Sunday, June 19, 2005

~ old due diligence ~

I've been collecting links to various State Archives and, State, County and City Historical Societies, for my due diligence work locating descendants. Links to County and City Historical Societies are at each state's site. Arranged similarly to this Minnesota state page. When I find a useful site, instead of saving it to the dark memory hole of IE "favorites", I subscribe via WatchThatPage, which sends me email notices as each page is updated.

I was adding additional links to my lengthy list and strolled through the Maine State Archives, which has an online searchable index of deaths from 1960-1996 and marriages from 1892-1996. As I randomly visited some other sites around the U.S., I stumbled on the Nevada State Historical Preservation Office, which has all the Nevada Census indexes, with every field searchable. The Vital Records page at the Arizona state genealogical site has an index and links to the actual document images.

GenGateway.com is a serious, extensive resource for the historical records searcher. It lists gateways to military, obituary and vital records sites. The link to California vital records details the law on obtaining records, provides the contact information and links to free and paid sources. The primary annoyance with most of the non governmental genealogy websites is that they eventually send the researcher to Ancestry.com for many, many searches. This aggregator is to family history records what ChoicePoint is to present-day personal data collection. Ya gotta pay to play at the ruler's site.