Google Chrome  and Mozilla Firefox have a nice feature that allows you to add custom search engines to your browser that can be tied to a short-hand keyword. For example, in both my versions of Firefox and Chrome, I just need to type “w Poland” in my address bar and I will be taken to the “Poland” page on Wikipedia.

Here is how you set that up in both browsers:

Google Chrome

In Chrome, your first step is to click on the “wrench” icon at the top-right and select “Options.”  On the first tab, Basics, there is a section called “Search.” Inside of that section is a button named “Manage Search Engines…” Click on that button.

Once you’re inside the new settings tab, you will see a list of default search engines and then a list of “other” search engines. You will be adding Wikipedia to your “other” list. There are 3 boxes at the bottom of the “other” search engine list. One for Search Engine name, one for the browser keyword, and one to tell the browser how to search.

You can see I already have Wikipedia entered into my list along with some other sites. To add add Wikipedia’s quick search to your browser type these into the 3 boxes:

• In the first box, enter Wikipedia
• In the second box, enter a shorthand keyword you would like to use. I personally use “w”
• In the last box, enter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s

Mozilla Firefox

Firefox’s process is, in most cases, much easier. Firefox, by default, comes with the English Wikipedia search engine installed. Though, to enable the keyword, you will need to add it. To do this, click on the drop-down arrow on Firefox’s search box and select “Manage Search Engines…”

Once you have the Search Engine window open, select the “Wikipedia (en)” entry and click “Edit Keyword…”

That opens the “Edit Keyword” window. Inside of that text box, type in your preferred keyword, such as “w”

Hit “Ok” and close the windows. Now when you type “w Poland” or ”w Milwaukee, Wisconsin” into your address bar, you should be taken to the correct Wikipedia page.

If you don’t currenty use either of these browsers, download them and give them a try.

• Google Chrome
• Mozilla Firefox

[Pinterest is] a “virtual pinboard.” Creative types often use actual pinboards or corkboards for inspiration on projects, adhering to it magazine clippings and printouts of images, quotations and typography; fabric swatches; cards; and other ephemera. In the business world, it’s more commonly referred to as a “vision board” but contains the same elements. With Pinterest, users – called “pinners” – can organize and “pin” photos of items they find on the Web to various boards on their page.

It may not sound exciting, but it can be pretty addicting like she says in her article. I think, for the genealogy folks, that it can be put to good use for inspiration or even collecting great old photos that you find around the web that you love. I’ve personally pinned some neat ideas for a family tree wall. I see a lot of other people using it (it seems to lean heavily female at the moment) for craft ideas, food ideas, and even fashion ideas. Another fun use is pinning places you’d love to visit or even people that inspire you. Maybe it will create some discussion on the site.

Here is my page if you’d like to browse around. The site looks to be invite-only right now, but I think I can invite you if you’d like. Just leave me a comment on here.

[Photo: AuntyCookie@flickr]

The site was created by Blanka Lednicka over at Czech Genealogy for Beginners, a site I didn’t know about until the other day. While the site is pretty new and doesn’t have a ton of content, yet, everything that’s posted so far is extremely helpful to anyone doing Czech research. I’m personally used it to find some really helpful translations and writing comparisons. Google Translate can only take me so far.

The blog is also currently being updated and Blanka even personally responded to some of my comments, which is very nice and has also been very helpful.

If you’re doing any Czech research, definitely bookmark Czech Genealogy for Beginners. I know I did.

I’ve run across a bunch of different history and genealogy related instant streaming options and I thought I’d share them with you. Though, these are not all specifically genealogy-related, some may be about the areas your ancestors once lived. Also, these videos are obviously more related to my ancestry than just general ancestry. If you have a Netflix account, these links should link you right to the video info page. If you don’t have a Netflix account, I will try to find another informational page for you to view. These are only Netflix Instant versions, not DVD by mail versions. There are a lot more if you also count DVD versions, though you’ll need to wait for those. Instant ones you can watch right now. Let’s see the list I can up with.

This is what I found from a pretty quick search. I’m always looking for more good genealogy/historical videos. Do you know of any other good Instant Netflix videos?

Two interesting things about Facebook has come to my attention: Facebook hates busy bloggers and keeps trying to hide us from our fans.

It’s nothing person, but it’s what appears to be happening.  Less than half of my fans are seeing my fan page updates and posts.

That’s right – less than half.

Now, I realize some of them may choose to hide my page for whatever reason.  That I’m ok with – if they choose to do so.  But I don’t much care for Facebook deciding to do it for them.  Thanks to a couple other bloggers, we can do our best to let our readers and fans know so those who want to be kept up-to-date won’t miss so much!

Read the rest over on the site.

