The Knowles Collection: February 2015

23 February 2015

Canadian Headstones

This past week FamilySearch has added another database of records supplied by a partner website. In this case the database is a name index to the headstone transcriptions made available by www.canadianheadstones.com. According to the CanadianHeadstones website, they have over 1 million headstones available online.
In searching the database at FamilySearch, I entered the surname Cohen into the search box. I was informed that over 1,000 records were returned. The image below shows the first page of those results.

From the list I clicked on the name Florinda Cohen. The database provided me with all the information contained on the website.

By following the link to the partner website, located at the right of the above image, I was then taken to the website which provided me with the actual image of the headstone (see below).

For those with Jewish family who may have been in Canada, this is another great resource. Many thanks to the CanadianHeadstones website for making these records available for free through FamilySearch.

02 February 2015

Indiana, Marriages, 1811-1959

Slightly over a year ago in this blog, I wrote about the Kelly Street Historic Jewish Cemeteries of Indianapolis, Indiana. These cemeteries filled the need of the growing Jewish community in Indianapolis. That community, which consisted of 8 different congregations, came into being in 1856. The records of those cemeteries, which are now also part of the Knowles Collection, is a wonderful source for Indiana Jewry.
Now, another great source for the Jews of Indiana is available at www.familysearch.org. That collection, Indiana Marriages, 1811-1959, which was indexed in partnership with the Indiana Genealogical Society, now contains over 1,100,000 images. These records come from all Indiana counties, except for Howard, Johnson and Montgomery.
The images, which are name search able and available for free are of very good quality. The example below, is the marriage record of Abe Karp and Dora Cohen, who took out the license on 17 Jul 1913 and were married 3 days later on 20 July 1913. The information about the couple is amazing on this form. We not only get their dates of birth, but also parents names and addresses.

Growth and Change

In the 12 years since the Knowles Collection was first published, the numbers have climbed from 7,500 to over 1,4000,000. So many of our ancestors left their native lands for new homes. Because of that movement the collection will now be in 6 different databases. All of them will be under the Knowles Collection umbrella. They are Jews of The British Isles; Jews of the North America; Jews of Europe; Jews of South America and the Caribbean; and Jews of Africa and the Orient and the newest one, Jews of the Southern Pacific.. This is a great indication of how universal our families are, and of how much still needs to be done.