Did you know that there are many Free Collections and Free Index Collections available on Ancestry dot com? And yes, you do not need a subscription to access them (but you need to have registered, which is free). Below is the list of the 1,317 Free and Free Index Collections (as of July 2024). How […]
Author: Kenneth R Marks
Kenneth R Marks was born and educated in the San Francisco Bay Area, receiving a BS in Mathematics in 1968. His career was in Information Technology; with the last 20 Years as a software executive with Boeing, Pearson, and NASA. His genealogy career began in 2004. He is an expert in newspaper research for genealogy, as well as additional genealogy topics. He regularly conducts webinars on the subject and has authored three genealogy books. See the About page for more details.
The Ancestor Hunt, founded in 2008, is focused on helping genealogy and family history researchers of all skill levels to achieve their goals, by providing links to free online genealogy collections, and search tips and techniques, largely via easy-to-understand Quick Reference Guides.
In a word, the Old Fulton New York Postcards website is a marvel. Created and maintained by one man, Tom Tryniski, this newspaper database has been in existence since 1999 when Tom began scanning microfilmed newspapers. Currently, this database has over 57.3 million digitized newspaper pages that are searchable by anyone, anywhere. I have just […]
Hello to The Ancestor Hunt readers! Here is the latest Monthly Newsletter. It includes links to all of the articles published since the previous newsletter, as well as articles that I think you might find interesting from other authors. It also includes research tips, a joke or two, and other interesting genealogical stuff. It is […]
Ancestry.com continues to add or update its records collections at a fast pace for us to search. For the period of July 1-15, 2024, the new and updated collections are: I hope that some of these are what you have been waiting for! Good Luck and Happy Hunting!
FamilySearch continues to add or update its records collections at a fast pace for us to search. For the period of July 1-15, 2024, the added/updated collections are: For a complete list of all added/updated collections, go to https://familysearch.org/search/collection/list I hope that some of these are what you have been waiting for! Good Luck and […]
We have a tendency as researchers to underappreciate the value of the documents or articles that we already have acquired, and spend our time looking for new “stuff.” There are so many “facts” and clues that can be retrieved from these artifacts if we just pay attention. And they are just sitting there staring at […]
Voter registration records are available online and offline from all over the world and are what I consider a hidden gem of information that can assist you in advancing your family history and genealogy research. Here are several reasons why voter records are such a wonderful tool for researching (and finding) ancestors: Most of the […]
In February 2017, I started publishing a list of the catalog of online historical newspapers from over 400 different collections put together by the Advantage Archives Company, developed in conjunction with the libraries, historical societies, and museums across the U.S. that preserve historical newspapers for their communities. The list has grown a lot since then. […]
Institutional records are another class of collections that should be part of one’s genealogy research repertoire. Although most of your ancestors may not have spent time in an institution, I’ll bet that almost every family tree has several that have. So they are worth your effort to research. Here are a few good primers for […]
Probate records and wills are available online from all over the U.S. and are what I consider another hidden gem of information that can assist you in advancing your family history and genealogy research. What can you find in these records? How about the date of death, spouse’s and children’s names, birth order, siblings and […]