I did request my Great Grandfathers military records. Didn't really help me a bunch. I'll put them out on photobucket and you can look through them if you'd like. family tree documents
I found getting the person's Social Security Application provided the information I was looking. But I supposed it all depends on how far back you're looking.
Alegna, thank you for those documents! That does help give me a better idea of what we might get.
The war this guy was a verteran in was in 1845, so my resources are limited. We do have two obituaries which are great, but can't find anything about birth, immigration, or even marriage records (around 1850 in California, so records are not easily found. There were many fires that happened CA cities at that time). We know his country of origin but no other information.
Does anyone know of any websites that help you identify fashion by decade/time period? I've randomly come across some things on costuming websites, but it's usually for a narrow time period. I'm thinking someone must have put together a reference like this for genealogy researchers, but I've never found one.
We have several old photographs (daguerreotypes, tintypes and silver nitrate "cabinet" photos) and can't always tell the time period. I have one of a woman with a capelet that has a huge satin bow tied at the neck, and figuring out the decade would help me know if it's the mother or the daughter.
Scooter Do you have a local college or university that might have a fashion/history department?
I've never heard of a reference like that, but it does sound like a fabulous idea!
Only 7 more days till the 1940 census is released!
I recently switched my focus to different branches of my tree and was able to get into a lot of information/pictures. I love when you find other people's trees. One guy even offered his assistance.
It's so nice to feel like you're accomplishing something instead of just hitting a brick wall and dead ends
My mom found an entire tote of papers/documents in her basement that belonged to my great Aunt. There is a ton of data about current living people. Cousins and such that I don't know.
I'm going to be a busy beaver entering all this info in!
I admit I started checking the new census on a few different websites before I went to bed last night--benefit of being on the West Coast. I was so excited. I can admit that in here without being laughed at, right? I'm pretty impressed with how fast Ancestry has been uploading the images, I've been using their site more than others.
Alegna, that is awesome! It's going to to take a long time to go through I'm sure, but that's really exciting! Thanks for the idea about universities, for some reason I hadn't thought of that. If I had any spare time to devote to it, I'd love to start a website to help people identify fashions from different eras. Researching it would be fun, too.
Is it just me, or is anyone else finding the 1940 census completely useless? Sigh. I mean, if you're looking for people in someplace like Chicago or Los Angeles, then good luck. Who knows what district you might need, and there's like a thousand to choose from. Or if you don't know the exact location someone lived in, say just the county or state, but not the town, you can't get anywhere. Until they get this thing categorized by name, I think it's pretty much impossible to navigate.
Is it just me, or is anyone else finding the 1940 census completely useless? Sigh. I mean, if you're looking for people in someplace like Chicago or Los Angeles, then good luck. Who knows what district you might need, and there's like a thousand to choose from. Or if you don't know the exact location someone lived in, say just the county or state, but not the town, you can't get anywhere. Until they get this thing categorized by name, I think it's pretty much impossible to navigate.
Is anyone else having better luck than me?
The LDS church is working on indexing it so that it's searchable. I have no idea how long that will take, but I've logged a few hours doing it.
It's difficult even if you know exactly the address, from what I've found, because you'll still have to search through 30-60 pages of names, hoping the census taker actually wrote in the street names. And the 1940 census has less information on it than some of the others, from what I've seen--eg. how long they're married, where parents were born, year arrived, etc.
I have gotten lucky a few times, by using the enumeration numbers from the 1930 census and the map of the 1940 census on Ancestry, but it still takes a long time to read through all those names and streets. Overall, I've just looked for a few key people. Once you find someone you can't save the record to their profile until it's indexed, so you just have to attach the whole image to the person's profile instead.
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Originally Posted by Rosebud
