Madison
County Genealogical Society
Minutes of the Meeting - January 12, 2017
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.
GIFT
MEMBERSHIPS AVAILABLE
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 petie8135@att.net,
about a gift membership.
January
Meeting
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: tpearson@slpl.org
and put ALE in the Subject Line.
This presentation was well received and provoked many questions.