Find a Grave Web site From your Laptop

What a great site Find a Grave is .. found the grave stone of great great great grandfather McCormick Zion in Decatur, Iowa. Almost as great as seeing it in person. Will be putting it on my want to visit in person list.

Adam Zion was born January 22, 1795 North Fork Holston River Washington County Virginia and Died December 26, 1863 at the age of 67 years 11 months and 4 days.

Find a Grave Web site From your Laptop

Last night I posted some of the top web sites for genealogy. One of them was Find a Grave

I love to wander the cemetary. Quiet and so peaceful. Today I had dh stop at a cemetary in the Houston area. Will tell about that in another post. But tonight I wandered Craig Cemetary from my laptop.

Find a Grave is a simple-yet-powerful cemetery database has grown to more than 31 million grave transcriptions. You can search by name (with options for maiden names and partial surnames), birth date, death date or cemetery location, or browse a cemetery for people you think might be your ancestors. There's also a surname index and the Social Security Death Index.

Tonight I went to the site. Registered as a member, offered to take pictures of gravestones in my area. I then found that the pictures of my great grandmother Rachel and great grandfather Adam Zion plus there grave stone had been posted. I had seen these pictures before on the internet, but to night I was able to also get the name of the cemetary in a picture also. Before leaving I left viritual flowers for them. .

That is my grandfather Perry upper left hand corner.

Try to take some time to check out this web site. I am amazed. I will be taking some time to searching this site. I hope to be able to find graves of my ancestors that I have not seen yet.

Happy searching

More Best Web Sites for Local Searches

Here are a few more of my favorite Best Web sites

Colorado Historic Newspaper Collection You can read all about it in more than 477,000 digitized pages from 147 newspapers published in Colorado from 1859 to 1923.

Washington State Digital Archives This massive digitization project boasts 80 million records, with almost 64 million of them searchable and many linked to images of the originals—birth, death and marriage records; censuses; military records; land records; naturalizations; and more.

Wisconsin Historical Society Here you will find a treasure trove for Badger State history of all kinds—including Civil War records, images and 150,000 names in biographical sketches, obituaries and newspaper articles—this site also lets you search 1 million births, 1 million marriages and 400,000 deaths, all pre-1907.

Find a Grave This simple-yet-powerful cemetery database has grown to more than 31 million grave transcriptions. You can search by name (with options for maiden names and partial surnames), birth date, death date or cemetery location, or browse a cemetery for people you think might be your ancestors. There's also a surname index and the Social Security Death Index.

MortalitySchedules.com Don't you just hate it when you find an inconsiderate ancestor who died right before the next census? I know I do.. Here we can track him or her with the help of this site: It provides free transcriptions of the 1850, 1860, 1870 and 1880 census mortality schedules, in which enumerators recorded information on all people who perished within the 12 months preceding the census.

Family Tree Magazine 101 Best Web Sites 2009

Family Tree Magazine recently released their annual 101 Best Web Sites for 2009. You probably have seen most already, but I wanted to add those that I think are perfect to this blog.

10 Best Web Sites for Vital Records

Arizona Genealogy Birth and Death Certificates For any of those whose ancestors were born or died in Arizona are very lucky. Not only can you search here for birth records (1855 to 1933) and death records (1844 to 1958), but once you've found your family members, a single click brings up a PDF of the original document.

Cook County, Illinois, Vital Records $ This new Web site makes finding your Chicago-area ancestors a snap: Searching the more than 8 million birth (75-plus years old), marriage (50-plus years old) and death (20-plus years old) records is free. The results show name, record date and file number, with an option to download a copy for $15.
If you happen to be confused by sound-alike names here? You can use the search tool created by genealogy-tech guru Steve Morse at stevemorse.org/vital/cook.html.

Maine State Archives This archives site serves up a searchable marriage index (1892 to 1996, with a gap from 1967 to 1976) and death index (1960 to 1996).

Massachusetts Archives This is a searchable database that lets you search indexes of Massachusetts birth, marriage and death records from 1841 to 1910. You can search by first and last names, year and location. Be sure to bookmark this site, too, its ongoing project to index more than 1 million immigrants through the port of Boston (1848 to 1891).

