Over the weekend, we put our collective brains together to come up with an idea for a blog theme to run through June (apart from Sundays which is sacrosanct for #52Ancestors). The ideas ranged from the bizarre to the downright ridiculous and that was before today began!
It would be true to say that this particular Monday has been more odd than most. That said, it’s been lovely talking to several people about the plans for their family history presentation gifts and others about their claims to intestate estates on the Treasury Solicitors list. New headshots collected from Cre8ive Studios – check out the Meet the Managing Director page – and then a new laptop to be sourced. Oh … no…. we have Mark Steel at Everything IT for that!
And so, the day disappears and someone says, ‘Have we posted today’s blog?’…. erm, no…. nor have we written it, it would seem! Apologies it’s a little later than our usual missive. Blame it on the workload here @ FWL.
You are probably wondering what we did decide to focus on in June, I guess. Well, each week in June, on a Monday, we will focus on European family, local or social history research turning to other continents of the world between Tuesday and Saturday. And today, we thought we would start with Austria….
Ancestry, FamilySearch and Cyndi’s List provide information pages about researching in different European countries – indeed, in countries around the world. The surprise for us with regard to Austrian resources was GenealogyLinks.net with links to, amongst other things, an Austrian Holocaust Victims online database of 61,000 Austrian Holocaust victims. Shame our German isn’t up to much as many of the sources available are not in English – of course! Ancestry’s New York City Immigrants (Austria, Galicia, Poland), 1890 includes 44,000 persons who arrived in New York City from Austria, Galicia and Poland during 1890…. 1,080 people called Franz, alone! So, when the next person says to you, ‘I can’t trace my ancestry because my relatives came from Austria’ (or fill in any other European country to be honest!), tell them to get Googling!
[Disclaimer: other search engines are available.]
