South Carolina, Joe Beine's Death Indexes and Wordle

Getting Started Researching in South Carolina?

If you have ancestors in 'the Carolinas' it is important to know that North and South Carolina split into separate territories in 1712. Your ancestor may have moved without packing the wagon! South Carolina went on to become a state on Monday May 23, 1788

Check out the South Carolina Department of Archives and History to see all the records that are available online.

And since this is the 150th anniversary of the Civil War it is important to note that South Carolina was the first state to secede from the United States.

Joe Beine's Death Indexes

Joe Beine's Online Searchable Death Indexes and Records are a genealogy treasure. Broken out by state the site is very user friendly and explains exactly what the index is searching.

Joe's website is not limited to Death Records, he also has "Online Genealogy Records and Resources". On this page he has links to military records, census records and other vital information.

If you are on twitter you can follow Joe Beine @fairangels and stay up to date on when new indexes are added.

Wordle

This last week I kept seeing references to Wordle. I decided I needed to check it out. Wordle is an application that creates a 'word cloud' based on words entered into the Wordle application. There is also an option to enter a blog URL. I had seen something similar on blogs advertising Amazon, but had never understood how it worked.

Since I had just been on a mini research trip to Illinois I decided use my Schwemm surname, families they had married into and the names of the towns where they had lived to create my first 'Word Cloud'.

I then wanted to see what it would do with an entire blog. I entered my friend Pam's blog My McKee Family Tree and here are the results:

Now What?

Once generated these 'Cloud' images can be incorporated as part of your genealogy research results. A Word Cloud would make a great cover for family tree, folders or document files. It could be used as a picture on your blog, Facebook or Twitter. If you create business cards to hand out to other genealogists it would make a create theme.

The possibilities are endless.

Take Care,

Pattie