• The Canadian Genealogy Centre (http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/genealogy/) is a page from the National Archives and Library of Canada. You can read a PDF file of the free booklet, “Tracing Your Ancestors in Canada,” which describes the major genealogical sources available at the National Archives and other Canadian repositories. You may also want to see the main page, http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/, which combines the Archives and Library of Canada sites.
Mexico
Mexican records are fairly detailed when it comes to church matters (births, baptisms, marriages, burials, and so on). However, some states in Mexico have less information on civil matters.
• Archivo General de la Nation (http://www.agn.gob.mx) is the National Archives of Mexico site. It’s as rich and deep as the NARA site in the United States. Note that the site is in Spanish.
• Archivo Historico de Arzobispo (http://www.arquidiocesismexico.org.mx/) has the archives of the Archbishop of Mexico, a treasure trove of church records. This site is also in Spanish and has a corresponding Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Archivo-Historico-del-Arzobispado-de-Mexico/204431596423.
• The Texas General Land Office has a page at http://www.glo.texas.gov/ for their archives. This state office has records dating back to Spanish times. The page tells you how to write for these records, including the proper addresses and what is available. It also has a searchable catalog of historic maps of the region.
• The Genealogy of Mexico (http://garyfelix.tripod.com/index63.htm) is one genealogist’s compilation of starting places. He covers the conquistadores, coats of arms, a DNA surname project, and more.
• The Hispanic Genealogical Society of New York (http://www.hispanicgenealogy.com) includes Mexico, Puerto Rico, and other North American Hispanic genealogy. You can learn about their regular meetings and publications, as well as find links to resources.
A Success Story: German Ancestry Discovered
Denzil J. Klippel had quite a bit of success in his international genealogy search, but it didn’t happen overnight. Denzil started with what he knew, researched back to the boat, and finally found his family’s village of origin. How he did this is fascinating.
Denzil only knew his parents, his grandmother on his mother’s side, and her brother and sister. “In the beginning, I didn’t take advantage of the resources on the [Internet] like DearMYRTLE and so forth, and ask questions. But I soon learned everyone in the online genealogy community is willing to help answer questions. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel—just ask if anyone has done this or that,” Denzil says. So he did eventually ask DearMYRTLE, who pointed him to research at a local Family History Center (FHC). Denzil visited a local FHC in New York City.
There he found his grandmother’s family, but not his grandmother, on one of the microfilms. Requesting the name and address of the submitter, he contacted him with a query, including his e-mail address. Soon, another researcher contacted him by e-mail, and everything began to fall together. Denzil sent for his father’s death certificate (New York) and found the father’s place and date of birth (California). Then he found his grandfather’s place of birth (upstate New York), as well as his father’s mother’s maiden name (Settle) and place of birth (California). He was able to order some of these records online through various vital records sites maintained by these states.
“After going back to my great-grandfather and finding he came from Germany, I hit a brick wall. Not knowing what to do, I went to one of the search engines—Yahoo!—and put in the name Klippel. It gave me 6,000 places where the name appeared on the [Internet], most of them regarding an illness discovered by a Klippel. I captured all of the Klippel e-mail addresses and sent them a message saying I was researching the Klippel family name and, if they were interested in working with me, perhaps we could find some common ancestors or at least discover where the Klippels originated.”
Denzil says he does not recommend this approach, however. “This shotgun approach never works,” he said. What did work, though, was searching for the surname on Google and looking for the genealogy sites. After e-mailing people with Klippel genealogy sites, as opposed to every Klippel he could find online, Denzil heard from people who had been searching the line. Several were cousins he didn’t know he had, and since that time, he now calls all Klippels he comes in contact with “cousin.” “One of these cousins had the name of the town in Germany where my Klippel line came from (Ober-Hilbersheim). I found this village had a website and sent a letter to the mayor. He responded via e-mail and said he knew of my line and told me there were still Klippels living in the village,” Denzil said. “In the meantime, other Klippels in Europe contacted me, and before I knew it, I was planning a trip to visit some of them and Ober-Hilbersheim. When they heard I was going to visit, they all said I had to stay with them. I bought my airline tickets online via Priceline.com and my train pass online.”
Now Denzil was really into the in-person, offline mode! Through electronic and regular mail, he made appointments at all the archives he planned to visit in Germany. When he arrived, they were ready for him and, in most cases, they’d already done all the lookups. As Denzil gathered the research material, he mailed it home to himself. This was important insurance against losing or misplacing any of the papers during his sojourn. “My trip started in Ober-Hilbersheim, and I stayed with the mayor. He took me to all the archives and helped me get all the Klippel family history back to 1550! My distant cousins in the village welcomed me with open arms. I then went to the Netherlands and stayed with the Klippels there, and they took me to the Island of Tholen, where the first Klippel came from in the 1400s. Then on to Hamburg to visit Helmut Klippel and the archive there,” Denzil said.
