AFTER THE GENEA-GOLDRUSH

I haven't blogged much so far this month. That's because I was out on a genea-goldrush.
Several of the top genealogy websites opened some record collections for free to celebrate
the 4th of July. They included:

Ancestry.com- Free access to the Vital Records of the original Thirteen Colonies. That ended
on July 5th.

American Ancestors-Free access to all the New England Great Migration material. That offer
ended on July 8th.

Fold 3- Free access to many of the Revolutionary War related records. That  offer is still
running until July 15th. 

This, for me, was great news. It was like someone yelling  "Thar's genea-gold on them thar
websites! Go get it!"

So I did!

I worked on the Ancestry collection first since that offer would expire first, and added a
slew of BMD records for the Barkers, Parkers, Ballards, and Phelps I'd added to my Ancestry
tree over the past year, being sure to check first the information matched what I already
knew about each person.

Then I moved onto the Great Migration collection, adding profiles from the Great Migration
book to files I already had on individuals, followed by the "Focus On..." articles in the Great
Migration newsletters.

On Fold3 I found a Revolutionary War Pension File for an ancestor of another family member.
I'm still going through that collection but I'd already found pensions for most of my Revolutionary
War ancestors years ago.


The Great Migration collection had the biggest nuggets of information. The profiles are great
resources because of all the records cited which give me clues on where to look for more myself. 
In several cases they helped push back a line another generation, some over to England. I discovered
I am descended from George Bunker, the man Bunker Hill was named after, and that in my Starr line I have a 10x great grandfather named Comfort Starr! (Love that name!) I also found some profiles for ancestors of that family member I mentioned earlier.

Now I will be going through the information I've found and analyzing it. It's going to be fun!

It was quite a busy weekend, but very rewarding!