Thursday, December 20, 2007

ICON: International Coalition on Newspapers

Here is a site with links to digital online newspapers from around the world, many of which are free http://icon.crl.edu/digitization.htm . The pay sites are clearly marked with a dollar symbol in a circle.

I have used Colorado Historical Newspapers & Utah Digital Newspapers for a few years and found some real gems. One hint is 1st search by name & time period, but if that doesn’t work I have had good luck is searching by date only. Say you have death date, search in that paper just after the event then look in the next 3 papers. Smaller papers will have sections for local news for different towns & if it is a real small paper death & marriage will be front page news.

Saturday, December 08, 2007

Land Research

Rede had done several videos on Land Research using very useful websites. I covered 2 of the sites April of 2006 http://quartzsitegen.blogspot.com/2006/04/using-blm-land-patent-search.html

Searching Land Patents Part 1
http://blip.tv/file/506725
Using the BLM website http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/ to find homestead land patents.

Searching Land Patents Part 2
http://blip.tv/file/506735
Using TSR-data website http://www.esg.montana.edu/gl/trs-data.html to find land patents on a map.

Searching Land Patents Part 3
http://blip.tv/file/506740
Plotting land descriptions on a map.

See http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/Visitors/PLSS.asp for more info on plotting land descriptions.

Plotting Land On Quad Maps
http://blip.tv/file/527860
Plotting land on free quadrant maps from http://libremap.org/

I was VERY impressed with the quality of the maps on Libre Map Project http://libremap.org/ , but the TIF files were a bit large (I averaged about 10 megs). I would recommend converting them into PDF so you can just print out what you need.

Basically to use the Libre Map Project, Click “Data” > Click the state you want > Then use the “Search” or Click “View the entire list of USGS Oklahoma Digital Raster Graphic Maps” > Then look in the “Cell Name” or “Longitude & Latitude” for the map you want.

Finding Towns In Your Genealogy

The U.S. Board on Geographic Names http://geonames.usgs.gov is wonderful site to find towns in your genealogy & also figure which maps you may need. The nice thing it will link you over to Google Map, TerraServer, MapQuest if you need county bounders, and others.

To use it for US places, click domestic > click Search GNIS > then enter your location > click on your location > then you can view the location on many online mapping services.

Rede Video:
http://blip.tv/file/485490