Minnesota Historical Society Yea.. alot of my family lived in Minnesota. Here you can search your ancestors in the Land of 10,000 Lakes and a million mosquitoes with the indexes to birth records (1900 to 1934, plus selected pre-1900 records) and records from death cards (1904 to 1907) and death certificates (1908 to 2001).

Nova Scotia Historical Vital Statistics $ This site covers 111,386 births (1864 to 1877), 94,933 delayed birth records (1836 to 1907), 12,043 marriage bonds (1763 to 1864), 211,617 marriage registrations (1864 to 1932), 53,835 deaths from 1864 to 1877, and 392,787 deaths from 1908 to 1957. Every name is linked to the original digitized record. Searching and viewing is free, and you can order e-copies ($9.95) or paper copies ($19.95). To bad I have no family there.

Michigan This new site stands out for its Library of Michigan collection of nearly 1 million Michigan death certificates, 1897 to 1920—particularly notable because a readily available statewide index for the years 1915 to 1920 didn't exist previously. But these digitized records go far beyond a mere index, giving you the decedent's birth date and place, parents' names and birthplace, cemetery name and location, and more
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South Dakota Department of Health Even though South Dakota didn't begin statewide birth records until 1905, people born before that date were allowed to file for delayed birth certificates. So don't be put off by the apparent four-year span of the database, which covers births from 100 years ago and earlier—more than 180,000 South Dakota births in all.

Utah Death Certificate IndexIf your ancestors died in Utah, you can find them in this searchable database of more than 250,000 death certificates, from 1904 to 1956, linked to images of the originals.

Western States Historical Marriage Records Index This ever-growing database now numbers more than 686,000 marriages, including most pre-1900 nuptials plus many later ones for Arizona, Idaho and Nevada. Also worth a look for marriages in California, western Colorado, Montana, Oregon, Utah, eastern Washington and Wyoming. New Mexico marriages from the 1700s are being added. I have ancestors that married and lived in this area also.

My " Zion " family roots

My interest in genealogy started over 10 years ago. My father's sister started that interest as she would share graphs and names of my dad's family the " Zion " family. She would share family names the Colemans, Cheuvront's and the Hall family. As I searched I found more and more names. The more you look the wider the family gets. My Zion line came from Germany some time before 1770. As of now we do not know his or his wife's name. He was probably born about 1749. My first known Zion ancestor is John W Zion who was born about 1770 in North Fork Holston River Washington County Virginia. He had a sister named Rebecca Zion. John married Lucy McCornick November 3rd 1789 in Washington County Virginia.

Part of my interest in my family history is the history of the area and what happened in the lives of my ancestors. By going to http://www.google.com/ and putting in Washington County Virginia history I found the following information at http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~vawashin/

The first white settlers arrived in what is present day Washington County in the 1760's. Abingdon, Va. was known as Wolf Hills before "Abingdon" was selected as the name of the county seat. Washington County was formed from Fincastle County in 1777, the county seat, Abingdon was formed in 1778. The original Washington County, VA in addition to containing some of the other present day surrounding counties also contained what is today, Sullivan County, TN. Visit this page, Early Settlers of Washington Co, VA, to see some of the names of the early settlers to county (before 1780). Burned by Union forces in 1864. The county is divided into seven magisterial districts: Harrison, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Taylor, Tyler, and Wilson.

I searched the Early settlers link and only a few names were listed. I saw a McCormick but not a Zion so the search continues. I wonder if the McCormick is related to Lucy McCormick.

I hope that you will continue to join me in my search for my roots

Organization File Folders, Notebooks or Computer Program

This is a continuation of my last post on organizing my files and yours if you like.

The first step to starting an organizational system is to decide on the basic form for your filing (the piles I have do not count!) — file folders, notebooks, binders, or computer disks.

