UpFront with NGS: disasters

Showing posts with label disasters. Show all posts

13 August 2014

Even now records are at risk to be lost ... Fires, flooding, theft, etc., are NOT just something that happened to our ancestors!

Recent events remind us that fires and floods and theft are not just the purview of when our ancestors lived, they are events that happen every day. Every time they happen, a bit of history can be lost or in these cases, a lot of history!

Burglars steal 100 years of historical records

Late July 14/early July 15, burglars broke into the church through a window, and then broke into a locked office. There, across from Chaska’s City Square Park, they lugged out a 3-foot by 3-foot metal safe. The safe held about four ledgers recording births, weddings and deaths, as well as an index... All the pivotal moments in the life of a Moravian parishioner, from about 1920 all the way to a baptism recorded within the last two weeks, were in the books, Eder said. The earliest records of the Chaska church, founded in 1858, have been shipped to the church’s headquarters in Bethlehem, Penn., he said.

Cause undetermined for fire that destroyed Hancock County Courthouse

In 1885, the Hancock County Courthouse was two years old when an all-white jury upheld the wishes of David Dickson, a wealthy planter who had left much of his estate to his illegitimate daughter born of a slave mother... Investigators called the building a total loss. It housed the county commissioners’ office, Probate Court, Superior Court and the elections office... Foster said clerks of the Probate and Superior courts used walk-in vaults to store many important documents, like deeds and birth certificates. Doors to the vaults typically are closed at the end of the work day, he said... Joslyn said many court records were microfilmed in the 1950s. Although the microfilm can be tough to read at times, the film is stored at the state archives.

Though I often comment to my clients that “real life” can take precedence over our research into our ancestors as the long-deceased are just that and their records will continue to be available into the future. Events such as these serve as a reminder that my assertion might not be completely true. Fortunately, even our modern court houses and churches do not hold ALL the records created during the lives of our ancestors. We just have to be a bit more creative in what types of records we research.

That said, it behooves us to do what we can to “preserve” records important to future genealogists and family historians.

Please do what you can to help ensure that your local records remain safe. Make sure they at least get transcribed by a person or society, or better yet, possibly provide financial support so they are microfilmed.

What have you or your society done recently to ensure that local records will remain available to future family historians?

Do you know of a situation where all was not lost in a fire, flood, theft, etc., due to steps having been taken to ensure that at least the content (if not the physical records themselves) of records was preserved?

Editor’s Note: Previous Upfront with NGS posts on related topics:

· Disaster Preparedness for Genealogists -- Are you Prepared?

· Disasters and Genealogy -- our ancestors were greatly affected by natural events, like "Sandy," also!

· “I’m Sorry, Those Records Were Lost” – California Genealogical Society Publication Gives Researchers New Hope

· The Dayton (OH) Flood -- one example of a devastating natural disaster -- part of a collection of then and now images from natural disasters

· FREE Video Series -- Caring and Preserving Family Papers, Photographs and More

P.S. If you happen to know if the safe was recovered or if there is any knowledge on what survived (or didn't) the courthouse fire, please post a comment to let us know.

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Unless indicated otherwise or clearly an NGS Public Relations piece, Upfront with NGS posts are written by Diane L Richard, editor, Upfront with NGS.

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07 November 2013

Disaster Preparedness for Genealogists -- Are you Prepared?

Created using Wordle, http://www.wordle.net/create

Though September was National Preparedness Month, disasters are something that we always need to be prepared for, whether for ourselves, a society we belong to or an institution. We all have in our possession invaluable items of historical and genealogical relevance.

A disaster can strike at any time and come in many guises. Lisa Louise Cooke (Genealogy Gems) recently did a series on this topic:

- Disaster Preparedness for Genealogists: Assess Your Assets Part 1

- Disaster Preparedness for Genealogists Part 2: Duplicate the Past

- Disaster Preparedness for Genealogists Past 3: Protect Precious Originals

- Disaster Planning for Genealogists Part 4: Share and Update Files

She gives a lot of great advice in short digestible chunks.

A few other neat resources on this topic are:

- Is Your Family History Archive Ready for a Disaster? (Diane Haddad, Genealogy Insider)

- Save Your Stuff Blog (I found this an interesting collection of articles regarding conservation which also has relevance to preservation if a disaster were to strike)

- 7 Steps to Disaster-Prep Your Genealogy (Denise Levernick, The Family Curator)

- Emergency Preparedness, Response & Recovery (Library of Congress)

- Emergency Preparedness (National Archives)

A key element of all of this great information is that the time to prepare for a disaster or emergency is BEFORE it strikes. During or after such an event is “too little too late!”

Living in an area prone to hurricanes, never mind other weather-related challenges, it only took the first hurricane to really really appreciate how quickly a disaster can strike.

Do you have any tips or additional resources we should know about?

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Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

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29 October 2012

Disasters and Genealogy -- our ancestors were greatly affected by natural events, like "Sandy," also!

With “Sandy” approaching and many taking important safety precautions ... I thought it appropriate to post about past disasters and related and how they impact our search for our ancestors. It might be that records are missing due to a natural disaster. Or maybe crops were destroyed, factories ruined or livelihoods otherwise impacted. This may have cause families to move, prematurely filled cemeteries, etc. Unfortunately, disasters do give us records about our family – often not records of the warm and fuzzy kind and yet how they were affected by a disaster tells us a lot about their lives and our heritage!

Though, I have to laugh as I went to visit my favorite “disasters” site, GenDisasters, since it has a genealogy focus to find that the message on the home page reads ...

This page has gone missing. It could have been lost at sea, swept away by a storm, or been buried under a landslide.

The page may be here hiding under a different name. So, there's a good chance that we have the article on that train wreck, hurricane, fire, etc.

Please click below to go to the main page of the site - from there you can use the search engine or browse the articles by state or province, type of disaster, and year - to see if you can locate the material.

And, if you just do a Google (or similar) search on GenDisasters – the sub-pages are listed and you can still use the site. For example, this link takes you to the “browse by state” feature.

Here are some other articles and resources for incorporating “disasters” and related into your research as well as the stories of your ancestors:

Do you have a favorite source for information about what disasters might have befallen our ancestors?

Were your ancestors affected by such? My great grandmother died in the flu epidemic of 1918 and I have not yet uncovered any “natural” disasters in historical records though I will never forget hurricane Fran when it hit Raleigh in 1996 ...

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Follow NGS via Facebook, YouTube, Google+, Twitter

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Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com