<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" http-equiv=Content-Type>
<META name=GENERATOR content="MSHTML 8.00.6001.18882"></HEAD>
<BODY style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: 10pt" id=role_body bottomMargin=7 leftMargin=7 rightMargin=7 topMargin=7><FONT id=role_document color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial>
<DIV>Les; Thank you for the information and for sharing. A lot of new
information, reminder of old info and great web sites. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Linda</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>In a message dated 2/13/2010 12:40:15 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
reedsportchapmans@verizon.net writes:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px"><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial>I just
ran across this and thought I would share it again in case some of<BR>you have
missed some of these. I checked and they all work, though you will<BR>have to
search out the actual search page on the New Brunswick link. Also<BR>Vital
search is now pretty much all a pay site, but still can get a little<BR>bit
out of them free.<BR><BR>Les C<BR><BR>Researching Government
Records<BR><BR>Local government record sources vary by size of community
and general<BR>variations; County seats and other administrative centers are
going to have<BR>more information. Smaller communities may have no organized
official records<BR>at all.<BR><BR>How well records were kept varied a great
deal over time and by areas.<BR>Massachusetts has many small communities where
excellent records were kept<BR>from fairly early in their history and
have been compiled into easily usable<BR>books. Conversely the deep South has
many communities where almost no<BR>records exist before 1865 as a result of
the War of Rebellion.<BR><BR>Unfortunately even areas where the norm was to
keep good records there have<BR>been lapses. One set of records near and dear
to me is the Concord,<BR>Massachusetts Vital Records as nearly every
page has Kin on it and half of<BR>some pages are in my family file;
Concord Registers Book 1 page 7: "From<BR>the date (September 17, 1659) when
Simon Willard made the foregoing return<BR>until February, 1654, no record of
Births, Marriages and Deaths in Concord<BR>is to be found .
. ."<BR><BR>The most common repository of records in
the U.S. is in County seats, or<BR>similar government levels, this is commonly
where almost all probate records<BR>and land records will be found. Often
these are the only records that are<BR>available with any useful information,
especially in 18th century and<BR>earlier.<BR><BR>Again there is a wide
variation in how helpful county governmental bodies<BR>are concerning requests
for information. I recently visited the Douglas<BR>County Courthouse and found
the staff very supportive of my quest which was<BR>very different from my
previous visit where I seemed to be "imposing" on<BR>them to be there at all.
Perhaps my previous visit I just caught them on a<BR>bad day. Some county
seats have a very good system for finding records and<BR>on the other hand at
PLSO conference a few years back the County surveyor<BR>for one of the smaller
Eastern Oregon Counties mentioned that his records<BR>were in two or three
cardboard boxes under a desk in is office.<BR><BR>States have a wide degree of
variation, not only in what they will share,<BR>but how easy it is to
get.<BR><BR>Getting anything out of the Federal Government usually involves
paperwork,<BR>patience and money in about equal amounts.<BR><BR>On the
following pages you will find some examples of currently
available<BR>information from various sources.<BR><BR>For specific locations
my best recommendation is to google the location name<BR>and "search within
results" for genealogy to get some relevant listings. I<BR>have often located
specific postings for people of interest by following<BR>with another
"search within results" for surname.<BR><BR>What the good web sites you find
this way will have is listings of where<BR>lookups may be available, what
online information is available and most<BR>important, who and where to
contact city, county or State offices for<BR>copies of original
documents.<BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR>First some of my favorites;<BR><BR>For
the state of Missouri for
starters;<BR><BR>http://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/resources/birthdeath/<BR><BR>This
is a somewhat complex site, but it provides you with pdf's of actual<BR>birth
and death records for the 19th century as they have them available,<BR>and