“And last, but not least, on to Sweden to stay with Alf Klippel, who had given me a wealth of information about the origins of the Klippel name via e-mail and did most of the translating of the old German documents I had been receiving over the [Internet].” It took some footwork and perseverance, but after seven years, Denzil feels he accomplished a lot in his international search, and the online resources made it possible.
Wrapping Up
• Once you find your immigrant ancestor, you can use archives and ships’ passenger lists to identify the home town.
• Many national archives have webpages describing research techniques for that country.
• At FamilySearch, you can download and print research guides for immigrant origins and for specific countries, as well as word lists of genealogical terms in non-English languages.
• You can find specific sites on genealogy for many nationalities.
• Translating pages are found at most web search sites.
Chapter 16
Ethnic Genealogy Resources
The international sources cited before can also help you with ethnic research within the United States and Canada for a well-documented ancestry. For some groups, however, the search is a little more complex.
Special Challenges
As I described in the Introduction, sometimes you need to search unexpected resources based on other genealogies, history, and, yes, the infamous “family legend.” None of these things alone will solve the challenges of ethnic research, but taken together, they might lead to that one document, vital record, or online resource that solves the puzzle. It worked for Bill Ammons, the success story in the Introduction, and it might work for you, too.
For example, African-American genealogy often presents special challenges. When researching the genealogy of a former slave, it’s necessary to know as much about the slave owner’s family as you do about the slave. Wills, deeds, and tax rolls can hold clues to ancestry, as do legal agreements to rent slaves. Tracking down all these items can be difficult. You need to know the history of the region and the repositories of the records, and you need to consider family legends to be clues, not answers.
As another example, Native American genealogies are also difficult, because in many cases, very little was w
ritten down about individuals in the tribes in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A genealogist must contact the tribe involved and look at many different kinds of records.
Mixed ethnic heritages, such as Melungeon, are problematic to research because these mixed groups suffered from stigma for many years. If you are researching a Melungeon family line, the true genealogy may have been suppressed or even forgotten by your ancestors. These special cases have led to many online resources as genealogists have tried to solve the problems and shared their results.
The sites mentioned in this chapter provide good information on how to begin to search for specific genealogy information, as well as the history and culture of different groups. The challenges you will face can be discussed in the forums and mailing lists; you will often find tips on which records to seek and how to get them. Don’t forget, however, that new pages are being added to the Web all the time. Search for “genealogy” plus the name of whatever ethnic group you’re seeking on your favorite search engine about once a month to see if new information has become available.
And stay on the mailing lists and newsgroups for the ethnic groups; when you hit a brick wall, perhaps someone on the list can help. And when you break one down, you can share that!
African-American Genealogy
African-American genealogy presents some special challenges, but online genealogists are working hard to conquer them. Search for “African-American genealogy” in any search engine, and you’ll find many good resources. Also try these sites as starting places. To begin, the African-American Research Area (www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/) on the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) site provides a list of articles and other resources not to be missed.
Note
You will find many African-American resources in the “Caribbean Genealogy” section later in the chapter, and you’ll find plenty of Caribbean information among the African-American genealogy pages listed in this section.
AfriGeneas
AfriGeneas (see Figure 16-1), www.afrigeneas.com, is the major portal for African-American research. Transcribed records, discussion groups, monthly articles, and more will help you get started. The site has a searchable database of surnames (in addition to slave data) from descendants of slaveholding families, as well as from other sources, both public and private. Tips and topics to help people in their search for family history are distributed through mailing lists, chats, newsletters, and the Internet. Volunteers do all of this; they extract, compile, and publish all related public records with any genealogical value. The site also maintains an impressive set of links to other Internet resources to help African Americans in their research.
FIGURE 16-1. AfriGeneas has databases, forums, chats, and more.
The sections of this site are an important body of work. They include:
• E-mail AfriGeneas has a page for you to create an e-mail account at so that your address is
• Search The search page lets you search the mailing list, surnames, death records, and the entire site for your surnames or places of interest.
• Records This drop-down menu can help you search the Census Records, Death Records Database, Library Archives, Marriage Records Database, Photos, Slave Data Collection, Surnames Database, State Websites, and World Websites of the AfriGeneas collection.
Be sure to read the page, “African American Genealogy: An Online Interactive Guide for Beginners” by Dee Parmer Woodtor, author of Finding a Place Called Home: An African-American Guide to Genealogy and Historical Identity (Random House Reference, 1999). This step-by-step guide to genealogy in general, and African-ancestored genealogy in particular, is full of good advice.
