North Carolina Genealogy

I hinted last week that there was another sister site on the way. Well, today the Alabama Genealogy site officially launched. You’ll notice that for now we have the same layout as here. As we have here, we have built pages for each county (67) in the state of Alabama with a profile and resources. Of course, there is more work to be done there, here and at the South Carolina Genealogy and Rhode Island Genealogy sites, but there are other sites on the way as well, although it may be a little while before the next official opening.

We’ve got some exciting news to share with you. Our network of sites is growing! You probably already know of our sister site at South Carolina Genealogy. Today we’d like to welcome Rhode Island Genealogy to the fold as well. In coming weeks we hope to be able to announce another addition to the family of sites! (To drop a hint…. the next one should be in the south.) So, we’re busy trying to get resources indexed and organized over at the Rhode Island site (and still working on updates here as well.) The county pages there are already useful enough to start sharing with the world though, so if you’re looking for any ancestors up in the Rhode Island area stop by! Thanks!

After last weekends realization that there were many broken links on the county resources pages…. I went on quite a roll reinvigorating the county pages. I think all of them should have somegood content and a refreshing to make sure that all the links are current. (The new link checker script only tells me if there is an error pulling the page up, so…. if it’s the wrong address we don’t know unless it is checked…)

MANY MANY THANKS!!!! to those of you who have sent in corrections on links in the last couple of weeks. It was a tremendous help and helped me realize that I still had quite a bit of work to do with some of the county pages that were “unloved”. Every county now should have a brief sketch and LOTS of other information. As always, if you know of other resource that should be there, make use of the contact form and let me know! (Leave of the http::// in any addresses and I think that will get past the spam filtering in the form.

It’s true that we still have some counties that are a bit lean on details and we would love to incorporate YOUR input on those counties. Also, it looks like I’ve worked into a routine of formatting from Macon County on that I may need to go back over the first half of the alphabet and use the same formatting, but…. this is another significant improvement for our county pages.

Thanks for stopping by!

Update– July 5th–
As of right now all of the links on this site have been updated, and corrected (over 400 corrected). A handful of links 10 or so were removed outright because the information is no longer found or domain is gone/not responding for a couple days, etc.

The original post continues below….

As some of you may have noticed there are broken links on this site. It’s a simple fact of the way the internet is. Pages are always moving, changing their address, going away and new resources being added. I remember the very first building of this site entailed many days on end of my time collecting links and organizing them. Unfortunately I’m sure the minute I finished someone, somewhere decided to move their counties census archive to antoher server or something along those lines. The point is, the internet is in a state of flux and it takes more time than you would realize to keep up with it when there are so many resources we’re trying to cover. (We, actually translates to ME.) I’ve recently installed a link checker scripts that will mark through invalid links and notify me of broken links, which will help. I used to MANUALLY check the links from time to time. Now I’ve installed a plugin that will help identify broken links and have spent about 6 hours updating around 300 links. There are still quite a few to go and I will work on those over the next few days.

What I’m leading up to though is a request….. I GREATLY appreciate it if you know of the new location for a resource, county genweb site, or other link. I have had a few occasions where a site owner sends me an email updating their link information. Most of the time instead I find a broken link when a visitor sends me an email asking if I know where they’ve moved to. SO…. if you know of a moved resource I would greatly appreciate if you would make use of our contact form to let me know of it’s location. The only catch is that our current form is a bit picky and for spam prevention declines weblinks in this format http://www.weblinks.com – so substitute xx for the // and make links look more like http:xxwww.google.com if you would. (There may be a replacement contact form coming in the near future…) Thanks for your help!

Some time back I ran across this great genealogy resource from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. They will do lookups of immigration and naturalization records. You can pay for an index search or record request at fairly reasonable fee levels ($20/$35 depending on the item…)

The records they have go back to approximately 1906 judging from their page, but it still may be a valuable resource for those of you who had immigrant ancestors come into the country since then.

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while and I’ve added to the links list in the sidebar.

I’m not sure if I had posted about this before, but I just ran across the State Archives collection of North Carolina Family Records Online. They have digitized a number of items in their collection and you can browse or search. (Including browse by last name or location.) So, what records are included? They have digitized over 2000 family bibles and have also included their 6 volume collection of marriage and death notices from North Carolina Newspapers that cover 1799-1893. I’m eager to see more sources in this resource, but if you’re lucky enough that a families bible has been donated to the state archives, it will be a real find!

Just a note to pass along: the Madison County Genealogy Society holds it’s meetings at 7 PM on the first Monday of the month in Marshall, NC at the Public Library.

The program on August 2nd will be on a “Madison County Oral History Project”.

North Carolina certainly has a unique and interesting history. The lost colony, Sir Walter Raleigh, the various tribes of Native Americans…. mountains, plains the coast, our state’s tapestry is so rich…. pirates, ship graveyards and… castles? There’s a castle in North Carolina? (Actually several… in Asheville there is Seely’s Castle (spelling?)) Today I’m writing a bit about Castle McCulloch. I saw an interesting feature on it on Our State a few weeks back and had to look up their website for more information. It’s located in Jamestown, NC which is in Guilford County, NC and started out as a mill.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m reposting the Declaration of Independence here in celebration of the events of 1776! Also, you might enjoy this reading of the declaration you can find at monticello.org podcasts done by a portrayer of Thomas Jefferson (Bill Barker).

Transcription of the Declaration of Independence, plus links to the Declaration at the National Archives.

This document, writted originally by Thomas Jefferson in June of 1776 documents the greivances that the colonists had against King George and asserts our right to be an independent state.

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Read the rest of this entry »

June 6th… it’s a day that to many is no different from any other. In many ways it’s a day that should be more sacred than so many on our calendar. I can’t help but get emotional thinking about D-Day June 6, 1944. The beginning of the Allied invasion of Europe and the liberation of France as well as the turn of the tide in the course of history. Hitler’s Germany had steamrolled Europe, the “Atlantic Wall” was seemingly impenetrable and England and been suffering the repeated bombings from the Luftwaffe…. The sheer scope and scale of that day in Normandy is unimaginable and as I watched specials and retellings of the day on the History channel here I can’t help but get emotional at the amazing feat that those men achieved and the horrible “what if it had failed”… unimaginable as well.

Read the rest of this entry »