Genealogical Filing Systems - the Advantages & Disadvantages

Filing Cabinet & File Folders - File folders, probably are the most popular organizational tool for genealogists, they are inexpensive, very portable, and easily hold papers of different shapes and sizes. But when they are dropped, file folders can become quite a mess - with papers thrown out of order, and even misplaced. File folders can make it easy to consult documents, but you have to be careful about making sure the paper is put back where it came from. Once you've generated a lot of paper, however, the file folder system is the most flexible and expandable.

Binders - If you're someone who really likes to keep things together in one place, then organizing your printed genealogy data into binders may be a good option for you. This method standardizes your genealogical records into a regular size paper format. Documents that you don't wish to three-hole punch, can be added in polypropylene sleeves. Binders are portable and don't require a filing cabinet, however, if you do a lot of genealogical research you may find that binders eventually become too cumbersome on their own.

This is my personal choice. Yes they can be cumbersome but also are a great family book in itself. Mine is a place I gather census, family group sheets, pictures, obits and even awards received.

Computer Disks, CDs, & DVDs - Transcribing or scanning genealogical documents into the computer can save quite a bit of space, and the computerized organizational systems can greatly speed up tedious tasks such as sorting and cross-referencing. The question is, will your descendants 100 or more years from now have a computer that can read them? If you choose to use your computer as your primary organizational system, you should also decide on making and preserving copies or printouts of important documents and backing up your CD files. I have had computers crash and their goes all my hard work. Also my first family tree research was saved on a floppy disc. My computer today does not read this disk. So it is just a small Frisbee.

Once you get started organizing your genealogical clutter, you'll probably find that a combination of storage methods works best. Some people, for example, use binders to organize "proven" family and file folders for miscellaneous research on unproven connections, neighborhood or local research, and correspondence. It is important to keep in mind that organization is and always will be a work in progress.

Organizing Your Genealogy Files

My genealogy records are not totally organized but I am constantly working on it. It is a work in progress that is for sure. When we moved I moved piles of family records, notebooks and family photos. Piles of copies of old records, printouts from genealogy Web sites, and letters from fellow genealogy researchers are sitting in piles on my desk and in boxes and in file folders in my filing cabinet. Not that they are completely disorganized - if you ask me for something specific, I can maybe find it. But it definitely isn't a filing system that I would recommend as efficient!
Does this sound familiar? Are you as surrounded in papers as I am? Believe it or not, the solution is as simple as finding an organizational system that suits your needs and research habits, and then making it work. I know, it's not exactly as simple as it sounds (or why am I not practicing what I preach?), but it is possible and will ultimately help to keep you and me from spinning our wheels and duplicating research.

Which Filing System is Best?Ask a group of genealogists how they organize their files, and you're likely to get as many different answers as genealogists. There are a number of popular genealogy organization systems, including binders, notebooks, files, etc., but there truly is no individual system which is "best" or "correct." We all think and behave differently, so ultimately the most important consideration in setting up your filing system is that it must fit your personal style. The best organization system is always the one that you will use.

Organizing the Paper as your genealogy project progresses you will find that you have numerous paper documents to file for each individual that you research - birth records, census records, newspaper articles, wills, correspondence with fellow researchers, Web site printouts, etc. The trick is to develop a filing system that will enable to easily lay your fingers on any of these documents at any time.
Commonly used genealogical filing systems include:
By Surname - All papers for an individual surname are filed together.
By Couple or Family - All papers related to a husband and wife or family unit are filed together.
By Family Line - All papers related to a specific family line are filed together. Many genealogists begin by starting with four such ancestral lines - one for each of their grandparents.
By Event - All papers related to a specific event type (i.e. birth, marriage, census, etc.) are filed together.
Beginning with any of the four systems mentioned above, you could then further organize your papers into the following categories:
By Location - Papers are first grouped by one of the four genealogy filing systems listed above, and then further broken down by country, state, county, or town to reflect your ancestor's migration. For example, if you chose the Surname Method, you would first group all DAY ancestors together, and then further break the piles down into the England DAYs, the New England DAYs , MINNESOTA Days, and the so on.
By Record Type - Papers are first grouped by one of the four genealogy filing systems listed above, and then further broken down by record type (i.e. birth records, census records, wills, etc.).

tomorrow Genealogical Filing Systems