State by State Research : Colorado

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Continuing with my review of state history and genealogy research, let's explore Colorado.


Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection  www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org

Wow, over 200 newspapers are searchable at this site.  That is impressive.  Let's see what I can find.

The years range from 1859 to 1966.  Not too shabby.  You can search, browse by title, name or place. There is also a topics page, listings are  alphabetically arranged, which helps a lot when you looking for that certain event that could have dozens of articles written and posted.  The articles are arranged by newspapers and date of publication.  Now that makes things easier.

I looked up "Knife Throwing", and 20 articles suddenly appeared.  Cool.  Of course these are all from Colorado newspapers, but that is the neatest thing.  You can get much closer to a specific geographic area.

There are "Help" and "Forums" to help you with search suggestions.  But let's be honest, isn't it fun to just fumble around and do some hunting without help?  OK, ask for help if you want to.


Colorado State Archives  www.colorado.gov/archives

Looking for birth and death registers?  How about divorce indexes?  Probate, yep.  Other documents of naturalization, teacher licenses, tax lists, Supreme Court case files, etc. This site is for you if you have Colorado research  ambition...

Want Probate information? Go to Menu tab, scroll down to Public Records (or Genealogy....all roads lead to Rome you know), then scroll to Legal Records....scroll down to Probate. There is a list of Counties and the years that are held at the state archives. Only those cases prior to 1985 are listed.  But, not all of these records are at the archives.  You can order document copies.

Did I forget to mention Military records?  How about Penitentiary records? School records?

Folks, there is just so much on this website that I can't possibly write about all of it.  You will just have to visit it yourself.  But I promise you, you won't regret it...ever.  It would be nice if every state have such a  comprehensive collection such as  this.

Job well done, Colorado!

And let me remind you, Family Tree Magazine published an fantastic article about the many state websites available...I still have mine from December of 2011.  Be sure to visit Family Tree Magazine.com.  A great publication!

State by State Research : Alaska

Last week I mentioned the Family Tree Magazine  listing of state archive websites for genealogy and historical research.  The state of Alaska is one of their entries, and I'd like to review it for you.

The Alaska Division of Libraries, Archives and Museums, found at www.lam.alaska.gov , is just what one needs when researching historical Alaska.  Databases include newspapers, naturalization and probate records, in addition to a gold rush pioneer index.

How many glaciers are in Alaska?  I don't know for sure, but there is a section in the Alaska State Library tab that shows the location of each glacier, it's common name and it's elevation .  The Library also mentions the newspapers that are featured in full-text, most of which are pre 1923.

Alaska free clip art is also a feature of this library.  Much too many topics to mention here.

In the Genealogy section of this site is Finding Your Gold Rush Relatives.   Links to repositories, societies, resources, books, cemeteries, etc. are plentiful.  Your could sit all day and still never cover every one of these.

Alaska and Yukon Vital Records are in PDF form, and volumes cover 1898 through 1936.

The digital archives include collections of the State Library and the various campuses of the University of Alaska, in addition to several museums.

Researchers can be employed if you don't have the time to do it yourself.  Just ask.

Although I don't have any family members who lived in Alaska, this is a site that I'd like to revisit simply because the history of Alaska is just so different from  the other 49 states.  I hope that you, too, will take some time to see what this site has to offer.

Obituaries

In the latest issue of Family Tree Magazine, the featured "workbook" article focused on Obituaries, written by Shannon Combs-Bennett. She did such a good job on this article that I decided to highlight some of her tips and tricks here in my blog.

Be aware that there are several types of remembrances that could be found in print.  Shannon mentions:
 
Obituary : an editorial  article written about a deceased person

Death Notice : a short announcement on the death of a person

Card of Thanks : a family announcement to thank those who offered support during grief

Shannon goes on to give a history of obituaries.  She notes that they date as far back as the 1600s. Alternative resources of information about a death include those mentioned above, and in addition, death certificates, cemetery records, funeral home records, church newsletters and club or society articles about the deceased.

Resources used to find obituaries are revealed as online indexes (which can be found through search engines such as Google), digitized and microfilmed newspapers, cemetery websites, etc.

A list of items that may be found in obituaries :

Names of the deceased
Age
birth and death dates and locations
names of spouses and children, other family members
funeral, church and cemetery arrangements

A worksheet to use when extracting information from any of the above resources is published with the article.  This can be very useful to help organize your information.

There is much more included in this article. In my opinion, Shannon has written a very good and helpful article full of ideas to help anyone in their quest to uncover information about a deceased family member.

Check out Family Tree Magazine familytreemagazine.com  A subscription to this magazine, both in print and online issues, will prove to be a very good value.