So each week I have been working on cleaning up my citations to EE standards and for whichever person I complete this for, that is the person I post about. Well, I got sidetracked this week.
I started going through my “Genealogy_Media” folder, which is the folder in which I store all the digital photos and documents I have accumulated. Unfortunately, they are not really organized or labeled well. Ooops!
Some of the folders…those that contain parish register transcripts or those that contain death certificates…were relatively easy. I had enough words in the name to identify them, but they were not using a particular method and so the file names were in different orders from file to file. So I made some corrections.
In other folders however, the files names were useless. One of these folders is my “History and Reference Books” folder. You see, there is a great site known as the “Internet Archive” and also known as the “Wayback Machine.” One of the things this site does is to “archive” pages of websites. So if you know of a site that has since disappeared, you might be able to find copies of the pages at the “Wayback Machine.”
However, another nifty feature is that it contains complete digital copies of books that are in the public domain. And some of these are very helpful for genealogists! For example, I was doing research on my family in Pickaway County, Ohio. So I visited the Internet Archive and performed a search. I first clicked on the icon for “Texts” (an open book) and then entered my search term of “Pickaway County”.
The two most promising results were for the books: History of Pickaway County, Ohio and Representative Citizens by Aaron R. Van Cleaf, published 1906; and Portrait and biographical record of Fayette, Pickaway and Madison counties, Ohio : containing biographical sketches of prominent and representative citizens, together with biographies and portraits of all the presidents of the United States by Chapman Brothers, published 1892.
Many of these older county history books reference early or prominent settlers of a county. And since part of my family settled in Ohio as early as 1805 (and maybe earlier), referencing this county history books is always worthwhile…even if I don’t find them listed!
To check out the “Internet Archive,” visit: Internet Archive! And don’t forget to rename the downloaded files to a name that makes sense!