[or-roots] Useful links and other hints

Sat Feb 13 13:01:00 PST 2010

Les; Thank you for the information and for sharing. A lot of new  
information, reminder of old info and  great web sites. 

Linda

In a message dated 2/13/2010 12:40:15 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,  
reedsportchapmans at verizon.net writes:

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.

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