Shot Towers: A Strange but Necessary Bit of History

If you lived in the United States in the nineteenth century, the need for hunting and defending yourself and your family from predators meant that you required a ready supply of ammunition for your guns and rifles. The forests and the prairies were your grocery stores. If you had the materials, skills, space, and time, you could make enough bullets for your personal use, but there was also ongoing conflict between indigenous people and sprawling American settlers, and there were wars and other military skirmishes creating continuous demand for gun shot. There was, however, an inherent problem with the way gun shot was created.

July StLGS Meetings, Events, and More!

Happy Fourth of July! We hope you have had a good holiday weekend, have stayed cool and dry, and celebrated the birth of our country safely and happily. Now that the holiday is over and summer is in full swing, we also hope you will make some time for attending some upcoming genealogy meetings. Our monthly meeting will be hybrid; you can attend in person at our office or via Zoom. However, the Irish Special Interest Group meeting this month will be via Zoom only. We are also announcing the Fall Speaker Series, now open for registration, and a new membership category for young people. Read on for more!

More Tips on Using the 1950 Census

Now that the 1950 federal census has been released, many of us have attempted to find our families or even ourselves. In looking for your relatives, you may have discovered that some major genealogy websites are in the process of indexing but have different states available. According to a news article from the Deseret News in Salt Lake City, Ancestry and FamilySearch have partnered to create an index. Ancestry began by using a proprietary Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology so an entire census index could be released as soon as the census went live from the National Archives in April. Now, FamilySearch volunteers are reviewing and making corrections to that index. The National Archives also released an OCR index and is asking for assistance in finding and correcting errors.

A Day at the Archives Enriches Research

At this year's StLGS annual Family History Conference, “Get in Your Car and Go,” speakers emphasized the importance of researching at archives, libraries, and other non-internet sources. Here is a recent, personal example of exactly how such a trip can enrich your family history research and even solve a few mysteries.

Finding St. Louis Orphanages in the 1950 Census

Did you know the term "orphan" refers to both full orphans and half-orphans? A full orphan means both parents have died or deserted the child. A half-orphan refers to children with one parent still living. Every year, our Ask Louie genealogy advice service receives many questions on researching orphaned ancestors, and this year is no different. With the release of the 1950 U.S. census, we've been busy updating St. Louis orphanage information on our website.  If you are researching an ancestor who was orphaned or half-orphaned in St. Louis and are a member of StLGS, you can access a great deal of information about St. Louis orphans and orphanages on our website.

StLGS June Meetings and Events

We hope you were able to attend our Family History Conference in May, but if you missed it, no worries. The recordings will be available until the middle of August. We have a wonderful hybrid monthly meeting coming up next week, a German Special Interest Group meeting, and a class on Catholic church records. In addition, we have updated the StLGS website to include all of the upcoming meetings and classes for the summer. Time to open your calendars and check out the details below!

Another Resource to Locate Revolutionary War Service Members

This weekend, as we have been honoring our military heroes, both present and past, we thought we might introduce you to a little-known resource you may find useful in tracking down ancestors who served in the American Revolution or a military operation in that time period. If you have worked with early federal censuses, you know that the first fifty years of the census listed only heads of household, and enumerators used tally marks in columns to indicate age and gender of household members. It wasn’t until 1850 that the census began to list names of individual members of each family. However, an exception was made in 1840.