How did you turn your passion for genealogy into a business? How did you first get started? How did you find clients? Set your rates? Keep things organized?

Share your experience and tips for those who are either considering or just getting started with genealogy as a profession. A little free publicity is okay here too! You're invited to share a little about your genealogy business (including URL) as well.

Do You Make a Living as a Genealogist? Share Your Story! originally appeared on About.com Genealogy on Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 at 12:50:49.

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Ancestry.au launched a huge new index this week to Australian BMDs, comprising nearly 15 million records between the years 1787 and 1985 (births only to 1922 and marriages only to 1949). The searchable database was compiled from microfilmed birth, marriage and death indexes taken from record offices and registries from across Australia, with the exception of the Australian Capital Territory. While some of these indexes and/or the original records are already available online, this is the first database that combines birth, marriage and death data from across all Australian states in one place and format.

The new Australia Birth, Marriage and Death Index is searchable by:

• Birth: name, birth year, father's name, mother's name and birth place
• Marriage: maiden name, spouse name, marriage year and marriage place
• Death: name, death year, birth year, father's name, mother's name and death place

It is available as part of a subscription to Ancestry.au or a worldwide subscription to Ancestry.com.

New Online Index to Nearly 15 Million Australian Births, Marriages & Deaths originally appeared on About.com Genealogy on Friday, July 16th, 2010 at 10:55:16.

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It's fun to sit on my couch in my pjs and search for my ancestors, but when I can find the time I always prefer the firsthand thrill of the hunt - talking to relatives, poking around in cemeteries and courthouses, and walking the streets and land where my ancestors once stood. Before planning a trip to the State Historical Society, the Family History Library, the National Archives or the local courthouse, however, I always do my homework. There is nothing more frustrating as a genealogist than to drive two hours for a day at the State Archives only to find out they are closed this week for renovations, or that the records you need are in off-site storage and can't be retrieved for at least 3 days (yes, I learned this the hard way!). Prepare for your genealogy research trip in advance with these 10 Tips for On-Site Genealogy Research. In addition, checking off these 10 Questions to Ask Before You Visit a Research Facility  in advance of your visit will help you to avoid frustration and increase your research time. Time for me to check out the Yvelines Archives before my research trip to France next month!

10 Questions to Ask Before You Visit a Research Facility originally appeared on About.com Genealogy on Monday, July 12th, 2010 at 11:31:19.

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Found primarily in France, New France (French-Canada, Louisiana, etc.), and Scotland, dit names are essentially an alias tacked on to a family name or surname. Dit in French is a form of the word dire, which means "to say," and in the case of dit names is translated loosely as "that is to say," or "called." Therefore, the first name is the family's original surname, passed down to them by an ancestor, while the "dit" name is the name the person/family is actually called or known as. Dit names are used by families, not specific individuals, and are usually passed down to future generations, either in place of the orginal surname, or in addition to it.

Why a dit name? Dit names were often adopted by families to distinguish them from another branch of the same family. Interestingly, many dit names derived from military service, where early French military rules required a nom de guerre, or nickname, for all regular soldiers. The specific dit name may have been chosen for many of the same reasons as the original surname - as a nickname based on trade or physical characteristics, to identify the ancestral place of origin (Andre Jarret de Beauregard, where Beauregard refers to the ancestral home in the French province of Dauphine), etc.

A dit name can be legally used to replace the family's original surname, so you may find an individual listed with a dit name, or under either the original surname or the dit name. Dit names may also be found reversed with the original surname, or as hyphenated surnames.

• Hudon dit Beaulieu
• Beaulieu dit Hudon
• Hudon Beaulieu
• Beaulieu Hudon
• Hudon-Beaulieu
• Beaulieu-Hudon
• Hudon
• Beaulieu

When recording a dit name in your family tree software, it is generally standard practice to record it in its most common form - e.g. Hudon dit Beaulieu. A standardized list of dit names with their common variants can be found in Rene Jette's Répertoire des Noms de Famille du Québec" des Origines à 1825 and Msgr Cyprien Tanguay's Dictionnaire genealogique des familles canadiennes (Volume 7). Another extensive source is The dit Name: French Canadian Surnames, Aliases, Adulterations, and Anglicizations by Robert J. Quentin. When the name is not found in one of the above sources, you can use a phone book (Québec City or Montréal) to select the most common form, or just record it in the form most often used by your ancestors.