• Resources Under this heading on the navigation bar, you can find a site map, with every page on the site and a What’s New link. It also can take you to the Beginner’s Guide, a slideshow-like presentation that steps you through online genealogy. It’s a no-nonsense approach, showing what can and can’t be done online. It also includes some success stories. The Resources tab also has links to state resources, a clickable map with links to each state in the United States with history, links to state resources, and queries. The World Resources link does the same for other countries, such as the Bahamas. Volunteers are actively being sought for other countries. From the Resources tab, you also get to some important databases:
• Forums This drop-down menu lists the major topic divisions from African-Native connections to surnames and family research, and the mailing lists. You can also choose to look at the most recent posts in all topics to quickly catch up on what’s going on in the different forums.
• Chat The AfriGeneas Chat Center is open 24 hours and seven days a week for any AfriGeneas member who cares to use it, except during times set aside for regularly scheduled or special chats, and the menu will take you to a chart of when those are. Use is specifically restricted to discussion of African-American or African-ancestored genealogical or historical topics. If anyone abuses the privilege, off-hours access to the chat spaces will be curtailed by AfriGeneas.com. To reserve a room, host a chat, or make comments about or suggestions for future chats, you can contact the chat manager at [email protected].
• Resources This menu has links to books, guides, directories of sites, links to genealogical and historical societies, humor, history, and the help desk, to name just a few. You could spend a week just exploring the items under this drop-down menu!
• Stores Links you to both the onsite bookstore and Amazon.com.
Among the most valuable resources on the site are:
• Slave Data This area will help you find the last owned slave in your family. Records kept by the slave owner are frequently the only clue to African-American ancestors, particularly during the period 1619–1869. The site is also designed to help descendants of slaveholders and other researchers. Users share information they find containing any references to slaves, including wills, deeds, and other documents. This site also houses a search engine and a form for submitting any data you might have. To use the database, click the first letter of the surname you’re interested in. This takes you to a list of text files with surnames beginning with that letter. Now click a particular filename. The text file may be transcribed from a deed book, a will, or some other document. The name and e-mail address of the submitter will be included, so you can write to that person for more information, if necessary.
• Census Records These are transcribed census records. As a file is submitted, it’s listed at the top of the What’s New list on this page. Not all states have volunteers transcribing right now, so you can only click those states that show up as a live link.
• News Briefs & What’s New These headings on the home page keep you updated on the latest news and additions.
Note
AfriGeneas also has a Facebook page, www.facebook.com/afrigeneas, where queries, news, and reviews are posted regularly. Be sure to become a fan!
Africana Heritage
A project at the University of South Florida (USF), this site is at www.africanaheritage.com. The USF Africana Heritage Project is an all-volunteer research project and website sponsored by the Africana Studies department at the University of South Florida. The volunteers concentrate on recovering records that document the names and lives of slaves, freed persons, and their descendants and then share those records on the site. You are invited to share documents with the site, and material is there from readers, scholars, archives, universities, and historical societies. For more information, contact Toni Carrier, Founding Director, USF Africana Heritage Project, 4202 E. Fowler Avenue, FAO 270, Tampa, FL 33620. Or you can e-mail [email protected].
More Good Resources
Other good African-American sites are in this list
:
• The Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society (AAHGS) is a group for the preservation of the history, genealogy, and culture of those with African heritage. The society’s main emphasis is in recording research (as in transcribing sources and so on) and sharing completed genealogies. You’ll find AAHGS at http://www.aahgs.org. They have an annual conference, local chapters, a journal, and newsletter.
• Slaves and the Courts (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/sthtml) is an online collection of pamphlets and books at the Library of Congress about the experiences of African and African-American slaves in the United States and American colonies. It includes trial arguments, examinations of cases and decisions, and other materials concerning slavery and the slave trade. You can locate information by using the collection’s subject index, author index, or title index, or you can conduct your own search by keyword. You can look at the items as transcriptions or as images of the original pages. Knowing this sort of history can often give you a clue as to where to look for other records.
Cases from America and Great Britain are included with arguments by many well-known abolitionists, presidents, politicians, slave owners, fugitive and free-territory slaves, lawyers and judges, and justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. Significant names include John Q. Adams, Roger B. Taney, John C. Calhoun, Salmon P. Chase, Dred Scott, William H. Seward, Theodore Parker, Jonathan Walker, Daniel Drayton, Castner Hanway, Francis Scott Key, William L. Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Denmark Vesey, and John Brown.
• African-American Griots (http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~aagriots) discusses the storytellers, or griots. Their roles are hereditary, their surnames identify them as griots, and they sing and tell the histories of their tribes. This site provides a list of links to databases for individuals and records pertaining to groups of people, background on the history of the griots, and, of course, e-mail lists.
Genealogy Online Page 22