Where are the Death Certificates?

St. Louis Genealogical Society has a very active presence on Facebook, both a News and Events page and a wonderful group just shy of 4,300 members. No politics, no precocious baby or animal videos, no endless goofy jokes—OK, maybe a few occasionally, but only about genealogy! We know that many people avoid social media, but our Facebook group provides a safe space for people to ask and answer genealogy questions, announce meetings and other special events, and spread the joy of genealogy. Sometimes inquiries are posted in the group that need a bit more time and space to answer, and this week brought up one that is so important, we thought we'd devote a post to it. So, for all of you asking about online death certificates, please read on . . .

Visiting an Ancestral Town in France

As anyone who lives either in St. Louis or New Orleans knows, the beginning of March is the time for all of us to dig deep to find some French roots as Mardi Gras approaches. (Or we can just enjoy celebrating, no matter what our ethnicity!) Regardless of where your ancestors are from, we hope you will enjoy a bit of a travelogue this week, as one of our members, Joan Koechig, who does have roots in France, shares an interesting research experience in the land of her ancestors. Thanks, Joan, for writing this week's post! Perhaps Joan's experience in France will motivate you to travel to your own ancestral cities! Joan writes . . .

Can You Help Us Return Photos to This Family?

OK, genealogy detectives, we have another mystery for you to solve. You may remember that in early December, we posted some military documents from a soldier named James Ronald that needed to be returned to his family. We got several responses with suggestions of things for us to do, but, luckily, one of our members, Norm Miller, recognized the surname. He made some phone calls, and, amazingly, discovered that a relative of the Ronald family was related to his own family. Several more phone calls later, and the documents were on their way to Arnold, Missouri, where they will be forwarded to the Texas family who has been eagerly awaiting their return. Kudos and many thanks to Norm for reaching out and making the contact!

Second Batch of Cemetery Maps Now Uploaded to our Website!

In August of this year, we announced that our resident map guru, Jim Bellenger, has been using his talents to superimpose old cemetery maps onto new Google maps and georeference them so that exact locations of even long-gone cemeteries are now visible. Jim has worked with dozens of people in St. Louis City and County and beyond to obtain maps of the cemeteries, get permission to use them, and link them to the cemetery pages on our website. Because this is so time-consuming, we are releasing the maps in groups of about twenty to thirty, and now, we are happy to share the next batch of maps with you. (If you missed the post about the first set, you can read it here.)

Can You Help with a Mystery?

The holidays are upon us, and we were just going to wish all of you a fun week of celebrating and take off to attend our own family festivities, when our resident photo matchmaker, Shirley Waddell, sent us the following plea. What a great Christmas we might make for the family of a deceased soldier if we could find a relative and return the items that were donated some time ago to St. Louis Genealogical Society. Here are the details . . .

Biographies for Sale at the StLGS Trading Post and Beyond

Do you often wish someone had written a biography or family history to help move your genealogy along? Maybe someone did write an article or a book. You can use search engines to find books about your family, or you can see if someone has donated a book to the StLGS Trading Post, where we sell gently-used history and genealogy books donated to the society by members and friends.

StLGS July Genealogy Meetings and Special Events

Summer is finally here and life is resuming more and more of its normal routine after our very challenging "Year of the Pandemic!" Be sure to get our July dates into your calendar so you will have plenty to do when it gets too hot to go outside! All of July's events are virtual. Pour yourself something cool to drink and stay comfortable in your shorts and flip flops as you watch our monthly meeting on the rich and lengthy history of St. Charles, Missouri. Move on to our two-day Speaker Series focusing on DNA testing, and then, join the Irish SIG for a casual chat session on Irish research.

March 2021 StLGS Genealogy Meetings, Classes, and Events

Just a few more weeks, and spring will arrive, at last! As we are moving into 2021, it's become clear that Zoom meetings are here to stay and that we can continue to learn and share with each other via technology. We are so excited about engaging those of you who reside outside the St. Louis area or who cannot travel to an in-person meeting. We miss you and look forward to the day when we can meet again in person, but in the meantime, we are continuing to plan for many interesting and exciting programs for the rest of this year as webinars. Here is what is coming up in March and a bit beyond, like our annual Family History Conference!

