Using Linkpendium

I often watch webinars and videos, read blogs, or attend lectures and Linkpendium is always brought up as being a great resource for genealogists. But I have never used it, so today I am going to change that as we both can learn about Linkpendium together.

Linkpendium.com

When you go to www.linkpendium.com you are greeted with the above homepage, and I like how it begins by telling you what it is and how to use it.

Linkpendium is a directory of over 10-million resources to help you find surnames within the United States (but it does say “worldwide” as well). There are 3-ways for you to research your family:

• Using the “Family Discoverer” boxes at the top of the page
  • You can select if you want to search “worldwide” or by a specific state.
• Using the “Jump to a City” box in the yellow section at the right of the page
• Using the “Jump to a County” box below the City in the yellow section
• Using the “Jump to a Surname” box in the yellow section

Family Discoverer

So I decided to do a search. I am missing the 1930 Census for my grandfather, Leroy Blair, so I put his first and last name in the Family Discoverer at the top of the page and selected “Pennsylvania” for my area (he lived in 3 different states – Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana). Below are my results for Pennsylvania.

For 85 milliseconds I was impressed. None of the hits initially are of my Leroy Blair but I will take a peek at the MyHeritage link at the top of the page.

I repeated the same search using Indiana and Ohio.

Okay, so I didn’t find out what I was looking for in my quest for information about my grandfather but let’s see what else I am able to find using the various search bars on Linkpendium.

Jump to City

My maternal great-grandmother was born in Coudersport, Pennsylvania so put it into the “Jump to City” search, and received 525 links to pages and subpages for Potter County (Coudersport is the county seat) so all in all I’m pleased (and plan on perusing the pages to get a better idea of the area. I’m especially curious of a biography page that came up, maybe one of my ancestors will be listed).

Jump to Surname

Next I did a surname search using my grandmother’s maiden name “Morgart”. The first half of the page was focused entirely on what I typed, but the second half of the page went into other options of the name. This isn’t so bad as there are a couple of different ways my Morgart’s spelled their last name. The family cemetery is actually known as the Morgart Morgret Cemetery so I could see how alternative spellings could be handy, and give you another option to look for when doing other searches for your family name in Censuses, etc.

I’m definitely going to utilize Linkpendium for future searches. I was impressed with the amount of hits I was able to get on learning about the specific areas of where my ancestors lived, and one of my favorite aspects of doing my family tree is finding out how my relatives spent their time and actually lived their lives. I could see myself being able to find so much more information using this valuable directory.

Has Linkpendium helped you solve any family history mysteries? Let me know in the comments below!