This page contains a collection of various records and information contributed by FRGS members and other sources. (Please contact us to contribute to this page.)
Stafford Death Records 1856-1857 by Trip Wiggins
These records usually provide the following information: death dates, causes, birthplace, and parents’ names. For all, they also record who the informant was. Normally it is the husband, wife, parent, or child. In the case of slaves, it is normally the owner/master.
To save space, I occasionally abbreviated first names. Those abbreviations are included at the end of the listings.
As we get closer to the civil war timeframe, you will notice several years where deaths were simply not recorded: 1862-64 and 1866.
If you have someone who died between 1853 and 1875 in Stafford, and I haven’t run that year yet, contact me through frgsva@gmail.com and I’ll do a lookup in my images.
State Censuses courtesy of Elkhart County Genealogical Society
State censuses can be as important as the federal census to genealogists but, because they were taken randomly, remain a much under-utilized resource in American genealogy. State censuses often can serve as substitutes for some of the missing federal census records – most notably the 1790, 1800, 1810, and 1890 censuses. Many state censuses also asked different questions than the federal census, thus recording information that cannot be found elsewhere in the federal schedules.
While not all states took their own censuses, and some have not survived, state and local census records can be found in many locations. Most states which took censuses usually did so every 10 years, in years ending in “5” (1855, 1865, etc.) to complement the federal census. These state census records are most often found at the state archives or state library. Many are also on microfilm through a local Family History Center of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and online via commercial genealogy databases.
Immigrant Ports of Entry and Exit Compilation courtesy of Bryan Mulcahy, Reference Librarian, Fort Myers – Lee County Library
This guide lists the major ports that immigrants to the New World departed from in Europe and the British Isles. Ships leaving these ports made regular runs to and from the United States and Canada. In most cases, immigrants left on a ship from a port that was geographically closest to them.
The port of entry list names the U.S. ports that were the most common destinations and for which the National Archives has some or all of the surviving passenger arrival records.