1927 Pennsylvania Agricultural Census

If your farming family lived in Pennsylvania in 1927, you might want to give this site a look at: http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/census_manuscripts/2959

Are You Saving Your Searches?

Create some type of document where you can track your websearches, particularly any "creative" ones you use at search engines such as Google, etc. You'll never remember later ones you searched for and reviewing the ones you have done will help you to see where they could possibly be tweaked to get better results.

You might even want to consider posting them to a blog so any really bored genealogists could offer suggestions.

That's not likely to happen--but keeping track of them is an excellent idea. You might even want to connect with another genealogist and compare search strategies.

School's Out Blowout-Get Year 1 of Casefile Clues Back Issues for $10!

To celebrate the end of summer school for me, we're offering a discounted rate on year 1 issues of my newsletter Casefile Clues.

• Year 1 of Casefile Clues for $10! (only valid as long as this blog post still loads--if you can see it, the offer is still good).

Grow your genealogy, see how problems are solved, sources analyzed, and information organized. We focus on showing the method, not just the one way that worked to solve the problem. Our concentration is on clear writing that explains process.

Topics from Year 1 can be viewed here--click back to view this offer page.

Consider Making A Blog

One of the best ways to create "cousin bait" is to create your own blog. You can post content as often as you want, only post what you are comfortable with, include images, etc.

The blog will appear in search engine results and you may locate family members who simply googled a relative's name.

And some will find your site, copy the information, and never ever contact you. If that's a concern, think twice before you post.

Just remember that there are people with a passing interest in their genealogy who are not active in online genealogy groups, societies, message boards, Ancestry.com, FamilySearch, etc.

Ancestry.com Submitters Who Don't Respond

I often contact submitters of the online trees at Ancestry.com, hoping to make a connection with someone researching the same family.

But don't be surprised if many do not respond. Some apparently have lost interest. Others may take a while to respond and there may be others who are not quite as interested in family history as you are even though they respond.

Indiana Marriage Index to 1850

Housed at the Indiana State Library, this index covers up through 1850. Wildcards are not used, but partial names can be entered, which serves the same purpose. Searching for Wil New is advised when searching for a name such as William Newman.

Soundex is not supported, so be clever with those names and keep in mind alternate spellings.

The searches can be conducted with only one letter in each box--at least when this tip was written. That's really neat as most sites do not allow that.

The database is located here http://208.119.72.68/INMarriages1850/marriages_search.asp

Chronicling America-Free Digital Newspapers at Library of Congress

3.6 million newspaper pages from newspapers across the United States can be searched on the Library of Congress site http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/newspapers/.

Give it a try if it has been a while.