Henrietta M. Christmas - Digging Up Your Roots April 19, 2014

April 2014

The Genealogy Center
On the Second Level of
The Albuquerque Main Library
501 Copper Street
Albuquerque, New Mexico
(on the northwest corner of 5th and Copper)

(Click here to view map.)

Saturday, April 19, 2014
10:30 AM - 12:30 PM

The New Mexico Genealogical Society

Presents

Henrietta Martinez Christmas

Digging Up Your Roots -
Using Land Grant Records;
With a Focus on the
Albuquerque/ Bernalillo Area

Land grants were handed out to individuals and communities during Spain and Mexico's control of the Southwest. This lecture will focus on records for the Albuquerque and Bernalillo land.

Henrietta M. Christmas is an author, lecturer, and full-time genealogist. She lectures statewide in New Mexico and Colorado on topics related to Hispanics from as early as 1542 through 1850. A native New Mexican who descends from eleven soldiers who came with Oñate in 1598; she currently resides in Corrales.

This program is free and open to the public.

Questions? Call (505) 796-0376 or email info@nmgs.org.

Genealogy in New Mexico Libraries

Have you ever wondered what genealogy resources you have in your community? Have you tried looking at your local library? I went to the websites of a few of the libraries around the state, and I found out some interesting things. For instance, did you know many libraries have access to Ancestry.com and other genealogy databases? Did you know that many have vertical files of newspaper and magazine clippings that might have articles about your ancestors? Did you know that some of these libraries have collections from their local historical and genealogical societies? Check out your local library, whether it is mentioned here or not!

Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Library

Rio Rancho Library

Clovis-Carver Public Library

Socorro Public Library

Navajo Nation Library (Window Rock, AZ)

Gallup Public Library

Ruidoso Library

New Mexico State University (Las Cruces, NM)

Las Cruces Public Library

Moriarty Public Library (Historical Society and Museum)

Los Lunas Museum of Heritage and Arts

Belen Library

Roswell Library

New Mexico Military Records

From the Albuquerque Genealogy Center's web page:

New Military Records for New Mexicans Now Available!

Do you have relatives from New Mexico who served in the Civil War or World War I?  We now have World War I biographical questionnaires from the New Mexico Office of the Adjutant General and Civil War application files available for many New Mexicans.

Thanks to a generous donation from genealogist Henrietta Christmas, we've been able to add microfilmed biographical questionnaires for World War I veterans from New Mexico.  In addition to biographical information, many of these records include other correspondence and photographs of the soldiers.  Also included on the rolls are lists of World War I casualties, wounded, unclaimed Gold Star Awards, and National Guard Enlistment Records.  The Library also has microfilmed copies of World War I draft enrollment cards for New Mexicans.

Genealogist Nancy Anderson and the New Mexico Genealogical Society have also generously donated Civil War pension application files for many New Mexicans.  Some of these applications were done by wounded soldiers and others by widows.  They are now filed with other family records in the Genealogy Center's family files.

All of these materials now have records in the Library's online catalog, contain a wealth of information about these soldiers and their families, and are available for researchers.

 I checked the ABC Library catalog, and found a list of 35 pension records that are in vertical files. Click on this link to see that list.

For more information about how to access this collection, click on this link for the ABC Libraries Genealogy Center.

Enjoy!

Helpful Links for New Mexican genealogists

Searching through the Internet, I discovered a few links that might be helpful to New Mexicans genealogists specifically and genealogists in general:

* FREE U.S. Censuses - The Internet Archive has images of all the microfilms for the censuses between 1790 and 1930! The only thing is that these images aren't searchable through a search engine. You'll have to scroll through them as you would scroll through microfilm. But, what do you want for nothing!

* The Internet Archive: Genealogy - The Internet Archives not only has census records, but all kinds of other records online. Compiled records of Confederate military units, compiled records of Union military units, Passenger lists of vessels for Baltimore and Philadelphia, a collection of War Records, etc. Once again, you'll need to scroll through the scanned images, and you'll need to figure out Soundex codes for some of the records.

* Rootsweb Soundex Converter - speaking of the Soundex system, here is a Soundex converter. Did you know that the Soundex code for Bourguinon is B622?

* Social Media Mavericks: 40 to Follow - The best blogs, tweeters, Facebookers, Pinners, and YouTubers on the list. For some reason the New Mexico Genealogical Society's blog and Facebook page did not make the list.

* National Archives Virtual Genealogy Fair - Online video lectures on all kinds of things the National Archives has to offer to genealogists. My favorite: "Introduction to Military Records at the National Archives".

* Bataan-Corregidor Memorial Foundation of New Mexico, Inc. - Many New Mexicans were casualties of the Bataan Death March and subsequent internments. Find out about these brave men on this site.

* Farmington, New Mexico Research Databases - The Farmington Public Library system has a few free research databases that are useful to genealogists. Heritage Quest and Sandborn Maps are accessible from your home computer as long as you have a Farmington library card. Ancestry.com is accessible only at the library. Other databases listed on the library's research database page might also be useful.

* Albuquerque Genealogy Center - And don't forget the databases available from the Albuquerque Public Library system. These include the "Newspaper Archive", "American Ancestors", "Ancestry.com", "Fold3", "Heritage Quest", and "Digital Sandborn Maps".  Recently I've been using Fold3 to find military records for my great-great grandfather.

* New Mexico Family Historian's Toolbox - I created a Pinterest Board of helpful sites for New Mexicans. Check it out! (You'll need a Pinterest account to see it, I think.)

- Robert J. C. Baca, New Mexico Genealogical Society President