Tonight, I went to the FamilySearch website to see what records they may have on Goczałki or Gottschalk, the area of Poland that I’m targeting in my latest research according to a recent post. I actually never got to finding the records since I was sidetracked by a link they had labeled “Free Classes.” I assumed these were classes at the local Family History Library and thought that they may be interesting. It would both get me to one of the libraries and also maybe learn more about how to use them. Instead, these are online classes. The one I picked was Introduction to Polish Research, which was about 53 minutes long. I paid attention for about 23 minutes when she was talking about ship manifests and origin locations. She recommended searching the passenger lists by origin location instead of by name. This way you could find other families that came from the same area. She also mentioned the amazing genealogy search website setup by Steve Morse at stevemorse.org.

I’ve used his site previously to find updated streets and addresses for Milwaukee and also converting the 1930 Census occupation codes. It’s not the prettiest site, but neither is Google. I never really got into the other search tools that he created, so I just started going down each of his passenger list tools pasting Gottschalk into the “Place of Origin” box. Not much luck. I did find Orlowski and Sobieski families, but I don’t have those names in my family tree. Then I got towards the bottom, beyond the Ancestry.com tools, and into a very basic looking one called Germans to America (1850-1897). It sounded too broad, but let’s try it. It came back with four people from Gottschalk, but one caught my eye, Jakob Salewski. The information didn’t give a port of arrival, but it did give an arrival date of 17 Sep 1891 and a ship name, the Rhynland. 1891 was the year of immigration listed on most of Jacob ZALEWSKI’s records. His age is also listed as 28, which calculates to about 1863, which also matches my Jacob.

I searched Ancestry’s immigration database for the keyword “Rhynland” and found one arriving in New York on 17 Sep 1891. Fortunately for me, Ancestry has a lot of New York passenger lists. What is interesting is that I’ve searched over and over for Zalewski, Salewski, and all other variations. I also tried all forms of Jacob and 1891 trying to find him. So, next, I browsed the New York records manually, picking 1891, then September, and then 17. As I had hoped, there was a “Rhynland” entry. I started browsing it manually page-by-page and found Jakob Salewski on page 16 of 19 and it did say he was from Gottschalk. This matches all of the other information I’ve been leaning towards. Interestingly, he is also traveling with two other men from Gottschalk, but they don’t ring a bell and who knows if they went to Milwaukee, also.

17 Sep 1891, Rhynland - Click for larger.

So, my next step (out of many other steps) is to see what records I can get for Goczałki and start digging. What a week.

I was going to try to work my way down their trees, from Frank & Anna and then Jacob & Pauline’s families, and see what I could find using tools from early 20th century newspapers all the way to Facebook. With a few tools at my disposal, I was actually able to get much more information than I thought I would in only a few days.

First, I used Ancestry.com and other basic genealogy sites to get the standard information on the main families including birth dates, death dates, marriages, etc. Once I had these, I could use both the Social Security Death Index and Ancestry’s “Wisconsin Deaths 1959-1997″ index to find exact death dates. This next step only works so well because Google’s New Archive has The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel papers from 1885-2007 for free. It is still one of the most complete archives that I can find in there. Not only do you get all of those dates, but any time before 1995 you get two options since The Milwaukee Journal and The Milwaukee Sentinel didn’t merge until 1995, which is good because a few days are missing here and there.

With the exact death dates, I was able to search through the archives and find obituaries. I had trouble finding a few. The early ones, before like 1940, were sometimes either not listed or they were not scanned very well. Inside of the obituaries, it usually listed living family members and spouses and sometimes you got even more. I was then able to use this to find more information on these descendants, and so on.

I even got very lucky sometimes by just typing the names into Google and hoping for the best. Note on Google searches for people’s names: you will get a ton of spam sites and content farms in your results. These sites just pull info from phone books and throw it all into a pile hoping to sell ads, they’re mostly useless and they spread like wildfire. There is a wonderful extension by Google, called Personal Blocklist, for Google Chrome that allows you to block specific sites from your search results. My recommendation: get it. It not only makes your searches cleaner, but it also helps Google find these sites and remove them from most searches.

I hit a few lucky searches doing this and found some other obituaries that way, moving further down the trees. Once I felt like I was in the generation that was either close to my age or my parents’ age, I then checked Facebook. If the person was found, I usually browsed their friends list for other people that looked familiar. If I was like 90% sure that this was the right person, I would send them a nice message telling them who I was and how they may be related to me. I also said they were free to respond or they could just ignore me if I was off-base or creepy. My first try at this still has not responded, so that lowered my expectations a bit. Though, as my wife said, some older people may not use Facebook a lot and may not even have seen it yet.

I sent a few more in the last few days and fortunately I’ve had 3 positive responses now. One of the people I contacted, I have probably already met before, but I didn’t even think about it. The back story on this is that my grandfather’s cousin (the side of the family I’m working with right now) married my grandmother’s aunt, which is how my grandparents actually met. So, I’m technically related to him on both sides. My grandmother’s family put together family reunions for years when I was growing up and he would’ve been to most of those.

