Saturday, March 27, 2010

Nebraska Disasters


In the course of your research, you may have found or heard about an ancestor being involved in some type of accident or disaster. Perhaps it was just a rumor or they may have lived to tell the story.

Nebraska/GenDisasters is a great web page for information on everything from train accidents to fires and tornadoes that occurred in this state. There are 27 pages of links to articles about disasters. Some of these include a tornado that was at Fort Kearny in June of 1859, the Omaha Dewey Hotel Fire in February 1913, a Lincoln, NE train wreck in August of 1894 and a collision of trains at Indianola in May of 1911. There is usually further information, sometimes news articles, names of people involved and photographs.

If you are interested in the history of Nebraska, this is also a great web site to check. The home page provides links to browse by disaster, states, years and more. Check it out!

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Nebraska Free Lookups


Ever wish you could access all kinds of records for Nebraska? There is hope if you spend some time checking out web pages and then preparing queries for lookups. Many of them are free just for the asking.

GenaSearch hosts Nebraska Free Genealogy Look Ups. The people performing these tasks are volunteers. They will check offline resources. Be sure you follow the directions.

Is there a book or information you need in the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, but can't get there? FHC Angel Lookup Requests may be what you need. Volunteers will try to help!

Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness (RAOGK) is a well known site and has proven helpful to many genealogists. Be sure you read the guidelines for making requests. After reading that you will be directed to a listing of volunteers. Many counties in Nebraska have volunteer listings ... anything from public record lookups to photos of tombstones and more.

This is a great way to find information you need but cannot access at the time of your research. Good luck!