Subject Guide: Genealogy & History

Subject Guide: Genealogy & History

General Genealogy Sites:

• FamilySearch  www.familysearch.org  from  the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
• Family Genealogy and History Internet Education Directory  www.academic-genealogy.com
• RootsWeb  www.rootsweb.ancestry.com
• USGenWeb  http://usgenweb.org
• Cyndi’s List  www.cyndislist.com  an extensive collection of genealogy related websites
• Liveroots  www.liveroots.com
• One Great Family  www.onegreatfamily.com  claims to be the world’s largest online family tree

Vital Records:

• Social Security Death Index  http://ssdi.rootsweb.ancestry.com
• Vitalrec.com  www.vitalrec.com  US birth certificates, death records, and marriage licenses
• World Vital Records.com  www.worldvitalrecords.com  Subscription based; includes many databases, birth, marriage, death, census, and military records, as well as family trees, newspapers, and newsletters.
• Genealogy Bank www.genealogybank.com A newsbank pulling from over 3700 historical newspapers to provide information on American families from 1690 to today.  Focus is on obituaries (back to 1977) and death records.

Other Genealogy Sites:

• Family Tree Connection  www.familytreeconnection.com  both free and subscription based; provides access to secondary resources like yearbooks, city directories, Masonic rosters, and church records.  Browsable by US regions or record type.
• Footnote.com  www.footnote.com A social networking site brings together over 40 million original historical documents and continues to grow.  Partnered with the National Archives, it added and interactive World War II collection, which includes and interactive version of the USS Arizona Memorial, World War II Hero Pages, and World War II photos.  Other material includes the Matthew Brady collection of Civil War photos and UFO documents from 1947-69.
• Archives.gov (NARA)  www.archives.gov/genealogy  The National Archives
• The Origins Network  www.originsnetwork.com  the place to go for British, Irish, and Scottish origins information.  Subscription required; prices are in British pounds. 

Genealogy Databases:

• HeritageQuest  - Beginning with more than 25,000 family and local histories, HeritageQuest Online is growing to include the complete U.S. Federal Census from 1790-1930, the Periodical Source Index (PERSI), the Revolutionary War Pension Applications & Bounty Land Warrant Applications, and the Freedman's Bank Records. Available through TexShare (Call 214-509-4905 for login information.)
• Digital Sanborn Maps - (1867-1970) – provides  digital access to more than 660,000 large-scale maps of over 12,000 American towns and cities. Founded in 1867 by D. A. Sanborn, the Sanborn Map Company was the primary American publisher of fire insurance maps for nearly 100 years.Sanborn maps are valuable research tools for geographers, social historians, urban specialists, genealogists, planners, local historians, architects, environmentalists, and anyone who wants to learn about the history, growth, and development of American cities, towns, and neighborhoods. Users of Digital Sanborn Maps have the ability to manipulate the maps, magnify and zoom in on specific sections, and easily print them out.

  Each large-scale plan contains detailed property and land-use records that depict the grid of everyday life across a century of change. The maps provide a wealth of information, such as building outline, size and shape, construction materials, height, building use, windows and doors, street and sidewalk widths, boundaries, and more. The plans often include information and shading for steel beams or reinforced walls, plus symbols for stables, garages, warehouses, etc. Also depicted are pipelines, railroads, wells, water mains, dumps, and heavy machinery likely to affect the property's vulnerability to earthquake, fire, and flood. Maps also give street names, street and sidewalk widths, and house and block numbers. Available through TexShare (Call 214-509-4905 for login information.)

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History:

• Bibliography of Native North Americans - covers all aspects of native North American culture, history, and life. This resource covers a wide range of topics including archaeology, multicultural relations, gaming, governance, legend, and literacy. BNNA contains more than 110,000 citations for books, essays, journal articles, and government documents of the United States and Canada. Dates of coverage for included content range from the sixteenth century to the present. Available through TexShare (Call 214-509-4905 for login information.)
• Handbook of Texas The Handbook of Texas, provided by the Texas State Historical Association is a multidisciplinary encyclopedia of Texas history, geography, and culture. It comprises more than 23,000 articles on people, places, events, historical themes, institutions, and a host of other topic categories. The scope is broad and inclusive, designed to provide readers with concise, authoritative, and accessible articles that provide factual, nonpartisan accounts on virtually every aspect of Texas history and culture. Available through TexShare (Call 214-509-4905 for login information.)
• Texas Reference Center Texas Reference Center contains 30 full text periodicals, 100 full text reference books, several Texas newspapers, and much more. Available through TexShare (Call 214-509-4905 for login information.)
• World History Collection World History Collection™ offers a global look at history with content from Africa, Asia, North and South America, Europe and the Middle East. World History Collection contains cover-to-cover full text for 150 titles, including many peer-reviewed journals. Full text dates as far back as 1964. These hand-selected information sources cover a wide range of historical topics including anthropology, art, culture, economics, government, heritage, military, politics, regional issues, and more. Available through TexShare (Call 214-509-4905 for login information.)
• Salem Press History - Great Lives from History: Notorious covers more than 600 biographies of personages from the merely controversial to the extremely negative, ranging from ancient times to the present, with emphasis on their roles in historical events and their impact on law enforcement or popular culture.
  Great Events from History: 19th Century provides coverage of hundreds of major events worldwide between 1801 and 1900. The focus includes not only core Western curricula but also coverage of Middle Eastern, Asian, African, and Latin American events.
  Great Events from History: 20th Century, 1971-2000 covers world-changing elements such as space probes, personal computers, the Internet, enormous advances in biotechnology, including the mapping of the genome and the first cloned animal, Vietnam, and the breakup of the Soviet Union.
   

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