GENEALOGY CLUB PRESENTATIONS
OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
ALL ARE WELCOME
While the Library is Closed
- Staff genealogist, Kathleen Maclachlan, will be checking email genealogy@skidompha.org on Mondays and Thursdays and is happy to respond to your genealogy questions via email.
- Get timely Genealogy updates, photos, and humor by liking and following our genealogy facebook page: Skidompha Library Genealogy.
- Check out our Online Resource page for links to helpful sites you can use from home!
- Subscribe to Skidompha’s weekly newsletter which usually includes a genealogy section with suggestions for books, website, blogs, etc.
- Enjoy these Two Lists of Online Resources:
Free Online Research Sites
You set up an account, but it is free. Has some, but not all, of the same records as Ancestry, and also has some unique records. Highly recommended for researching documents. Trees placed on this site are not private and may contain unsourced information. Search > Records
The Ancestor Hunt – this site contains newspaper links to many free digital newspaper sites in every US State and Canadian Province, plus a small amount of information on Australian, Caribbean, and Europe.
Ancestry Library Edition and My Heritage via Digital Maine – NOW AVAILABLE FROM HOME!
The Digital Maine Library provides every resident of Maine with access to online resources that include a collection of full text articles and abstracts from magazines, newspapers, journals and reference. It also provides students, business people, public library patrons, and higher education students and educators the ability to use online learning tools. This is also your portal for accessing NOW FROM YOUR OWN HOME Ancestry Library edition and My Heritage, genealogical databases, free for those in Maine/ Search > Genealogy Choose Ancestry Library or My Heritage and enjoy your family history research! Other wonderful links of note from this site: Maine Memory Network and Digital Maine Repository.
Online Learning – These sites have some free, some paid webinars.
From the makers of Legacy genealogy software, offering 29 sessions of 22 different live webinars each on a specific date and time, between July 1 and September 15 (free, sign up required) and many pre-recorded webinars to watch anytime (in various languages even!) For pre-recorded webinars, go to the link shown above, then click on Webinar Library on the toolbar
To give you a sense of what’s available, here’s my personal list of a few pf these free live webinars that I hope to watch: Dissection a Civil War Pension Packet – Union and Confederate; Using DNA to Solve Adoption and Unknown Parentage Mysteries; 50 More Websites Every Genealogist Should Know; Researching a Loyalist Soldier; Researching German-Austrian Families; Using Chromosome Browsers, Segment Data and Triangulation. For the free prerecorded webinars, two caught my eye: Jewish Ethnicity and DNA: History, Migration, and Genetics; What are the Odds? An Online Tool that can Help Solve DNA Puzzles.
American Ancestors Online Classes
This site is part of the New England Historic Genealogical Society; some of their next free (sign up required) webinars are:
July 7 Women in 19th Century American Bookbinderies
July 9 What’s New at AmericanAncestors.org
July 10 The Scottish Architects Who Changed the World
July 23 Searching the Register on AmericanAncestors.org
August 11 Gretchen Sorin with “Driving While Black”
August 14 Speed, Style & the English Country House
August 25 Jews in the Catskills During and After the Holocaust
September 11 All Roads Lead to London
[Note that americanancestors.org is a subscription-based site, so these 3 webinars are free, but researching on the site is not.]
Six week free introductory course from the University of Strathclyde’s continuing education program available now!
This site has nearly 100,000 articles to guide you to websites, research strategies, records & resources! You set up a free account at www.familysearch.org and then can use the above Wiki site directly with this link or from the main page: Search > Research Wiki. Keyword search by location, record type, etc.
This is an extensive list which guides you to other sites with records & resources. Over 20 years, genealogist Cyndi Ingle has created a “card catalog” to the vast amount of genealogical resources available online. It is categorized and cross-referenced for easier use. Cyndi was to be the speaker at the Maine Genealogical Society’s Spring Conference, but like most gatherings, that has had to be cancelled.
A Genealogist’s Guide to Tracing People from Our Past
This new suggestion comes from a family who found our Skidompha “other online resources” page and got busy researching their own family history online and via phone interviews. They’ve recommended this site as a good addition to our resources list, saying “it’s loaded with information from beginners tips, a wide variety of documentation tips, and preservation tips.”
New York City History: Ellis Island
We are grateful for this new addition to our list which came as a suggestion from someone who has used this pandemic time to begin their family history journey. The page includes some background history on Ellis Island and then compiles a list wonderful links regarding Ellis Island and other topics related to immigration history. This page was created by a lawyer. Including this link to his New York City History: Ellis Island page and its links does not constitute a recommendation of any sort by Skidompha Library or staff, past, present or future, about this law firm or its partners and employees. Also, be aware that not all immigrants came through Ellis Island; many came earlier than it opened and may have come through the earlier immigration and processing center, Castle Garden in New York, which operated 1 August 1855 – 31 December 1891.
The library remains closed at this time
The following message will hopefully, in future, be applicable again.
The genealogy section is available to researchers during all library hours; please remember to sign in and sign out at the section kiosk. Please place all books, etc on red cart when finished.
Our staff genealogy specialist is here Thursdays from 9 – 5 to assist visitors in researching local history and local family history as well as to help folks use the free ancestrylibrary.com (world version) subscription, suggest strategies for genealogy research in the US and beyond, and increase awareness of the many fine institutions in Maine and beyond who have collections which augment those at the library. Thursdays are “drop-in” days and no guaranteed private instruction is offered on these days when multiple researchers are likely to be using the genealogy area.