Use City and County Directories in Your Genealogy Research

Long before the popularity of telephones and telephone books, urban communities listed their residents in city directories and rural communities often had county directories as well. For many areas, publication began in the early to mid-1800s and continued well into the twentieth century. City directories are especially helpful in tracking city dwellers, who often did not own property and may have changed residences more frequently than those who lived in the country. Like phone books, both city and county directories have multiple sections in which you can find listings of people, non-profit organizations and businesses, and many interesting paid advertisements. Best of all, directories were often issued yearly, so they can help fill in the gaps between censuses.

January 2021 Genealogy Meetings and Classes

Well, we made it! Finally, 2020 is over and there is a glimmer of hope for a much happier, healthier new year. Now that the holidays are behind us and it's feeling like winter outside, it's time to get back to genealogy! We enter an especially important year in Missouri as we celebrate the state's 200th birthday! Look for special focus in our meetings, extra events, and our Quarterly journal on early Missouri history. Because it is still not safe to meet in person, we are continuing our virtual meeting schedule for the foreseeable future. We have had such positive feedback from so many of you, we can't wait until you see some of the exciting plans we have for 2021. Here's a start—stay tuned for a lot more!

First of the FHC 2020 Digital Recordings Now Online!

St. Louis Genealogical Society is delighted to announce that digital recordings of the four Judy Russell lectures are now available online! During the upcoming week, recordings of three additional lectures from the 2020 StLGS Virtual Family History Conference lectures will be ready to post as well! We all know what a curator does in a museum. Do you know what he/she does in a legal document? Have you thought of using mind maps to help you solve genealogical puzzles? Those who had the opportunity to watch Judy Russell live on Saturday, 18 April and Sunday, 19 April, have those answers and many more. With Judy's recordings available online, you now have a chance to watch at your leisure, either for the first time or to review the large amount of detailed information this noted genealogist shared with her audience.

Next up for recording will be Dennis Northcott, associate archivist at the Missouri History Museum's Library and Research Center. Dennis is an expert on the collections in the Missouri History Museum's archives and will share firsthand accounts of the Civil War taken from letters, diaries, and other unique materials in his talk called "Civil War Eyewitnesses."

Also coming soon will be a lecture from John Dougan, Missouri State Archivist, who will speak on "Life and Death at Missouri Statehood: Gleaning Genealogical Details from Frontier Inventories." John will give us insights into what life was like on the Missouri frontier prior to statehood and how you can learn more about early ancestors from their inventories and other estate papers.

Cathy Amen's talk on "Using Technology in Genealogy Research" will also be posted soon. She will discuss software, scanners, photo-editing apps and organizational tools that will help make you more productive.

The remaining three conference lectures will be added as soon as the speakers have access to their workspaces and equipment. Registrants will be notified as soon as those recordings are ready for viewing.

All digital recordings will be online for ninety days, beginning with the day they are posted. You may watch as many times as you like within that time frame.

Registration Process

 

1. Registration for all ten of the digital recordings will continue to stay open until at least the beginning of July. The cost is the same as it was for the in-person conference: $55 for StLGS members and $65 for non-members. All of the information you need to register is on our website.

2. Once you have registered, you will receive an email with a link to a page on the StLGS website that contains the complete syllabus, in two large files, including all of the handouts. These are downloadable PDFs, which you can print and/or just save to your computer. Links to all the digital recordings will be added to that page as soon as each recording becomes available.

Questions? Send an email to programs@stlgs.org and the vice-president for programs will get back to you. No one is currently in our office, so please do not call.

Researching Marriages in Jackson Co., Missouri, Just Got Easier!

(Thanks to society treasurer, Viki Fagyal, for alerting us to this website.)

Jackson County, Missouri, Recorder of Deeds Office Marriage Records Online

Do you have Kansas City or Jackson County, Missouri, ancestors? The Recorder of Deeds office in Jackson County has digitized all marriage licenses and applications from the county's beginning in 1826. You can view and print copies free of charge! Go to the Web Access page to begin your search.

