Thursday, December 18, 2008

Genealogy databases

Well its that time of the year again, the holidays. Tomorrow is my birthday and with a winter storm coming through I don't expect to be doing anything special. But I don't mind, because it usually snows on my birthday anyway.

The genealogy databases that are available keep growing. One I happen to like comes from FamilySearch, which is the Latter-Day Saints, or more commonly the Mormons. They have a site called FamilySearchLabs, which is their indexing site, where you can help bring more records online for FREE to fellow genealogists. I have done some indexing and am proud to say that the records that are continuously updated have been a great help to my research. For example, the Ohio Death Certificate index that they have goes from 1908-1953 and has helped me find dozens of names that I either had but didn't have information on or ones that I didn't expect to find living in the state of Ohio.

The other has to do with my home state, Illinois. They recently put up Illinois, specifically Cook County Marriage license records with IMAGES, which is always a plus. That one isn't complete but there are enough records online already that I have filled some blanks in or confirmed information I obtained elsewhere. I'm hoping that Birth records from Cook County will also come online in the near future.

Hope everyone has a great Christmas and I'll probably post after the first of the year.

Here's hoping you have tons of genealogical discoveries in 2009!!!!!!!!!

JK