Live Roots: The New Genealogy Kid on the Block

The Salt Lake Christmas Tour consumed my time and my genealogy skills from 4 December through and including 14 December. Many of the people on the Tour have been coming to Salt Lake City for 1-2 weeks each Christmas.  And this year–the 23rd year–they brought a variety of new genealogy research challenges.  Challenges that kept me and 9 other research consultants busy all day, every day of the Tour, and into the evening.

And I learned some very interesting new genealogy stuff helping them–at least they were interesting to me.  And I hope, as I share them over the next several newsletters, you will find them to be as useful as they are interesting.

The New Genealogy Kid on the Block: 

Live Roots is a new genealogy search engine.  http://www.liveroots.com/  

  1. You can search by surname, given name, multiple names (484,337 names to date)
  2. You can search by genealogy resources–printed books, original records, newly transcribed indexes, and combined sources (175,709 resources to date).
  3. You can search related materials.  Each resource has links to related materials.

These searches are straight forward and clear.  I searched for one of my hardest to solve research problems–Peter Sigler.  When I asked for Sigler, I got 5 results by surname in free sites including family histories and marriage indexes online.  28 hits by surname in subscription results.  2 cemetery hits with over 120 inscriptions available online.

This is the most Sigler information I have ever found in one single search.  And I could easily check out the related materials where they appeared.

Illya D”Addezio includes a blog with the site where he adds corrections to broken links and direct links to new resources.   Here I discovered that the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database begun several years ago, now yields almost 35,000 slave voyages with access to ships by name, officers of ships by name, more than 67,000 slaves by name with ship, age, gender, origin, and place of embarkation.  Isn’t it remarkable that this many  slaves were listed by name!

Printed original sources include what librarians and archivists refer to as ephemera–unique, one-of-a-kind items that survive, amazingly, among collections of stuff.  Illya has searched garage sales and antique shops for these kinds of records.  These are a part of his Family Tree Connection–a database of information transcribed by hand, and verified for accuracy, from original documents published between 1830 and 1930 — including Masonic rosters, rural school and college catalogues, vintage telephone directories, insurance claims, church catalogues, association memberships and much more! The amount of information available for each individual varies from document to document, with some documents listing just the person’s name.   Some examples include:

  1. Porter Home and Leath Orphan Asylum 1912-1913 Report–Report of the Porter Home and Leath Orphan Asylum from March 1, 1912 to April 1, 1913. Memphis, Tennessee. Includes a listing of Officers, Physicians and Memorials.
  2. Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen’s Magazine 1914 April–Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen’s Magazine, Volume 56, Number 4, April 1914. Includes a detailed Statement of Death and Disability Claims. Columbus, Ohio.
  3. Fairview Country Club 1925 Year Book
  4. List of Registered Maine Embalmers 1913
  5. Soldiers’ Home in Massachusetts 1889 Report–Seventh Annual Report of the Trustees of the Soldiers’ Home in Massachusetts, at Chelsea, for the Year ending July 25th, 1889. Includes listing of Officers and also Deaths During the Year.

This is a sophisticated search engine that includes partnerings with commercial, private, and government sponsored websites.  If the link is not active, the entry tells what has happened–this is a search engine’s nightmare because sites appear and disappear at will.  The hits, results, and descriptions indicate what data is free and what has a fee attached or requires a subscription.

Try it out.

You genealogy just might luck out like I did with your hardest-to-find ancestor.   Your favorite genealogist, Arlene Eakle

PS  Stay tuned–for many more discoveries I made at the Family History Library during Salt Lake Christmas Tour.   Including the new Road-Map for FamilySearch!

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