2016 Crossing the Pond Course
Crossing the Pond: Finding Your Immigrant Ancestor in Their Homeland
Course Outline:
One of the toughest tasks a genealogist can face is finding where their ancestors lived prior to settling in North America. The process of discovery can be fraught with many challenges, disappointments, and frustrations. Conversely nothing quite matches the feeling of finally finding that elusive ancestor in their town of origin with their family.
This course is a combination of classroom instruction and lead research in the Family History Library. Using your own research problems, a great team of instructors lead by Eric Stroshein will assist students in learning how to solve tough immigration problems. Though this course targets finding your ancestors in the British Isles, anyone can benefit from this class because the strategies and techniques taught translate to most countries and nationalities.
- Framing your Problem: Thorough Research (Stroschein)
- Online Immigration Research: Computer Lab (Ouimette)
- Advanced Researching at the FHL: Computer Lab (Darby)
- British and Irish Immigration (Ouimette)
- Immigration Records USCIS (Federal, State, and County) (Stroschein)
- Lists, (Censuses, Tax, Directories) (Taplin)
- Identifying the Immigrant within the Family and Community (Ouimette)
- US Newspapers (Regular and Nationality Specific) (Darby)
- Ships and Passenger Lists (Stroschein)
- Land Records (Stroschein)
- Church Records (Taplin)
- Military Records (Stroschein)
- Localizing the Surname: Dictionaries and Heat Maps (Ouimette)
- DNA Evidence of Ancestral Origins (Ouimette)
- Don’t Forget Canada