Windham County Genealogy Interest Group: ONLINE

Windham County Genealogy Interest Group Meeting

March 4, 2023

Finding Your Ancestors in Immigration Records

The Windham County Genealogy Interest Group will hold its next meeting on Saturday, March 4, 2023, from 11am to 1pm, ON ZOOM ONLY. ****Please note that this is a change from the original in-person plan, because of the predicted bad weather.****

Please register at this link https://bit.ly/WCGIGMAR4

To join the Zoom session, please use this link http://bit.ly/3Zf19Gl

Jerry Carbone and Wayne Blanchard will explore how to find ancestors in immigration records using ship manifests, border crossings, naturalization records and census records that asked citizenship questions.  Except for those of Native American heritage, everyone in the United States had ancestors who arrived from other places.

“Our goal is to assist genealogists and history enthusiasts in finding their ancestors and tracing their journey to the United States,” said Blanchard.  “By understanding how to access immigration records, attendees will be able to uncover the stories of their forebears and learn more about their family history.”

The presentations will show attendees how to use websites, such as, stevemorse.org and ancestry.com to find Ellis Island records and other ports of entry to the U.S. to  include Boston, Baltimore, Galveston, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.  For those with ancestors who immigrated earlier than the Ellis Island era, other methods must be used.  Using journals and court records, for example, it is possible in some cases to learn a lot about how English ancestors came to New England during the Great Migration of the 1630s.

The Windham County (Vt.) Genealogy Interest Group is an informal organization whose members are dedicated to genealogy education, research, and best practices. Meetings are held every other month on Zoom. Many of these sessions were recorded and are available on the WCGIG YouTube Channel, which cover topics  as: improving your search results in FamilySearch.org and Ancestry.com; using family tree software; navigating the crowd sources cemetery database, Find A Grave; using land records for genealogy research;  using AmericanAncestors.org, the  database of the New England Historic Genealogical Society; finding people in the newly released 1950 U.S. Census.

For more information please contact windhamcountygig@gmail.com.