Week 5 Lesson 9 -- History and Genealogy Resources - Ancestry Library, Heritage Quest and Sanborn Maps

I had a hard time finding the place in Ancestry Library to search for “Ship Pictures and Descriptions”.   I finally found it under the list of more databases and then by clicking “Immigration and Travel”.  I was then able to narrow down the timeframe and search for passenger ships by the first letter of the name of the ship.  By looking at the pictures of the Titanic, I was not able to see much about a sister ship, so I type in “Sisterships of the Titanic” and looked in the results for ones that was built in 1911 by the same shipping line as the Titanic and came up with a picture and description of the Olympic.

Once again it took a little looking to find the link to Ancestry Library’s “Newspapers & Publications”.  I am beginning to understand why knowing these websites inside and out is so important.  I went to the link to more collections, clicked on all databases, and off to the left hand side found a link to newspapers and publications.  I limited the search to just newspapers, clicked on the link to “Search Entire Newspapers Categories”, and then typed in Hindenburg in the keyword search box.  I could then sort the over 300 results by category or by relevance.  Noticing that Hindenburg was also a popular name, I limited the search further by adding the word dirigible, and I got over 400 results.  When I added the word explosion, I got over 11,000 results.  I obviously wasn’t doing something right, so I started over and tried the periodicals which only resulted in 3.  But none of these seemed to have much useful information so I went back to sort through the newspaper articles.  I may not have been using the right limiters, but I never did find a useful article about the history of the Hindenburg.

Using Heritage Quest, I first clicked on the link to “Search PERSI”, clicked places, and then typed in Brule County and chose South Dakota.  I was shown 50 results with several familiar options including titles with Bijou Hills, Peterson farm, Chamberlain Register and the Lyman County Argus Leader, the history, Chamberlain, Pukwana, Red Lake, people who owned land, the cemeteries, homesteads, townships and much more.  Some of the entries included local genealogy newsletters with several volumes available while others are from the South Dakota Historical Society.  There would be plenty of items for the townsfolk to digest, but it would take a bit of time to acquire all that you would need because the articles all said, “Copies of this article may be obtained by completing the request form.”    I wonder how extensive this process is and how long it takes?  Either way, there seemed to be a lot of information.