The January 2017 meeting of the Madison County Genealogical Society was held at the Edwardsville Public Library on Thursday, January 12, at 7:00 pm.
President, Robert Ridenour, called the meeting to order.
The following is the Treasurer's report for the month of November:
The following is the Treasurer's report for the month of December:
Do you have a family member that
is interested in (or even obsessed with) genealogy? A membership
in the Madison County Genealogical Society would be a very thoughtful
gift. A gift card will be sent to the recipient of any gift membership.
The following memberships are available:
Individual/Family Annual Membership $25.00
Patron Annual Membership $35.00
Life Membership $300.00
Contact our Secretary, Petie Hunter, at [email protected],
about a gift membership.
On January 12, 2017, Tom Pearson,
Subject Specialist in the Genealogy Room of the St. Louis Public
Library, presented a program titled A Guided Tour of Ancestry
Library Edition.
The major portion of his presentation consisted of hints on performing
more effective searches in the various parts of Ancestry Library
Edition. He covered both Basic and Advanced searches using the
research tools available in Ancestry. The Ancestry program and
database contains tips for using their tools.
The Basic or Global search allows you to input a name (may need
to try nicknames or initials), birth year, and locations where
the person may have lived. But, you should remember, it is easy
to be TOO SPECIFIC when entering search terms. Do not make a birth
year TOO exact, this rules out some Circa and Census matches!
Approximate dates are often more useful than exact dates.
It is very easy to switch to an Advanced Search, where you can
also specify that certain life events be searched, e.g., birth,
marriage, death, or any event; you can also add other family members,
occupation, address, nationality, gender, etc., to the search.
You can specify which collections are to be searched: historical
records, stories and publications, family trees, and others. Ancestry
offers Quick Links to their many Content Categories, including
the State Resource Collections and Country Resource Collections.
The Image Viewer offers many options, including helps and tips.
The Ancestry Card Catalog has a multitude of choices. The results
of a search gives you the title of the collection where a match
was found, the total number of records in that collection and
the number of records that match the search.
Tom offered the following Hints:
1. FamilySearch.org has different census indexes than Ancestry.com.
2. Some states (like Missouri and Illinois) provide some online
vital records or indexes for vital records
3. Search both Ancestry.com and Fold3.com for Military Records
4. There are also separate websites for searching arrivals at
Ellis Island and Castle Garden.
5. When searching census records, pick a census year and search
that census only!
Ancestry Library Edition gives a good list of Research Tips:
1. List what you already know.
2. Interview relatives.
3. Get death records.
4. Follow up on death record clues.
5. Search census records (This one probably should be number 3.)
6. Search local sources.
Do not forget, also check everything not covered in numbers 1-6!
Main point to take away though, be thorough! Most people are too
impatient and give up too soon!
Ancestry Library Edition Search Tips
Wildcards
An asterisk "*" represents zero or more characters (e.g.,
a search for "john*" might return "john, johnson,
johnsen, johnathon, johns", etc.). Any use of the asterisk
requires at least two non-wildcard characters (you cannot search
for "S*", but could use "Sm*").
A single character is represented by a question mark "?"
(e.g., "Sm?th" equals both "Smith" and "Smyth").
Phrase Searches
You can use quotation marks to indicate that you want keywords
to return as an exact phrase.
For example, a search for the keywords Flying Tigers would return
matches with the word Flying on part of the page and Tigers on
part of the pageThat is, any part of the page not necessarily
adjacent to one another
If you use quotation marks, however, (like "Flying Tigers"),
you will only get back matches where the words Flying Tigers are
very close to each other.
Ancestry Library Edition Charts & Forms. You can download
and print as many as you need.
The Ancestry Library Edition Learning Center offers the user free
research guides. Most of these guides are 2-10 pages long and
can be read online or downloaded as PDF. The topics covered are:
The Ancestry Library Edition Learning Center contains a WIKI which
contains material from:
The Ancestry Library Edition has information about AncestryDNA
and how to interpret your results. Their website has the following
quote: With more than 1.5 million people now in our database and
the unique ability to connect with Ancestry's billions of historical
records and millions of family trees, AncestryDNA can help deliver
the richest family stories and solve the toughest family mysteries.
Mr. Pearson had a handout that contained website addresses for
many of the items he discussed. He will send you a copy of the
program handout with clickable links. Just email him at: [email protected]
and put ALE in the Subject Line.
This presentation was well received and provoked many questions.