The Mercantile Marine War Medal

This week FindMyPast is bringing over 600,000 new records online, including:

• Merchant Navy, First World War Medal Cards, 1914-1925

In this database I was able to find a Cassingham cousin who was recorded in the 1901 & 1911 UK census records as a Marine Engineer:

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The Mercantile Marine War Medal was awarded to members of the Merchant Navy for one or more voyages through a war or danger zone during the course of World War I.



The RELIC Room in Prince William County, VA

The Ruth E. Lloyd Information Center (RELIC), located in the Bull Run Regional Library, is a special collection devoted to genealogy and local history with a focus on Virginia and Prince William County. 

Materials found in the RELIC room include published and manuscript materials, indexes and research guides, photographs, maps, microfilms, and computer (CD-ROM) databases. 
They have an excellent website that includes a large digital library with links to vital records, photos, images,  historical records, and maps.  The staff there are very helpful, and they even have an online 'ask RELIC' page where you can submit questions related to genealogy or local history.

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Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections

The Illinois Digital Newspaper Collection contains 45 newspaper titles that include historic Illinois newspapers ranging from 1831 to 1975 and is continually growing.  You can browse by collection, date, or title. The website also offers Simple and Advanced Search options.  A great feature:  readers can easily correct  the OCR text to improve future search results.

Searching the Google Newspaper Archives

Currently, Google News search only returns content from the past 30 days. The "advanced web search page" will let you search by date or date range, but only up to 1970.  To search in earlier time periods, you can use site:news.google.com/newspapers xxxxx

For example, I used
site:news.google.com/newspapers Macoupin 1880

and found:

 

 

To see if there is a newspaper covering your area of interest,

check the list of the digitized historical newspapers available

 on Google at  http://news.google.com/newspapers.

If you know the specific time period and place you are searching, you can actually read though individual newspaper issues by choosing a newspaper from the above list and selecting the "Browse this newspaper" tab.

Have fun!

List of Online Newspaper Archives

Wikipedia: List of online newspaper archives  contains a list of free and pay-to-view digital online newspaper archives. Most are searchable using OCR technology. I found that some will offer an abstract with the option to purchase the full article (like the example below). The list contains links to newspapers from all over the world.  For the U.S. and Canada, the links are divided States and Provinces, and the UK has sub-links for Scotland and Wales.

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Thrifty Thursday: JSTOR Digital Library

JSTOR  is a digital library that holds a treasure trove of primary sources, journals, and books.
Many of these, including The William & Mary Quarterly,  are available free through their website. http://www.jstor.org/ offers a basic search field and an advanced search option.

I entered the surname Cassingham and found an article of interest.

This article is available for download for a fee or I can read it online at no cost by registering for a MyJSTOR account.

 With an account I can have up to 3 items in my personal bookshelf for 14 days, after which I can remove the item(s) and select another one to view.

 Now, with my account created, I can read the article at my leisure online for free.

http://www.jstor.org is a great site to bookmark and add to your arsenal of genealogy references.

Massachusetts Birth Records - Online images at your fingertips

FamilySearch.org provides free access to many original records. 

Easily searchable, the Massachusetts, Birth, 1841-1915 collection contains 3,818,515 records which can be viewed as they were recorded in the state registers. Below is the birth record for Gertrude A. Hughes, born 29 Nov 1897 in New Bedford, MA, daughter of Edward L. and Lillian Emily (Cassingham) Hughes.

(click image to enlarge)

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