Cow Hampshire

Everyone enjoys finding free stuff….

…especially New Hampshire genealogists, who are a thrifty lot.

Perhaps this obsession with having everything be free is due to the high percentage of Scotch-Irish who originally settled in this area, resulting in a high percentage of Scotch-Irish descendants who are still among us.

It seems that genealogists are constantly having to make hobby-related purchases.  BMDs (i.e., birth, marriage and death records, for you non-family tree geeks) are one of our ongoing expenses. Also we rack up the credit card charges with historical and genealogical society memberships, on-line search services, and town history or family tree book purchases.

Believe me, there are some valuable TRULY FREE items out there.

– ORGANIZED PILES –
Is your genealogy research collection sitting in stacks against the walls of your den? Is it time to reorganize? If so, then you will enjoy Family Tree Magazine’s web site. It offers a caboodle of genealogy forms that are easily downloadable.

– CEMETERY MATH –
Do you lose a few I.Q. points the moment you step through the gates of a cemetery? When you try to read a cemetery inscription, you are perplexed about how to count backwards…

For example [tombstone]: Jane Smith, died February 1, 1942, aged 51 yrs 8 mos 9 days… OK, what date is her birthday?

No need to go hunting for a calendar… just dig out your Tombstone Birthday Calculator, and your work is done!

– FREE QUERIES –
A query is a question you can pose, free of charge, on rootsweb.com. Best to limit your question(s) to one of a family tree or historical nature.  I am the list moderator for their Hillsborough County (New Hampshire) message board. Stop by! Note that strangely there is a second message board named ‘Hillsboro.’  I haven’t been able to convince rootsweb to combine the two..oh well.

– FREE NEW HAMPSHIRE RESEARCH –
The New Hampshire History & Genealogy Web site provides mostly free resources.

– NEW HAMPSHIRE CELEBRATED –
Whether you are a teacher, a parent who is home schooling their children, or a researcher of history in New Hampshire, the New Hampshire Historical Society provides free access to a variety of slide shows lesson plans, and hands-on fun projects.  Some are PowerPoint slides, while others are provided in PDF.

– FREE PHOTOGRAPHS AND DOCUMENTS –
American Memory (Library of Congress) has to be one of the the best resources around for historical photographs, documents, and stories about every possible subject or topic.  There is an easy to use search engine.

– WHAT DID YOU SAY? –
New Hampshire is a state of immigrants… from all parts of the world.  If you’ve run across real life documents or even web sites in a foreign language that you need translated into English, hope is in sight. Alta Vista’s Babel Fish page gives you the option of translating words, or an entire web site!  You can even add this tool to your own web site or blog.  This blog receives several “hits” a day from people seeking to view the site in French, Italian, German and other languages.

– ANGLOPHILES WANTED –
Did you always want to be a Brit?  Now you can be, at least in name, with the “Very British Name Generator.”  Maybe you will learn to like tea 😀

Enjoy!

Janice