RQG Christmas Presents to You
We asked our members about what hints and tips they would give as Christmas gifts to genealogists and family historians everywhere. Here are the results!
John Boeren gives the gift of images of objects, photographs, paintings and much more, which are in the collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Their collection is digitised and you can use images to illustrate your own family history or client reports. All images are available free of charge, free of copyrights. You only need to create an (free) account.
https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/nl/rijksstudio
Simon Kirkpatrick’s gift to you is that French documents created during the period of the first French Republic from 1792 to 1805 use the unique Republican calendar. Each ‘month’ consisted of 3 decades. with each decade being 10 days. Although introduced in October 1793, it was backdated with the first month, Vendemaire, starting on September 22, 1792. Each day of the year was named after a plant or something natural, each 5th day after an animal, each 10th day after an agricultural implement. A useful calculator for converting the dates to the Gregorian calendar is here (https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/the-republican-calendar/)
Kathie Ross’ gift to you is when you are transcribing a deed or other document, find the standard working for the document and use that to make your transcribing easier by searching for standard phrasing. Bookmark pages such as the University of Nottingham’s Deeds site (https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscriptsandspecialcollections/researchguidance/deeds/introduction.aspx)
Janice Smith’s gift to you is that The National Library of Scotland (NLS) holds an archive of Scottish Post Office Directories and you can access these online . The archive contains over 700 digitized directories spanning from 1773 to 1911. They provide name, occupation and address for individuals and for businesses. They can be accessed using this link https://digital.nls.uk/directories/
Anne Powers’ Christmas gift to you is …seek out Wills especially those of unmarried female ancestors who often left many small gifts to named relatives, describing how they were related to her and sometimes where they lived. The treasure trove is not the gifts she left them, but the details of family relationships that she left us.
Clare O’Grady’s Christmas gift to you is .. get involved with the family history society local to your research. They often have great projects and resources available and talking to people who are researching in your area can always give you some good ideas.
