Lesson 2 Genealogy Resources

1)  I have to admit that I have gotten very frustrated with the fact that I need to have a username and password wherever you try to go for information.  For example you cannot search the census database with a password.  In searching for my great grandpa on my mother's side I found out that he was born in Russia and obtained citizenship in 1907.  His parents were both born in Germany.  He was married but I cannot read her name and they had two daughters, my grandmother Anna and her sister , and 6 sons. He was employed as a farmer in Russia.  At the time of the 1920 census my grandmother was 16 yrs. old.  The first two children, my grandmother being the oldest, were born in Russia, the rest were born in South Dakota.  This is a 1920 census from South Dakota.

I did not realize that my grandmother was born in Russia. I thought that they had come to America before she was born and that she was born on the homestead in Tripp, South Dakota.

2).  There are not too many states to choose from. Over 99% of the 1890 population schedules were destroyed in a fire which took place in 1921.  Of the 62,979,766 people in 1890 a total of 6,160 names could be extracted from the surviving schedules.  16 states were lost in the fire.  To protect these files now they are backing them up on many diff disk and storage devices and storing them in diff locations in fireproof safes and ect...

3).  No official census was taken in Alaska until 1880.

4).  You could always download your information to a disk or thumbdrive as a PDF or TIFF file or if you have your own computer just save it in downloads as a PDF file to print out later when it is convenient.

5).  I did think that is was cool that I could add notes and things to my image after I had downloaded it. 

When trying to access the 2 articles I keep getting a blank screen.  I get to the syllabus/course page just fine a couple different ways but once there when I click on the link to an article all I get is blank/white screen.  Again, this is very frustrating for me.

To conclude this lesson I will say that I got totally caught up in trying to find my ancestors and didn't start on the homework for a couple of days.  I now know how some of my relatives are hooked on genealogy and finding more information about our past relatives.  It is really interesting.  I have never tried to get into a database or website to look up information like this before and it was eye-opening.  Hard to read at times but worth it.