Thursday, December 20, 2007

Upstate New York Genealogy Website 411

This Blog will inform new visitors of the types of materials that will be found on the website of
Upstate New York Genealogy
at www.unyg.com.

When you land on the homepage of unyg, you will see across the top some tabs.

The first tab is for the "UNYG Blog" which will bring you to where you are reading this.

The next is a new tab for a "UNYG Store," which is not yet active, but might be real soon.

The next tab is, "Favorite Links" a collection of links that we started with a couple of years ago, which needs updating.

The tab for "FAQs" means "Frequently Asked Questions," answers to questions posed in the early development period of this website.

The tab marked "Contact Us" will bring up an email link to the webmaster.

The tab for "Privacy" was put on to explain our Privacy Policy.

The "Site Map" tab is a quick way to get a feel for the contents of the site, but is designed such that bots like Google, Yahoo, MSN and others can automatically index the contents of the site.

The top left corner of the website is a search box that searches just the unyg site, it does not search the Blog site. A separate search box is on the "UNYG Blog" page.

Under that is "HOME" which you can see from all sub pages and will bring you back to the start.

"BASIC GENEALOGY" is a paper of a very old lecture that we used to give to groups of individuals that were just starting out in searching for their ancestors. It is a little dated, but the basic ideas are still relevant.

"CIVIL WAR RESEARCH IN NY" is a collection of instructions and links to persons looking for Civil War ancestors.

"INTERNET GENEALOGY" also is dated, from an old series of lectures given, but some of the processes are still valid.

"INTERNET SECURITY" is also a few years old, but good advice. (We will get around to updating these older instruction areas, real soon now...)

"LAND RECORDS" is one of our favorite areas of instruction. If you have not been using land Records in your family history research, you are missing out on a fantastic resource. Please print the instructions out and refer to them often.

"MAYFLOWER CONNECTION" is a non-documented basic set of charts that show our own family connection to three of the Mayflower passengers, George SOULE, Francis COOKE, and Edward FULLER. Please use it with care, it is for general information only and these lines are not officially proven.

"NY COUNTIES & CENSUS" shares the hot spot with the Civil War button, according to the stats program that we use to monitor our website activity. This very informative page is a chart that we developed some years ago to explain the dates that the various counties were formed, their parent counties if not an original, the name of the county seat, and a list of partial or complete holdings of the New York State Censuses that might be available for each county. These state censuses are very helpful in addition to the federal censuses that are on-line. Most of the state censuses are not on-line yet, a very few exceptions, and usually only a few parts. The best places to view these censuses are at the NYS Library, any LDS Family History Center, and some of the other excellent research libraries around the country.

"OLD CAMBRIDGE DISTRICT" is a description of a collection of about 30,000 manuscript Family Group Sheets of an in-depth area study of the South East corner of Washington County, NY., which is generally the now towns of Cambridge, Jackson and White Creek, and covers from the colonial period up to about the Civil War period. None of these records have been digitized and we just keep building the collection with the grand plan of publishing it all, some day...

"RESEARCHERS GATHERING" (not presently being used.)

"PROGRAMS & LECTURES" is a partial list of some of the conference and genealogical society lectures given by Dick Hillenbrand in the past and a place to post announcements about some of the forthcoming programs to be given.

"BOOK REVIEWS" needs to be updated. At present there is only one book reviewed and we have many more to put up, some day, real soon now...

"DATA / IMAGES" is a collection of images and scans of some manuscript items that we want to share with researchers. We have much more to add, when we can get a round tuit.

"MY TOOLS" will show a chart that is handy to print out and use when you are searching pre 1850 federal censuses, where only the name of the head of the household is given and everyone is counted in age groupings. This chart will help you decide "APPROXIMATELY" the years of possible birth range.

"MY GENEALOGIES" is a list of some of our own ancestors and is shown in basic fact format only. If anyone thinks they might tie into any of these people listed, we are very willing to share our full blown version of these genealogies complete with voluminous notes and all sources cited.

Next is a "Google Search" box where you can instantly search for anything on the Internet without having to leave the unyg site.

You will now be seeing some advertising on this website also, as we need a little help paying for webspace and bandwidth.

The logo for "s-go consulting" will take you to the homepage of our wonderful hosts and website developers down near Ithaca, NY. Please visit s-go if you EVER have need for any website assistance of your own. They are a FIRST RATE company!

Lastly, the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG) logo. A group of highly dedicated and motivated professional researchers that share ideas and methods, and keep up with the latest in the world of family history research.

The body of the website is dynamic and constantly changing with fresh material.

Please bookmark our site or add it to your favorites, come back often to see what's new or revisit some materials that you have seen on www.unyg.com in the past.

Ps: Don’t forget to click on the “UNYG Blog” at every visit to see what our most recent postings are.

Dick Hillenbrand

Upstate New York Genealogy

www.unyg.com

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