Zoom Presentation and General Meeting Thursday, August 11, 2022 11am PDT

Please join us for our General Meeting and Zoom presentation on Thursday, August 11, 2022 11am PDT.

This presentation demonstrates how to pursue Genealogy and Family Research using Library of Congress materials from your home computer. The presentation will also highlight some materials relevant to Californians. A list of links will be provided. This meeting cannot be recorded. There will be no Saturday, August 6 meeting. 

PRESENTER: A J Aiséirithe (uh SHYree) is a reference librarian at the Library of Congress. She holds a Ph.D. in American History. She joined the History & Genealogy Section of the Library in 2018. 

Lunch & Learn Saturday, August 13, 2022 1pm to 3:30pm PDT “All About Find A Grave” & "Missing: Reward! Locating Widows, Spinsters, and Bachelors”

 PLEASE NOTE INFORMATION BELOW: 

Please register at least one-hour ahead for the FREE SCGS Lunch and Learn Education program - on August 13, 2022 at 1:00 PM PDT  

Join this webinar from your computer, tablet or smartphone. Please register at: 

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8787288552682558990 

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Hispanic Genealogy in Colorado.

 To watch the YouTube video, hit here

Announcing GSHA Virtual Conference and annual meeting September 16 and 17, 2022

 Add these dates to your calendar

SEPTEMBER 16 AND 17 - GSHA VIRTUAL CONFERENCE

Registration and more info coming soon. Here is a list of our speakers:

Jorge Rodriquez

Debbie Gurtler

Carlos Yturralde

Jose Esquibel

Miguel Torres

Rick Hendricks

Gloria Mora

My Heritage - Daniel Horowitz

Alex King

Online Resources for Hispanic Research

 To watch the YouTube video, hit here

Ada Nelson's presentation describes the methodology she has followed in her Hispanic research; although, most of these techniques apply equally well to other geographical areas. See this link for handout and more info:https://fh.lib.byu.edu/2019/11/09/onl...

Lisa Kudrow, actor and Producer of Who Do You Think You Are, talks about the show.

 Actor (and executive producer of the "Who Do You Think You Are?" genealogy TV program) Lisa Kudrow recently sat down on the 3rd Hour of TODAY to talk about her executive produced NBC series “Who Do You Think You Are?” and how the show personalizes people’s genealogy.

She also tells why she thinks that genealogy has become so popular in recent years.

You can watch her guest appearance at: https://on.today.com/3B68u1P (make sure you "Tap to Unmute.")

Can we preserve the integrity of the FamilySearch.org Family Tree?

This article can be read in its entirety on Genealogy's Star blog by James Tanner, by hitting here 

 The FamilySearch.org Family Tree is a marvelous resource. It has the potential to become a standard universal wiki-based family tree. However, there are serious issues with any large wiki-based project that must be addressed to maintain informational integrity. There is a precarious balance between open participation and accuracy. Most large, online cooperative websites, such as Wikipedia, are source centric. In addition, However, Wikipedia actively notifies users when information is unsupported by sources or is incomplete. Here is a quote from the article, Wikipedia: Quality Control. 

Quality control is essential to Wikipedia. To maintain articles of acceptable quality, it is necessary to improve the quality of existing material, and remove material of irreparably poor quality.

The article further points out the following:

But mistakes sometimes occur. These, and the damage done by the bad apples mentioned above, need continuous attention. The three ways that Wikipedia maintains its quality control is as follows: (a) A great deal of Wikipedia's volunteers' effort is applied to quality control. Wikipedia has an elaborate disciplinary system for handling vandals and other troublemakers, and a dedicated force of system administrators to enforce the Wikipedia community's decisions and policies – admins even have the power to block a bad apple permanently. (b) Once material is added to Wikipedia, an army of volunteers organized under various departments check and recheck it to make sure it conforms to the high standards set forth in Wikipedia's policies and guidelines (which were established specifically with the creation of quality articles in mind). There are departments for everything from typos to factual errors. For a list, see Wikipedia:Maintenance. (c) And Wikipedia even has robots, automated users that monitor for errors and correct them automatically. For example, these days most vandalism is fixed by Wikipedia's robots, or our content editors, who are watching your every move. Be careful. 

The southbound Underground Railroad that brought enslaved Americans to Mexico - Smithsonian Magazine

 To read the article in full, hit here

South to the Promised Land

Before the Civil War, numerous enslaved people made the treacherous journey to Mexico in a bold quest for freedom that historians are now unearthing

Diana Cardenas, a high school English teacher from Pharr, Texas, stands in her small family cemetery between the Rio Grande and the new border wall. Stylishly dressed and coiffed, wilting slightly in the heat and humidity, she holds up a photograph of her grandmother. “Her name was Adela Jackson, and we were close,” she says. “She loved to come here, and tell me stories about our family history, and all the runaway slaves we helped and took across the river into Mexico.”

