Websites to use for genealogy research

A source of information that I often omit writing about is the National Archives. If you go to www.archives.gov, you will find an enormous listing of available records, some of which are online. Just pulling from their genealogy section you find applications for enrollment in Native American Tribes, court records, fugitive slave cases, land records, military personnel records, naturalization records and federal employee records (historical).

If you have an idea of what section you need to access, you can perform a simple keyword search by going to: https://catalog.archives.gov and putting your keyword in the search box. It is highly unlikely that you will find a particular person by doing that unless they happened to be a historical icon, but as the site points out, if you want to find bounty land they strongly suggest you enclose two words or a phrase with quotation marks , “bounty land”, to narrow your search. Once your results are listed, you may go to filter section of the results and reduce the return. The descriptions of results may not indicate what is contained in the record but if you want only photographs, select the filter named Photographs and Other Graphic Images. If you want to only access results that include a digital image of the record, choose Digital Objects as a filter.

One more hint for using the search box for military records, use the word AND in capital letters between such as Service Records AND Civil War.

Each unit of the National Archives has contact information for those records that you wish to access but are unavailable online and you can contact the staff in that unit for more information. If you are researching a relative that went through the naturalization process in the states of Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, North or South Dakota, you may email the Kansas City facility at: kansascity.archives@nara.gov or call 1-816-268-8000. Naturalization records are held by regional facilities and most are not available on line.

Now for a blast from the past, 110 years ago this month from the McCook Tribune, April 23, 1909. The Pastime Theater located on the south side of B Street in the 100 block had a big program lined up for Friday and Saturday, April 23-24. The Saturday matinee is advertised as: “Doll Making. This is a special for children teaching them how to make dolls, and it will be most interesting. Don’t miss it-especially children.” Also showing that weekend were the following features: Hand of the Wizzard; Charlie Paints; Difficult Position and Canadian Winter Carnival. Admission for adults was 10 cents and for children 12 and under, 5 cents. W. Harmon owned the theater. Silent movie star, Max Linder starred as Dieutegarde in Difficult Position while the better-known Charlie Chaplin was the headliner in Charlie Paints.

SWNGS continues to gather information concerning Civil War soldiers buried in Riverside Cemetery for our second annual cemetery tour in June. If you have veteran from the Civil War interred there and would like to have him honored, please contact me at: 308-340-8221.