Understanding Dit names originally appeared on About.com Genealogy on Thursday, July 8th, 2010 at 10:52:52.

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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...

Those words from the Declaration of Independence always give me a chill when I read them - as I imagine how scary and proud the men who drafted and signed it must have been. How terrifying and exciting to live during that time in American history. So many of us today with a family tree that stretches back to Colonial times can claim descendancy from someone who participated in the American Revolution, whether they bore arms (on either side), provided supplies, or helped with some other non-military service. Do you have a Revolutionary War ancestor in your family tree?

Researching Your Revolutionary War Ancestor originally appeared on About.com Genealogy on Sunday, July 4th, 2010 at 08:44:15.

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It's a fact of life. Trees can't live without light, water, air, and food. While fancy fertilizers and high-tech bug killers are nice, all trees really need to survive are the basics and a little TLC.

As with real trees, all your family tree really needs to grow and flourish is a little of your time (or a lot if you're as addicted as I am!) and some attention to the basics.

Five Golden Rules for Growing "Healthy" Family Trees originally appeared on About.com Genealogy on Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 at 12:16:34.

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A project to index Freedmen Letters from North Carolina has been added to FamilySearch Indexing - absolutely wonderful news for anyone researching 19th century African Americans in that state. These records are a rich source of information on emancipated slaves, freed Blacks and Black Union soldiers, including details such as names, marriages, education and employment information, receipt of rations, health care and legal support. These records are currently being indexed by volunteers for eventual placement on the FREE FamilySearch Record Search site. If these records hold interest for you then you may want to consider donating a little of your time to help get them indexed and online faster!

FamilySearch Indexing is an all volunteer Web site that makes it possible for anyone with an interest in family history to spend a few minutes a day or week to index records online from home and help make them available for everyone free on the Internet. FamilySearch provides the digital images of the records along with in-depth instructions and software to make it easy for volunteers to extract the relevant data. You can learn more about how it works by taking the two minute test drive (available from the home page at FamilySearch Indexing). Hundreds of other projects are currently available for indexing there as well (yes, you do get to choose which project you want to index), including records from Argentina, Brazil, Canada (Ontario and Quebec), Chile, Colombia, Spain, France, Germany, Guatemala, Italy, Jamaica, Mexico, Norway, Peru, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Sweden, Russia, South Africa, Venezuela, the UK (Bristol, Essec, Isle of Man, Manchester and Warwickshire) and the US (Alabama, Arkansas, California, D.C., Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas and Utah).

Indexing of Freedmen Letters from North Carolina Underway originally appeared on About.com Genealogy on Sunday, June 27th, 2010 at 10:45:54.

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Was your Australian ancestor a digger? If he/she arrived in Australia during the 1850s or in Western Australia during the 1890s, it is certainly a possibility! Hundreds of thousands of new settlers descended on Australia, especially Victoria, during the 1850s after gold was discovered in 1851  near Bathurst, New South Wales, and in Ballarat, Buninyong and Bendigo Creek in Victoria. In the 1890s, the rich gold fields of Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie attracted yet another large influx of immigrants. Not only did the promise of gold lure diggers, but also tradesman, shop keepers, house servants and others necessary for a rapidly growing settlement. Learn more in Researching Australian Gold Rush Immigrants.

Was Your Ancestor an Australian Digger? originally appeared on About.com Genealogy on Friday, June 25th, 2010 at 20:49:26.

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Yet another twenty-nine new collections were updated or added this week at FamilySearch.org--with 26 million names and 1.5 million digital images! The records just added or updated include nine more indexes for the U.S. 1910 Federal Census (now 37 percent complete), plus images of Costa Rican Church Records, an updated index to French Protestant Church Records, images of some Hungarian Civil Registration records (Agauj-Torna and Szabolcs), indexes to over 4 million digital images from the 1930 Census of Mexico, and digitized images for several small collections from Spain, including civil registration records, Catholic church records and municipal records.