Until recently, the southbound Underground Railroad, as some scholars call it, has been largely overlooked, mainly because it left so few traces in surviving records. No one who escaped slavery by going to Mexico wrote a firsthand account of the experience, as Frederick Douglass and others did about escaping north. Nor were they interviewed by researchers, or recruited by antislavery organizations. And though the journeys of enslaved people to Mexico are of the utmost importance, the scale of the southern migration was more modest, numbering between 3,000 and 10,000 people, compared with an estimated 30,000 to 100,000 who fled north of the Mason-Dixon line.

But in recent years scholars have begun to uncover a wealth of information about the southbound freedom-seekers. For example, they’ve learned that while there was no organized network of assistance, no celebrated “conductors” like Harriet Tubman guiding them to the next safe haven, slaves escaping to Mexico did sometimes receive help along the way.

Diana Cardenas’ great-great-great-grandfather, who died in obscurity, was among the staunchest allies of slaves escaping south. “He was a white man from Alabama named Nathaniel Jackson,” says Cardenas. “He married a slave that he freed, Matilda Hicks, and they came out here in covered wagons in 1857. She already had three children by another man, and she had seven more with Nathaniel.”

Cardenas produces a faded, blurry, copied photograph of Matilda Hicks, her great-great-great-grandmother, as an old woman, tall and thin and wearing a white dress.

“Nathaniel bought 5,535 acres of land right here by the river and established the Jackson Ranch,” says Cardenas. “There were Black, white and mixed-race people all living together, raising cattle in a place that was very remote, where they could be left alone. The runaways knew they could get help here—food, clothing and work if they wanted it. Nathaniel was a nice, generous, courageous man, a humanitarian. He would cross them into Mexico in boats.”

The history of southbound runaways, preserved in scattered fragments, presents scholars with enormous challenges of research and interpretation. Perhaps no one has done more to advance our understanding than a historian named Alice Baumgartner. In 2012, as a Rhodes scholar studying violence on the U.S.-Mexico border in the early and mid-19th century, she was hunting through state and municipal archives in northern Mexico. She found plenty of documents about cattle rustling and Lipan Apache raids, but she also came across records of a completely unexpected kind of violence—between American slave catchers crossing the Rio Grande and Mexicans who fought against them.

Exploring Jalisco's Indigenous People: Past and Present by John Schmal Saturday, July 23, 2022 1pm PDT

 

The Mexican-American War - Explained in 16 minutes

 To watch the YouTube video, hit here

GSHA-SC Zoom Hispanic Research Thursday, July 28, 2022 6:30pm PDT

 Please note due to the January 6th Commission television coverage in the evening at the same time, we will postpone this meeting until Thursday, July 28, 6:30pm PDT.

Please follow the instructions for rsvp.

Panes update

 

It has been a long process to order the scanners for digitizing documents of genealogy value to place online. Please know that ten scanners were ordered the first week of June and our order is #1851. The arrival of the shipment is hopefully expected very soon. When we receive them, we have locations lined up for placement and a person in Mexico to coordinate the efforts.

Hispanic Heritage Project will be eternally appreciative of all of you who have supported this effort and we thank you for the sacrifices you have made. What you have done will add a great wealth of information to the resources already available. Thousands of researchers who may find information for which they are searching will be grateful.

Silvia Magdalenos has completed transcribing six more censuses from towns in Chihuahua:

Carichic 1821 

Santa Eulalia 1826 

Santa Rita del Cobre 1806 

Santa Barbara 1802 

Santa Barbara 1803 

Santa Barbara 1822

Genealogy Garage: Learn about MyHeritage.com- Genealogy Saturday, Jul 16, 2022 11:00 am to 12:30 pm

 In the past, our organization has helped with the promotion of webinars that the Los Angeles Public Library's Genealogy Garage puts on for the general public. Even though we are a Hispanic genealogy group, we promote the education and knowledge that one may obtain from these presentations. Who knows if your ancestors may have some connection to these areas. Since they our free online via YouTube or Facebook, we are letting our members know that these courses are available to you if you sign in to YouTube or Facebook. Information to see the streaming live are below. 

 For more info, hit here  The library’s monthly genealogy session will feature Daniel Horowitz who will discuss the most internationally diverse genealogy databases in the world: MyHeritage.com.

 You don't have to RSVP or even be a YouTube member--just go to that above link and click "YouTube."  The presentation will be recorded and available to watch after-the-fact, so don't worry if you miss the live presentation.

The Best Free Genealogy Software! (Roots Magic)

To watch the YouTube video, hit here

In this video, the Joyous Genealogist introduces the viewer to RootsMagic. I also compare the free and paid version of RootsMagic and how to sync your tree to family search for free. I also go over if you can use RootsMagic with ancestry.com. She will be going thru the many companies for their free version. Do note that the society gets no benefit from showing this video.