The other two people responded and were very surprised and happy that I decided to contact them. We’re planning to meet/talk more in the future. Hopefully, these meetings will bring in more information and stories. I can’t wait. Have you contacted distant cousins on Facebook with success?

Photo from itchys@Flickr

• The Milwaukee Journal from 1884-1995
• Milwaukee Sentinel from 1909-1995
• Milwaukee Journal Sentinel from 1995-2007

Screenshot from my great-great-grandfather's obituary.Click to enlarge.

It’s a great collection of news and information from the area. I’ve run across larger obituaries on my great-great-grandfather (shown above), my great-grandmother, and even a story about my great-grandfather during his Police work (3rd section down.)

Since the search and view section is run by Google, it works very well. You can even send a link to somebody pointing to the exact article on the page (as long as Google marked it.)

There is a link on the right that says “Get This Newspaper” but it seems to not go to the correct place. A quick email to JSOnline.com should hopefully clarify that.

Go search JSOnline’s Historical Newspapers.

And if you’re looking for more, it turns out Google has a lot more to choose from.

While I love Ancestry.com with their user-submitted family trees and I have used it constantly in my research, it’s a double-edged sword, especially for newer researchers. I sigh and roll my eyes every time I see their television commercial that shows a woman who notices the “shaky leaf” on some of the names in her family tree. When she clicks on them, she is able to add whole new families to her tree. Unfortunately, it seems most people think it’s that easy. Just click and boom, all your work is done.

I admit that in the beginning of my research over ten years ago, I usually just went for quantity over quality. It was so exciting to find new people and information that you just added it. I’ve paid the price for that now, but fortunately not in any major way. I’ve just had to go back, change a few pieces, and re-find all of the sources. That has actually indirectly helped me find new information, since now I look closer at every source I find.

I can use my great-great-grandfather’s profile to prove my point.

For example, on my great-great-grandfather’s profile on Ancestry, Frank J ZALEWSKI, I have entered all of his info. I know most of the info is correct (or very close to it) and I have attached sources to everything. The Ancestry sources actually link you right to the document in question, sometimes right to the exact line. This helps prove the data and you can see it with your own eyes.

A list of some of Frank's sources, with most linked directly to the document.

As you can see above, I’ve attached many sources to specific facts on Frank’s entry. (The double entries are from a mix of both Ancestry’s sources and my imported sources.) Every so, often I see a shaky leaf on Frank’s profile, which means he has a Ancestry hint to another document or tree. I’ve almost stopped looking at the tree hints because they’re usually not sourced, or the info is already taken directly from my tree. Look at this entry for a person who is supposedly the same Frank ZALEWSKI (click for larger version.)

My profile on the right. A "hint" profile on the left.

See any difference? I guess I missed that Frank was born in Toledo, Ohio in 1858 instead of Poland, even though there is documented evidence that he arrived in Baltimore in 1889. Not to mention that he is listed as being born in Germany/Poland/Prussia in every census, as are his wife and 1st three daughters. Plus, it seems that they had many more kids than I thought, and even naming some of them the same. Interesting.

The one sad part about this specific entry is that it has “3 Sources” listed. Not only is the information blatantly wrong, it’s actually connected to a source that proves it’s wrong. Then it gets worse. There are a few more trees in the list and most of them have pulled the Toledo, Ohio information as fact. One bad seed was planted, that’s all it takes.

I guess the point is to get your sources and double-check everything you find. I’ve only added a few things from Ancestry trees, but I always make a note and double-check everything I find. Source. Source. Source.

A local TV station did a story on genealogy recently. In the article on the website, the reporter puts a list of tips to help you in your search. His last tip perfectly sums it up.

The internet is a great genealogical resource, but it’s also loaded with misinformation. People by their nature want to believe, and there are countless family trees online that are incorrect. Bad information will lead you down the wrong road. Just because your ancestor was named Phineas Figglebottom, don’t assume he’s the only Phineas Figglebottom. That’s a very common mistake people make.

Though, this also got me thinking about how to use it to her advantage. For one, almost every kid gets the “Trace Your Family Tree” assignment in elementary school. When that time comes, I think we’re pretty well set. The other way we could use this for her would be in certain history classes. If you tell her that her 4th-great-grandfather, and a few others, fought for the Union army in the Civil War, this may make learning about it more exciting. I was never much of a fan of history classes when I was in school. I trudged through them, but really only learned enough to get by. Now, after getting into genealogy, I love history and watch a lot of the shows about certain aspects of history. I am usually much more interested in history that involves my ancestors.

Have any of you used genealogy to help kids, or others, in school?