Info - October 2008 Meeting

The next meeting is scheduled for Monday on Oct 27, 2008 at 7:00 PM, we will meet in the upstairs meeting room.

Please NOTE the earlier time!!

There will be a guest speaker, discussing the Acadian diaspora, i.e. the spread of Acadian people from Canada to many points within North America.
-- Brian Lingard

Tip - Genealogy Tutorials

When you are just starting out with genealogy, things can seem a bit daunting. So it can really help to review some tutorials specifically geared towards getting you up to speed quickly.

The following websites have great tutorials for the newcomer:

- RootsWeb - http://www.rootsweb.com/
- FamilySearch - http://www.familysearch.com/
- Cyndi's List - http://www.cyndislist.com/

A great book to look for is Unpuzzling Your Past: A Basic Guide to Tracking Your Family's Genealogy, by Emily Anne Croom (4th ed., Betterway Publications, 2001), an excellent beginner's guide with enough detail to keep you busy locating new sources for many years.
-- Brian Lingard

Info - September 2008 Meeting

The first meeting of the season is scheduled for Monday on Sept 22, 2008 at 7:30 PM, we will meet in the upstairs meeting room.
-- Brian Lingard

NH - Deed Searches

A while back I learned that the NH Registry of Deeds had created a website that you can search to locate deeds by county. Each county has a different range of dates available in the indexes, and a different set of scanned deed images available, depending upon how much they've managed to enter into their databases. All the counties have been diligently indexing and scanning new deeds, pushing their databases further back in time.

Currently the oldest available indexes online are for Rockingham County which goes back to 1643. Unfortunately the scanned images don't go nearly that far back. But it still can save you time, since you can identify deeds by books and pages in the comfort of your home, before venturing out to the county deed office to view or copy the deeds themselves.

-- Brian Lingard

NH - Rochester Courier Newspaper Index

For those who may be working on ancestors in the Rochester, NH area, the Rochester Public Library has put up a great resource on its website -- see http://www.rpl.lib.nh.us/reference/newsindex.htm.

A volunteer has indexed the back issues of the Rochester Courier newspaper starting from 1900. The index has people entries from birth notices, marriage notices, death notices, and obituaries. The indexes cover the surrounding towns of Barrington, Framingham, Gonic, Milton, New Durham, and Rochester itself.

An example entry is shown below:

Allen, James S., died 3/6/25: 3/13/25p7

This entry shows that James S. Allen died on 3/6/1925 and his obituary (or death notice) appears in the 3/13/1925 issue on page 7.

The back issues are on rolls of microfilm in a cabinet on the second floor of the library, near the reference section.

Good hunting!!
- Brian Lingard

Veterans - Gravesite Locator

I stumbled across this site the other day while looking for my grandfather's father who I knew was buried in a veteran's cemetery in Maine, it's the US Department of Veterans Affairs Gravesite Locator.

If you know which cemetery the veteran is buried at, this site will help you locate the gravesite within that cemetery (these cemeteries can be quite large so this could save you a lot of walking), including a map of the cemetery showing sections and nearby roads.

If you don't know which cemetery the veteran is buried at, enter as much information as you know, hopefully you may get lucky and find who you're looking for. Good luck!
-- Brian Lingard

Tip - Ancestry of Barak Obama

Just in case you've been curious here's an interesting site - http://www.wargs.com/political/obama.html - that details the ancestry presidential candidate Barak Obama.
-- Brian Lingard