Colonial Spanish & Mexican Censuses & Census Substitutes by Henrietta Martinez Christmas Friday, July 15, 2022 11am PST

 Join Henrietta Martinez Christmas on her topic learning about the different types of census records and substitutes that can place your ancestors in New Spain or Mexico. This class will discuss why the records were created, where to find them, and what type of information they contain. To register, please hit here

"Finding your Hispanic Ancestry: An Introduction" with Maria Tello

 To watch the YouTube video, hit here

Maria Tello spoke to an online audience for the Sutro Library sharing her knowledge on how to begin researching family from Mexico, the Caribbean, Central and Latin America. This talk is ideal for beginners.

In the Eyes of the Parish Priest July 9, 2022 10am PDT

 

Click on the link below to register for the Zoom meeting.

Catholic parish records are among the richest resources for family history research in Spain and Latin America. Catholicism has been the predominant religion in these countries for centuries. As a result, millions of people have had the vital events of their lives, births, marriages, and deaths, recorded in the pages of the Catholic parish records. The local parish priest recorded the happiest and saddest events of the lives of our ancestors, from their baptism as an infant to their final resting place. Come learn about the history, use and content of parish records to flesh out the lives of your ancestors. Tips and strategies will be presented which will facilitate your success in locating and searching these records. Stories from parish records will be shared to highlight the richness of the records.

Debbie Gurtler, AG® graduated with honors from Brigham Young University with a bachelor's degree in Family History. She worked as an intern at the New England Historic Genealogical Society. She has taken research trips to archives in Spain, Virginia, and North Carolina. 

She is employed by FamilySearch where she is currently the supervisor of the Latin America – Southern European team and the International floor at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. She is fluent in Spanish. She can also read genealogical documents in Portuguese, Italian, and French. She is a member of several national and international genealogical societies including the National Genealogical Society (NGS), the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS), the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG), Utah Genealogical Association (UGA), Cuban Genealogy Club of Miami, New Mexico Genealogical Society in the United States as well as HISPAGEN and Antzinako in Spain.

When: Jul 9, 2022 10:00 PM Mountain Time (US and Canada) 

Register in advance for the Zoom meeting:

https://us02eb.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUsf-mqqjsjGtHb9Bk8-j8xJFkXy0GwabUd w

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

13 Websites to Find People on the Internet

 To read the article in full, hit here

Looking for lost friends? Today, it's easier than ever before to find people on the internet with these 13 people search engines.

In an era of booming social networks, it's easier to find lost friends and colleagues than it ever was before. The private world of yesterday is now an online world. Everyone with a search engine has open access to social networks, government databases, and public records.

If you're looking for a long-lost friend, or maybe want to do a background check on someone, consider the following free resources to find people on the internet.

How to Search People for Free on the Internet

The internet is essentially a giant database, overflowing with data points about individuals. Today, it's hard to find anyone who hasn't commented on a blog entry, made a post in an online forum, or registered at Facebook or Flickr.

Different sites use this information in different ways. While the following 13 sites can be used to find people online, they may draw the data from different sources. As a result, there may be some differences between the results.

Before starting, learn a few details about the person. Start with their birthday or the state they live in. Once you have those details, the volume of information you can find online about a person is amazing. In fact, it can sometimes prove overwhelming.

When searching for people online, be sure to use multiple people search engines for the best results.

1. Pipl Search

There are many websites that search standard social networks like Facebook or Twitter. But Pipl Search is one resource that conducts a deep web search for the name on “non-typical sites”. The search results from Pipl Search are impressive.

Pipl Search makes a big effort to uncover street addresses, phone numbers, and even family members, scraped from miscellaneous websites.

The app used to be free to use, but you now need to sign up for a subscription. Indeed, the app is now aimed at businesses who want to do identify verification and investigations rather than individual users.

2. Google Groups

Probably the most powerful tool to find someone who used the internet a long time ago is Google Groups. Google Groups has incorporated over 800 million Usenet messages into its database, an impressive archive of internet conversations dating back to 1981.

For example, if the person you're looking for attended university during this time, you might find a trace of them. Usenet's channels were a popular way for people to access the internet before its explosion in the late 1990s. Universities, research centers, tech businesses, and other bodies relied on Usenet for collaboration and more.

Not only you might find who you're looking for, but you'll also get an idea about their thoughts, ideas, and motivations of the time. Remember, if you're worried about people find old information about you, there are ways to tell who is tracking you online.

3. TruePeopleSearch

A “100% free people search” service, TruePeopleSearch delivers some good results. But it depends on where you're based.

For US readers, this is a great tool, and by simply searching for a name and state of residence, you'll find surprisingly in-depth results. You should also get some good results for Canadian residents, too.

Look out too for the “Possible Associates” section. Useful to law enforcement and private eyes, this displays names of past college roommates, colleagues, and more. No doubt scraped from public Facebook information, this is reliable information.

TruePeopleSearch will typically return a list of previous addresses, along with phone numbers. This list is free to view with some basic information, but more detailed reports are available for a fee. Perhaps the site's branding of “100% free” isn't quite true.