<p>This week's additions brings FamilySearch up to a total of 428 record collections digitized from original source records. You can search or browse record collections for free online at FamilySearch's Record Search pilot, or the new FamilySearch Beta site. I especially like searching/browsing free FamilySearch records  from the Historical Record Collections screen on FamilySearch Beta (select the "All Collections" tab from the home page) which starts you with a list of all collections which you can either narrow down by country, time period or record type, or search for a collection by name. One caveat!  These latest record additions (1910  US Census Index, 1930 Mexico Census, etc.)  appear to have not yet made it to FamilySearch Beta - search them on FamilySearch Record Search instead.

Free at FamilySearch - 26 Million New Names originally appeared on About.com Genealogy on Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010 at 18:07:16.

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Millions of records from England, Scotland and Wales are available online in the form of digital images or transcriptions. These can be found on literally hundreds of helpful genealogy Web sites, but the following 10 British genealogy sites are especially popular for their wide variety of useful records and information for anyone researching British ancestry.

10 Top Databases for British Genealogy originally appeared on About.com Genealogy on Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010 at 12:05:34.

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Irish Genealogy, hosted by the Ireland Department of Tourism, Culture and Sport, has added a large number of new church records of baptism, marriage and death to their free Web site. This brings the total to over 2 million church records from Dublin City and counties Kerry and Carlow, plus a subset from Roman Catholic parishes in the Diocese of Cork & Ross. These records include transcriptions and, in many cases, digitized images of the original records (though these are not yet available for all online records) taken from Roman Catholic and Church of Ireland parishes, as well as a small number of Presbyterian records relating to a congregation in Lucan. Best of all, these Irish church records can be accessed online completely free of charge.

Project work is ongoing to complete the computerization and digitization of the remaining Roman Catholic records for Dublin City and the Diocese of Cork and Ross, which encompasses Cork City and all of the parishes in West Cork. The intent is to have the rest of the project completed and available online by the end of 2010.

View the church records online for free at Irish Genealogy, learn more about how to research your Irish ancestors, or view more Irish genealogy databases in 15 Top Web Sites for Researching Irish Ancestors.

New Irish Church Records Online - FREE! originally appeared on About.com Genealogy on Wednesday, June 16th, 2010 at 23:53:55.

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Small, but beautiful, Manchester Cemetery in Wheeling, West Virginia, is fairly old, with almost half of the graves dating between 1800 and 1850. Imagine my delight to find flowers and other little offerings on the grave of Martha McCandless, who died on January 6, 1831. That's almost 180 years ago, yet someone has recently visited her grave and cared enough to prop it up and leave evidence that she is still remembered. I've visited as many of my ancestor's graves as I've been able to locate, but I've never thought to leave a flower or other remembrance. I think I might just have to do that next time!

One sad thing about this hauntingly, beautiful cemetery - many of the individuals buried here are likely not only gone, but forgotten. The underbrush had been cut back around the stones so the cemetery is obviously maintained by someone, but many of the stones have fallen and/or become illegible due to more than a hundred years of wind and rain. Luckily, Gary Timmons took time to transcribe Manchester Cemetery in 2002, but even by that time many of the stones were partially or totally unreadable.

Cemeteries are good sources of information on individuals, from birth and death dates, to choice of occupation and family relationships. Sometimes the gravestone is the only existing record of this valuable information. For this reason, I challenge each of you to do something to help preserve a cemetery near you. Contact your local genealogical or historical society to learn what is being done or needs to be done in your area.

Related information:

Steps for Transcribing a Cemetery

Tips for Taking Great Cemetery Photos

Gone but Not Forgotten originally appeared on About.com Genealogy on Friday, June 11th, 2010 at 20:54:02.

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Cabinet cards, popular in the late 1800s, are easy to recognize because they are mounted on cardstock, often with an imprint of the photographer and location just below the photo. There are similiar card-type photographs, such as the smaller carte-de-visite which was introduced in the 1850s, but if your old photo is about 4x6 in size then chances are it is a cabinet card.

Most of us have one of these cabinet cards in our collection of old ancestral photos, which tells us it was most likely taken between about 1870 and 1900. But you can also further narrow down the time when the photo was taken. Learn how to identify the popular cabinet card, and how to use clues such as cardstock weight and color, and the type of border, to narrow down the time period when the photo was printed.

Dating a Cabinet Card originally appeared on About.com Genealogy on Saturday, June 5th, 2010 at 19:23:54.