As with many search engines, less is more on this site. Unless you are searching for a very common surname, try just typing in either the groom's or the bride's surname and let the search bring up all of the people with that name. You never know what you might find. If your surname is too common to do that, then begin to narrow down by date. In the following screen capture, you can see a simple search for Haycraft and the result of just one marriage. The first field in the search result is "Image" and under it, you will see it says "View." Clicking on that link will bring up a digitized copy of the marriage license and the application.

Even better, though, is clicking on the next link, the string of numbers, under "Book/Page." As you can see in the screen capture below, this link will give you a column on the left with certificate number and other information that might be on the documents.

While you are on the website, take a look at the tab called "Official Public Records." Let your mouse hover over the tab and you will see lists for grantees and grantors as well as a subdivision list and a real estate index. Of most use to genealogists, of course, are the grantee and grantor lists, but be aware that these are fairly recent, from 1962 to the present. For earlier records, you will have to look at microfilm at the Recorder of Deeds office. Another road trip, perhaps?

Missouri Soldiers Database: 1812 through WWI

Did you know that the Missouri State Archives has a massive database on their website holding information on Missouri soldiers who fought from the nineteenth into the beginning of the twentieth century? Called The Soldiers Database: War of 1812–World War I, it contains information, according to the website, on more than 576,000 Missourians "who served in the military from territorial times through World War I. . . . The records primarily consist of individual service cards, but the extensive collection also includes muster rolls, special orders, reports, and more."

The service cards were originally created "to collect historical and statistical information about the men and women who served in the military." The information on them was abstracted from original records and maintained by the Missouri Adjutant General's office until they were transferred to the Missouri State Archives. The original cards contain a wide variety of information, including description of wounds, dates of enlistment, service, and discharge, and, of course, personal data.

The Soldiers Database includes entries for twelve wars and military engagements, from the well-known, such as the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, and World War I, to the "battles that were peculiarly Missourian, including the Heatherly War of 1836, the Mormon War of 1838, and the Iowa (Honey) War of 1839. The bulk of the service cards, more than 380,000 of them, record the fractured history of Missouri during the bloodiest of all American wars—the Civil War." There are descriptions of all the wars on the site.

The database can be searched by soldier's name or unit. Digital images of original service records are linked for many of the soldiers; however, not all.

Begin your search by placing either a surname or last name, first name into the search box. You will get a list from which to choose that gives you names, wars, and some description. Next, click on a person of interest and you will get a screen like the one below. If there is a button at the bottom next to "Image" so you can view the record, click on the button. A PDF will download to your computer. In this case, notice the interesting information on the soldier's Civil War record on the white card below.

 

Ready to search? Here is the URL:

https://s1.sos.mo.gov/records/archives/archivesdb/soldiers/#soldiersearch

Honor Your Ancestors: First Families of St. Louis

Have you heard of the St. Louis Genealogical Society's First Families program? Most genealogists are familiar with lineage organizations such as the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) and the Mayflower Society, but what if your ancestors arrived in America after the Revolutionary War? What if your people were among the hardy pioneers that migrated west during the days of the Louisiana Purchase or the War of 1812? What if they came to St. Louis during the Irish potato famine, the European wars of the mid-nineteenth century, or the American Civil War? How do we honor those brave and daring settlers to our region?

The First Families program of the St. Louis Genealogical Society offers you the opportunity to identify, recognize, and archive the lineage of your early St. Louis ancestors. If you descend from one of these families, the First Families program is a way to preserve and honor your family's longevity and the intrepid spirit of those who explored and settled this vibrant city.


The First Families program is open to members of the St. Louis Genealogical Society whose ancestors arrived in St. Louis between these dates:

• Founding Families, between 1765 to 1804
• Pioneer Families, between 1805 to 1821
• Immigrant Families, between 1822 and 1865

To qualify for the First Families program, you need to provide appropriate documentation that proves your family's descent from a founding, pioneer, or immigrant ancestor.

Ready to find out more? Information about the program (including a PDF of the informational booklet), the documentation required, and a step-by-step guide through the application process is
on the StLGS website.

Questions? Send a note to firstfamilies@stlgs.org or call the StLGS office at 314-647-8547 during our regular business hours (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, 9 a.m. until noon, Central Time) and ask for Diane.

(Thanks to Diane Broniec and Viki Fagyal for their help in writing today's blog.)