TIP OF THE WEEK –
OKLAHOMA VITAL RECORDS INDEX

Oklahoma’s Dept. of Health now has an online vital records index, called OK2Explore. This is a free, searchable index of births and deaths in the state of Oklahoma; included are details of births more than 20 years ago, and of deaths more than 5 years ago. One may search this site using any combination of the subject’s name, date of event (birth or death), county of event, and sex of the subject.

Records of births occurring more than 125 years ago and those of deaths occurring more than 75 years ago are open to the public, and no proof of eligibility is required to order them. More recent records require proof of eligibility.

If you find a record you want a copy of, the site provides several ways in which to order it.

Here is the URL for this site:

https://ok2explore.health.ok.gov/

TIP OF THE WEEK –
USING LOCAL LIBRARIES TO FIND OBITUARIES

While on-line newspaper vendors like GenealogyBank.com and NewspaperArchive.com are terrific resources, these databases often do not have newspapers for the geographical area you are researching. When online sources fail to find an obituary, what is a person to do?

One excellent resource to check with is the local public library in the city, town, or county in which your ancestor died. Provide them with the name, the date of death, and ask them if they have newspapers for that period that they can search for you. Sometimes this query can be done via the local library’s web site. And some local libraries even have links to an obituary index that you can search.

Libraries might charge a nominal fee for this service, but some may provide it for free, especially when they can email you a scanned image of the obituary, rather than mailing it to you.

So don’t forget the local library in the area where your ancestor lived or died can be a valuable resource

TIP OF THE WEEK –
USING THE DAR WEBSITE

You don’t have to be a DAR member to use the DAR website and its resources. If you had an ancestor in the Colonies during the American Revolutionary War, here are the steps to finding out what the DAR might have on them:

1. Log onto www.dar.org

2. Click on GRS (green button at top of home page)

3. Click on Ancestors

4. Enter at least your ancestor’s last name and hit Search

A results list will be displayed showing full name, rank, birth and death date, service description. Click on the individual entry and you’ll get some additional data such as residence and spouse. Hint: click again on the member number (aka “Natl Num”) to see even more info. Sometimes you can purchase the associated membership application and/or supplemental supporting documentation as noted by the green Purchase button. Also don’t forget some lineage applications are on Ancestry.

TIP OF THE WEEK –  SANBORN FIRE INSURANCE MAPS

Sanborn Maps were originally created in the 1860’s for assessing fire insurance liability in urbanized areas.  The maps include detailed information about buildings in approximately 12,000 US towns and cities. They are a very useful resource for historical research, genealogical research, and they are the most frequently consulted maps in public libraries.

The good news is The Library of Congress has already placed 25,000 of these maps online and they are in the process of adding more maps monthly. The goal is to have all the maps (approximately 500,000) available online by 2020.

While still hit and miss, maybe the map you need is already online. Check it out at:
https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-17-074/?loclr=fbloc-new

TIP OF THE WEEK –   Elephind,
 the Search Engine for Historical Newspapers

Many genealogist love the Library of Congress –  Chronicling America – historical, digitized newspapers website, but have you heard of Elephind.com? Their goal is to search all the world’s digitized, historical newspapers from one place at one time; it’s similar to the idea behind Travelocity.com with the airline industry.

Elephind currently is at about 175 million items from over 3,300 newspaper titles worldwide. That is more than 10 fold what you will find at Chronicling America.  In fact, Chronicling America is one of the sites Elephind has covered. Also like Chronicling America, Elephind is adding volume almost daily.

At the website  www.elephind.com ,  start with the Search Tips.

The “proximity search” is particularly useful.  An example, using this syntax  “Jane Doe”~4 in Search will find for you :
•Jane Doe
•Jane E Doe
•Jane Elizabeth Doe
•Elizabeth Jane Smith, nee Doe

But it will exclude something like “Jane and Sally found a young, frightened doe in the woods”.

Elephind.com will be a good addition to your arsenal of historical newspapers websites and someday it might become the only one you will ever need.