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An additional quarter million service records of men who were pensioned out of the British Army between 1873 and 1900 and who received a pension administered through the Royal Hospital at Chelsea have been added to the online Chelsea Pensioners database at Findmypast.co.uk. This brings the collection to date to over 500,000 records and more than 3 million images. Records from this collection will continue to be rolled out online over the next 18 months; once complete the entire collection will comprise over six million full color images.

Many of the soldiers in this database served in some of Britain's most significant wars, including the Battle of Waterloo (1815), the Crimean (1853-1856), and both Boer Wars (1899-1902). Each individual soldier's record contains a minimum of four pages, and could be up to 20 pages in length - full of rich detail such as the soldier's date and place of birth, name and address of next of kin, height, hair and eye color, distinguising features such as tattoos, rank and regiment, occupation prior to joining the Army, medical history, dates and countries where the soldier served, and more.

The Chelsea Pensioners British Army Service Records, 1769-1913 (not yet complete), digitized from National Archives  records series WO97, can be accessed online as part of a paid subscription to Findmypast.co.uk. The records are being digitized in partnership with The National Archives (where they can also be accessed through DocumentsOnline) and FamilySearch.

Additional Chelsea Pensioners' Service Records Available Online originally appeared on About.com Genealogy on Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 at 11:56:00.

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The Syracuse.com CNY blog posted this week about a free database of Civil War vouchers, 1861 to 1865, available online at the New Jersey State Archives. The database actually launched in 2009, but I still wanted to point it out for those of you who might not be familiar with it. Almost 114,000 indexed entries include soldiers' discharge certificates for final pay, affidavits for pay due to deceased soldiers and returns listing the names of soldiers' families and dependent mothers who received subsistence pay.

The database is searchable by any combination of first name, last name, regiment, county and year. Copies of records are available from the New Jersey State Archives for $5.00 a record.

New Jersey's free Civil War Treasury Vouchers database was made possible by the New Jersey Civil War Heritage Association (NJCWHA) who supplied the volunteers to sort, flatten and organize nearly 16,000 documents. A grant from the New Jersey Historical Commission helped cover the costs of the indexing and database.

New Jersey Launches Civil War Vouchers Database originally appeared on About.com Genealogy on Sunday, May 30th, 2010 at 10:33:08.

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Originally called Decoration Day, Memorial Day is a U.S. day of remembrance for those who have died in our nation's service. Too many of us, however, think of Memorial Day as just another holiday from work and school -- a day for picnics, baseball games and barbeques -- instead of a day for actively remembering our ancestors, family members, loved ones, neighbors and friends who have given the ultimate sacrifice.
Read more...

How to Observe Memorial Day originally appeared on About.com Genealogy on Wednesday, May 26th, 2010 at 09:30:27.

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During the past few weeks while I've been recuperating from surgery, I have pleasantly had time to read several books that I think may interest my genealogy friends. All three are very different in the stories that they tell, but each also follow the same basic premise - a researcher in the present-day trying to solve a family mystery from the past. One of the books, The Forgotten Garden, was a gift from my husband, while the other two -- Annie's Ghosts and The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane were sent to me for review by the publisher, Hyperion. Read more...

Pleasure Reading for Genealogists originally appeared on About.com Genealogy on Tuesday, May 18th, 2010 at 12:01:20.

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A very interesting set of records is now available online at FindMyPast.co.uk. The Great Western Railway Shareholder Index, including color images of the original records, encompasses over 570,464 records covering the period from 1835 to 1932, recording 440,000 shareholders and related parties, such as executors and spouses. Why is a shareholders index interesting you may ask? There are a lot of deaths from England and Wales recorded in the index, as well as other events which would cause shares to go through a change of ownership. For those of you who like celebrity genealogy, the records contain some famous names such as Charles Dickens, William Ewart Gladstone and Lewis Carroll, under his real name, Charles Ludwidge Dodgson.

The new Great Western Railway Shareholder index is available through subscription or pay-per-view access to findmypast.co.uk.

570,000 New Shareholder Records Go Online at FindMyPast.co.uk originally appeared on About.com Genealogy on Tuesday, May 11th, 2010 at 10:10:38.

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A recent TV documentary criticised hospitals for selling food and drink high in saturated fat, salt and sugar on their premises. Some hospitals...

L AST week, reader David Whittern said that if a new mosque is to be built in Barton Hill, Christians in Islamic countries across the...