Claiming Kin

Follow Friday: Finding Eliza, Reclaiming Kin, and Historic American Newspapers

Posted by Liv | Filed under Follow Friday

Today is Follow Friday at geneabloggers.com and I want to call special attention to a free online resource I’ve been using a lot lately, as well as a couple of excellent genealogy bloggers whose rich content and research methodology has been the inspiration behind my family research this month and beyond; enjoy!

•  If you’re a fan of genealogy blogs filled with rich documented history and beautiful sepia photos,  then Kristin Williams‘ blogs – Finding Eliza and My Cleages and Reeds (which is being merged to her Finding Eliza blog starting November 1st) — are blogs you should add to your list of favorites! My visits to Kristin’s blogs are always lengthy because I cannot help getting caught up by all she has published there. When I say she needs to write a book about her family, I’m not kidding and to help you better understand why so many of her fellow bloggers feel as I do, check out her post titled, “The Illustrated News – Walk to Freedom.”

• Whenever you visit Robyn Smith‘s blog – Reclaiming Kin – have paper and pencil ready because you just might need it!  There are a lot of great genealogy bloggers out there who are wonderful about sharing information and who will go the extra mile to recommend resources that will aid anyone in their family research. But at Robyn’s space in cyberspace, I love how she not only recommends resources, but gives detail information and step-by-step instructions on how she uses those resources in her research. If you haven’t used maps yet in your family research (I had not until I read her post), then check out her post, “Maps Lead the Way to Better Understanding,” to learn how!  I had the pleasure of connecting with Robyn a few months ago and we are indeed kindred spirits for genealogy; so visit her blog today!

• Search Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers for ancestors whenever you are online! After the Civil War, the rise of black newspapers became an important resource in capturing black life in this country. So if you’re not searching these newspapers for your African-American ancestors, you maybe missing out on a valuable resource that just may hold the answers you’re looking for to questions you have about members of your family tree. But what I’m also discovering is that some of the white newspapers in the cities and counties where my family members lived published information about my ancestors too!

Tags: chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/, Finding Eliza, geneabloggers.com, genealogy, genealogy bloggers, Historic Newspapers, Kristin Williams, Reclaiming Kin, reclaimingkin.com, Robyn Smith

Permalink | Comments (4) | November 18, 2011