Wednesday, March 10, 2010

52 Weeks To Better Genealogy - Challenge #10--Family Search Pilot


Investigate Family Search Pilot, which is part of FamilySearch.org. This is a wonderful collection of records which literally grows every day. In the middle left of the page is a link that says “Browse our record collections.” Click it and pick a region. Search collections outside your research interest. Investigate the types of records collected all over the world and see how they differ from those with which you are familiar. If you are a genealogy blogger, pick a type of record from another country and share your observations about it.


This search engine is not new to me, but I did not find it on my own. My husband's aunt, a genealogist from way back, introduced me to it back in the fall. She does not own a computer; however, she is a member of the local genealogical society where is lives and there was an article about the site in her newsletter. Thankfully, she passed it along to me.

Living in Ohio and researching numerous Ohioans from the past, this site has been a HUGE help to me as all the early to mid 1950's death certificates are on line. Granted I sometimes have to play around with the spelling of the names to find the documents, but detective work IS a BIG part of genealogy, isn't it! West Virginia is another state I work in and they have also put a death certificate website on line. I wish other states would follow suit.

To be honest, until this challenge, I had not looked to see what other information was out on the Family Search Pilot. I do have family from England, so I decided to poke around those records. I did not have any success finding my family.

So, I am searching back in the good old USA--Columbiana County, Ohio since there are early tax records and I have NEVER seen those before. WOW....this is a HAPPY DANCE time....here is one of the records I found.


Lindsay Cannon or Lindsey Cannon is my maternal ggg grandfather. I had found an early Columbiana County newspaper article years ago mentioning that he was the owner of a mill in St. Clair Township, Columbiana County, Ohio. There is in that area a village called Cannons Mills, which I had to believe was named for his mill. Here is a tax record that proves he DID have a mill in St. Clair township--a gristmill, distillery and sawmill. I need to explore more of these tax records for Lindsey as well as for other ancestors in the Columbiana County area.

COOL BEANS!


© 2010, copyright Linda Hughes Hiser

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