also index entries for some of the 20th century, these indexes are
quite<BR>helpful, much more info than your usual "name and date and county of
birth<BR>if your lucky, these have mother's maiden name and some other details
though<BR>they are very insistent that you should order the actual document
cause they<BR>can't guarantee the info. A lot of the birth entries do not have
child's<BR>given name, it seems to me even some of the original certs don't,
and as I<BR>said the person you are looking for might or might not be
available.<BR><BR>Closer to home for
me;<BR><BR>http://www.deathindexes.com/oregon/index.html<BR><BR>some of the
information on this page is fee based, but the Oregon Death<BR>Index 1903-1930
is a freebie and some of the county info is also. For those<BR>with specific
Oregon requests they should contact me off list as I may be<BR>able to connect
them to resources for lookups in some areas that
aren't<BR>obvious.<BR><BR>California;<BR>Rootsweb death
index;<BR><BR>http://vitals.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ca/death/search.cgi<BR><BR>
http://www.vitalsearch-ca.com/<BR><BR>the worst of that site are the pre 1940
death indexes which are poor quality<BR>scans of the index pages, if you have
some skill at digitally enhancing them<BR>they become a little easier to read,
but i am sure I have a dozen or so<BR>misread dates in my data file, but am
too cheap to order the certs. (you may<BR>notice a pattern here, I pretty much
only pay for folks in my immediate<BR>ancestry, or where I can find a real
bargain, unless I am getting stuff out<BR>of county courthouse records or for
someone
else)<BR><BR>Illinois;<BR><BR>http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/departments/archives/databases.html<BR><BR>very
good for indexes of death and marriage, no birth info. One of
the<BR>eccentricities is some states won't give you birth info, some won't
give you<BR>marriage, but everybody figures after your dead your info should
be<BR>available.<BR><BR>Also in
Illinois;<BR><BR>http://jersey.ilgenweb.net/
granted this is mostly just one county,<BR>but if you happen have kin there,
or if they ever were there for any period<BR>of time this site may have
something on them.<BR><BR>New
Brunswick;<BR><BR>http://genealogy.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.gnb.ca/Arc<BR>hives/e/Default.asp<BR><BR>yes,
I know that isn't part of the Western United states, but thought I'd<BR>throw
it in.<BR><BR>Washington Vital Records; Washington (the state) is making the
most<BR>comprehensive effort to make vital records available, the key to using
these<BR>however is to click on the "show all records" link for the record
type you<BR>are interested in and then you can come back to this page when you
are<BR>through, if you just click on the record type you have to go back and
start<BR>a new search when you finish that type and clicking on the "open in a
new<BR>window" just gets you an error
message.<BR><BR>http://www.digitalarchives.wa.gov/default.aspx<BR><BR>here is
what Wheeler nets in that database; oops, never mind that! I've<BR>never done
that before, the page I meant to paste in here was 15 lines, but<BR>somehow it
was linked to the "show all records" and for most of the sets of<BR>less
than a hundred it showed them! Here again a lot of originals
are<BR>available as pdf or whatever ( another nice feature is they give you
a<BR>choice of formats) but not by any means all of what is even
indexed.<BR><BR><BR>Western states marriage
index;<BR><BR>http://abish.byui.edu/specialCollections/westernStates/search.cfm<BR><BR>apparently
this is based at least in part on contributions or some arcane<BR>system of
deciding what to include; the Oregon entries seem to be mostly<BR>east of the
Cascades. I think it may have to do with teh host for
the<BR>database??<BR><BR>Last but not least;
Arizona;<BR><BR>http://genealogy.az.gov/<BR><BR>I thought they had marriage
too, but I don't see it, they are most open<BR>about stuff as they seem to
have a lot available and it comes as a pdf of<BR>rhe original<BR><BR><BR>For
persons of Massachusetts ancestry try googling the town name followed
by<BR>the words vital records and you may be able to download the entire book
of<BR>vital records up to 1850. This will also get you similar results for a
few<BR>other locations. People with a large number of towns of interest there
might<BR>want to inquire of my personal
database.<BR><BR>_______________________________________________<BR>or-roots
mailing
list<BR>or-roots@listsmart.osl.state.or.us<BR>http://listsmart.osl.state.or.us/mailman/listinfo/or-roots<BR></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>