Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Where the heck did they go? Part 2 - United States

So your ancestors have upped and moved away from their homes, their family and everything they knew to try and start a better life. While possibly a great move for them, sometimes for those of us left scrounging to find them, it can be a pain in the butt! Unless you have family stories they tell you where to look, most times you just pray you get lucky and find them in a census return. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. Since they were normally only done every ten years (some states also did their own midway between the American census), sometimes you will just have ancestors that you can't find cause they moved around or died somewhere in amongst that ten year gap. Oh how I wish mine hadda stayed here, where I KNOW where to look. If you prefer to have all the census returns at the tip of your fingers in one place and are willing to fork over the cash, then ancestry is probably the way to go. If you are cheap like me (my hubby says I'm so cheap I squeak), then you probably want to find as many census returns as you can for FREE (ahhhh my favorite F word). You can find the 1850, 1870 and 1900 indexes and images on the familysearch pilot site listed below. Completely FREE! There are other ones there as well, but not all have the images available so you can be sure what was transcribed is actually the information that was recorded. The Washington site below has their 1910 images available on their site. You can also sometimes find information on some county/state rootsweb sites. Check them out.

Here are some of the American sites I have stumbled across. Again, some are indexes only so just be cautious. Just cause you find a name that matches someone you are searching, doesn't mean that IS who you are looking for. Investigate further to prove.

Illinois (Cook County) - www.cookcountygenealogy.com/Default.aspx

Maine Marriages - http://portal.maine.gov/marriage/archdev.marriage_archive.search_form

Maine Deaths - http://portal.maine.gov/death/archdev.death_archive.search_form

Massachusetts - http://www.sec.state.ma.us/vitalrecordssearch/

Massachusetts (Early Records) - http://www.ma-vitalrecords.org/Towns.shtml

Minnesota Births - http://people.mnhs.org/bci/

Minnesota Deaths - http://people.mnhs.org/dci/Search.cfm

Minnesota Marriages - http://www.mncounty.com/Modules/Certificates/Marriage/Default.aspx

New York - http://www.italiangen.org/VRECLIST.stm

Ohio (Cleveland Necrology File) - http://dxsrv4.cpl.org/WebZ/Authorize?sessionid=0&next=/html/obit_start.html&dbchoice=1:dbname=necr&bad=html/authofail.html&style=noframe

Oregon - http://genealogy.state.or.us/

Washington - http://www.digitalarchives.wa.gov/

Wisconsin - http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/vitalrecords/

And of course don't forget my favorite - http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html#start This site has tons of American records! Check it out!!

Happy hunting!

20 comments:

Nanci said...

Colorado Historical Records Index -

http://accipiter.state.co.us/archive/publicrecordsearch.do

Nanci said...

Washington State Library has a free obituary look up service. Click here for information

http://www.sos.wa.gov/library/Obituaries.aspx

Nanci said...

Missouri Births and Deaths pre 1910


http://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/resources/birthdeath/

Nanci said...

New Hampshire, Keene - http://keenepubliclibrary.org/subject-guide/genealogy

Nanci said...

Arizona births and deaths - http://genealogy.az.gov/

Anonymous said...

Montana Death Index - http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mtmsgs/death_records.htm

Anonymous said...

Colorado - Pike Peaks Library - Colorado Springs - news articles

http://more.ppld.org:8080/specialcollections/Index/article_search.asp

Anonymous said...

Utah - State Cemetery Burials website

http://www.slcgov.com/cemetery/cemetery-burials-database

Anonymous said...

California - Ivy Lawn Memorial Park interment records in Ventura County http://www.ivylawn.org/

Anonymous said...

California Digital Newspaper Collection - http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc

Anonymous said...

Newspapers - http://news.google.com/newspapers

Anonymous said...

North Dakota Public Death Index - https://apps.nd.gov/doh/certificates/deathCertSearch.htm

Anonymous said...

ILLINOIS - death certificates 1916-1950
http://www.ilsos.gov/isavital/idphdeathsrch.jsp

Anonymous said...

New York Death Index 1957-1963

http://www.newyorkdeathindex.com/

Anonymous said...

New York - Westchester County - online Indexes

http://archives.westchestergov.com/browse-all-online-indexes-main

Anonymous said...

Massachusetts - Melrose Cemetery, Brockton - http://www.brockton.ma.us/Government/Departments/Cemeteries/cemetery-search

Nanci said...

Maine - Aroostook county newspapers http://turner.advantage-preservation.com/

Anonymous said...

New York - Forest Lawn Cemetery, Buffalo - many records have burial permits linked http://www.forest-lawn.com/genealogy/locate-a-loved-one

Anonymous said...


Michigan - Digital Michigan Newspapers

https://digmichnews.cmich.edu

Anonymous said...

American Newspapers (Library of Congress) -

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/search/pages/results/?state=Nevada&lccn=&dateFilterType=yearRange&date1=1789&date2=1963&language=&ortext=&andtext=Vivan+Misson&phrasetext=&proxtext=&proxdistance=5&rows=20&searchType=advanced#tab=tab_search