What's a good underutilized web site for sourcing?

Question

I feel like exploring.  I'm sure there are tons of web sites I had no idea existed.  What's your favorite "unkinown" goldmine of  genealogical information.  Particularly one which is useful for sourcing.

Comments

Great post Dave

Answer 1

That's a broad question but one site people don't mention often is the BLM GLO records, which are free. For people who have ancestors who traveled west, the site is an incredible resource of land purchase documents. Often you can see the original land purchase contract. You can see where the land was on a map, and any joint purchasers. I've found it to be really useful for helping identify when a family moved from one area to another.

Comments

Awesome Michele! https://www.glorecords.blm.gov/default.aspx

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Good one!  I did actually use that once to find my William Miller (3rd ggrandfather) who bought land in Licking County. Ohio.  Unfortunately, though it had the land patent available to download, it just showed him to have been living there and didn't give a lead to where he came from.  BTW does anyone know if you can upload the documents from that site to WilkTree?  It is a government site I believe and I'd think material there should be public records.

Answer 2

Depends what/where you are researching. For Ontario, Canada I often find hidden gems in http://ourontario.ca/ For Canada-wide http://ourroots.ca/ is full of surprises with a wide array of local histories. In the Netherlands I am always discovering new-to-me municipal archives that often have loads of digitized local content (newspapers, books, legal documents, photographs).

As far as U.S. sources (outside of archive.org and hathi trust) I will see if universities/colleges near where I am researching have digitized collections. Some states have great collections of digitized content freely available (North Carolina for example), but many seem to treat history only as a revenue stream.

I also like to hit up Old Maps Online to get a better 'sense of place' - I find looking at period maps often helps my research (oh look - X's house was right by St. Y church that moved - maybe their records will have something on X)

Comments

Well, one good thing your answer does is point out that there are categories of underutilized sources.  Though I can't think of many relatives from Canada and no ancestors, I can think of a need for maps or municipal archives, so thahks.

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Thank you for the map link. That's awesome!

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Agree with Kelley, Rob. The map source is vey helpful.

Answer 3

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Kitty%27s_Library

Answer 4

This site isn't unknown, at least to me, but a lot of people don't use all the goodies available on http://www.familysearch.org. In particular I'm thinking of the Wiki, the Books, and the unindexed collections.

Answer 5

My latest favourite is the National Library of Australia Trove website; all sorts of interesting things, especially searchable newspapers, and best of all it is free!

Answer 6

I really like findmypast they do great deals as well

Answer 7

With an awesome search system the Hiski Project is a great, free source fo Finland research.

Answer 8

dustydocs.com It is a free source for English parish registers. Also seems to have a lot of other interesting info/links on it, including a link to wikitree :-)