GenealogyBlog

Do you know what sports if any your father or grandfather played in high school, college or beyond. Perhaps your mother or grandmother was the star of the basketball team or the ping pong champion of the school. With a little digging you can find out about the youthful activities that occupied your ancestors time.

The first and easiest way to find out is to ask. If your ancestor is still around ask him or her. If they are not, ask an older aunt or uncle or anyone who knew your ancestor. You might be surprised about what they know. Here are a few questions about what to ask them.

• What sports did you play when you were in high school or earlier?




• What position did you play?




• Tell me about one particular game or match that you remember playing in.




• What special awards did you earn while playing in the sport?




• Tell me about one of your teammates that you remember.




• Did you continue playing the sport in college or afterwords

You can use these or come up with some questions on your own. Try to ask them open ended questions rather than a questions which can be answered with a yes or no.

If there are no older relatives to ask, there are still resources you can look for to understand your ancestors life in school and sports. Here are some of my favorite resources to look for;

• High School Yearbook: Many of these can be found at the local historical society or library.




• College Yearbook: You can find these at the college library.




• Local Newspaper Articles: A lot of newspapers are being digitized and indexed. If your lucky your ancestor’s hometown newspaper is one of them.




• High School or College Programs: Many teams published a yearly pamphlet about their teams


Below is a small sample of what you might find.


• High School or College Newspaper: School newspapers highlighted the sports programs.


Here is another example of what you might find.

If you know of any additional resources to find out about the sports your ancestors played, please reply to this post. We would love to hear about them.

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Newspaper Archive Search at Genealogy Bank

Newspaper Archive Search and NewspaperArchive.com

Town reports can be a tremendous find when looking for information about your ancestors. I have found a lot of hidden genealogy nuggets within town reports especially town reports from the mid to late 1800s. More than just town officials are located within this report. The towns poorest residents were listed as they often received monetary support from the town. The town often needed to pay for the burial of someone who died and couldn’t afford the burial costs. This may be the only evidence of your ancestors death in some cases.

Old town reports may be kept within your local town hall. Check with your town clerk. They may also be kept at your local historical society or even your local library.

The image below is from the 1891 Town Report from Seymour, Connecticut. For towns which did not have a cityor town directory, this type of report may be used to help create a census substitute.

Here are a few highlights from this page;

• J. W. Bassett digging grave for J. Iles 4.00
• J. W. Bassett digging grave for Samuel Lum 4.00
• W.B. Stoddard house rent for Thomas Sheehan 10.00

As you can see there can be some very helpful information about your ancestor. I’ve found about 10% of of a small town’s population are listed within a town report. If you do find your ancestor listed in one years town report look for the other years.

Below are some entries about my ancetsor Patrick Fraher/Fryher. Those of you who are regular readers of this blog will know a little background about him.

1870 New Britain Connecticut Town Report

1871 New Britain Connecticut Town Report

1873 New Britain Connecticut Town Report

Patrick Fryher was a Civil War Veteran who was discharged due to a disability. Apparently he hit his head during training and was in and out of insane asylums for the better part of his life after the civil war. He moved to New Britain, Connecticut in about 1869. The town reports confirm his insanity and that his family received support from the town out of the poor house.

One additional item I overlooked until I was writing this blog was an entry in the 1871 New Britain Town Report. That entry was “James Glashean, for 2 children of T. Corocran … 110.00″. A great great aunt of mine was married to a James Glashean in New Britain, Connecticut. I would have never had expected him to be listed in the Poor House section of the report.

So look for town reports where your ancestors lived. You’ll never know what hidden genealogy nugget you will discover in them.

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Christmas Gift Idea: Buy the genealogist in your a subscription to ancestry.com

Most researchers who’ve been doing genealogy for some time have heard of Heritage Quest. Heritage Quest is available through a number of libraries. In Connecticut, we’re lucky to have the state library have a subscription to Heritage Quest. With this subscription, a Connecticut resident can access Heritage Quest for free at their own home with a library card from the state of Connecticut.

There are six main areas of research available on Heritage Quest;

• Census
• Books
• PERSI
• Revolutionary War
• Freedman’s Bank
• U.S. Serial Set

In this blog post, we will explore a few tips for using the Census on Heritage Quest and how to get the most out of it. Although Ancestry.com has the census as well, you may be able to find that ellusive census record on Heritage quest which you weren’t able to on Ancestry. Heritage Quest has a different index than Ancestry and there are some tricks you can try on Heritage. When you click on Heritage Quest, go to the advance tab. Here are few tips I’ve used on Heritage Quest to varying degrees of success.

• FIRST NAME SEARCH: You don’t need to include a last name. If your ancestor, his wife or one of his/her children have an unusual name, try to find you ancestor with just the unusual first name. In order to limit the results, you’ll have to include the year, state, county and a location.
• IMMIGRANT ANCESTOR?: For immigrate ancestors, you may not need either the first name or the last name. I’ve been able to find some ellusive census records, including just the birthplace, state, county and location.
• LAST NAME VARIATIONS Heritage Quest doesn’t have a soundex index so you’ll have to try variaions of your ancestors names. For example, my Fraher’s have been indexed as Fryher, Friher, Fraher, Fraher and Frayer to name a few.
• SORT YOUR RESULTS In Heriatge Quest, a result set will only come back if you have 1,000 or fewer hits. You can page through the list looking for your ancestor, or you can choose to sort it various ways. If your ancestors first letter of his last name has been transcribed incorrectly, you might not look under “Boyle” if your ancetsors last name is actually “Doyle”

If you’ve had trouble finding a census record on ancestry.com, take a look at Heritage Quest. You might find that hidden genealogy record.

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Christmas Gift Idea: How about a gift subscription to a great genealogy website.

This photo comes from a 19th century Sanders & Fryher Photo album. If you can identify the date, age of the individual or who the person is, please post a remark about it.

This is a very small tin type photo.