant to paste in here was 15 lines, but
somehow it was linked to the  "show all records" and for most of the sets of
less than a hundred it showed them!  Here again a lot of originals are
available as pdf or whatever ( another nice feature is they give you a
choice of formats) but not by any means all of what is even indexed.


Western states marriage index;

http://abish.byui.edu/specialCollections/westernStates/search.cfm

apparently this is based at least in part on contributions or some arcane
system of deciding what to include; the Oregon entries seem to be mostly
east of the Cascades. I think it may have to do with teh host for the
database??

Last but not least; Arizona;

http://genealogy.az.gov/

I thought they had marriage too, but I don't see it, they are most open
about stuff as they seem to have a lot available and it comes as a pdf of
rhe original


For persons of Massachusetts ancestry try googling the town name followed by
the words vital records and you may be able to download the entire book of
vital records up to 1850. This will also get you similar results for a few
other locations. People with a large number of towns of interest there might
want to inquire of my personal database.