The most important discoveries often come after the straightforward path disappears. The Insight Many people begin genealogy expecting a simple progression from one generation to the next. Find a parent, then a grandparent, then a great-grandparent, and continue moving backward through time. Reality is rarely that straightforward. Records disappear. Names change. Ages vary from one […]
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.
The time you spend documenting your research today can save hours of duplicated work tomorrow. The Insight One of the most common frustrations in genealogy occurs when a researcher discovers they have already searched for the same information months—or even years—earlier but cannot remember the result. Many genealogists save records, screenshots, and downloaded documents but […]
The longer an assumption circulates, the easier it becomes to mistake it for evidence. The Insight Many genealogy errors begin with a reasonable possibility. A researcher notices two individuals with the same surname living in the same county. A family appears near another family in a census record. A marriage record seems to connect two […]
The quality of your research often depends on the quality of the question you ask before you begin. The Insight Many genealogy searches fail before they even begin—not because records are missing, but because the researcher never clearly defined what they were trying to learn. It is easy to open a database, enter a surname, […]
Some family history can never be found in a database because it exists only in someone’s memory. The Insight Genealogy researchers sometimes spend years searching databases, archives, newspapers, and courthouse records while overlooking one of the most valuable sources of family history: living relatives. Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and longtime family friends may hold […]
The record that solves tomorrow’s problem may be the one you cannot relocate today. The Insight Many genealogists carefully save records, screenshots, and downloaded documents but pay less attention to recording exactly where those records came from. At first, this may not seem important. The information has been found, the ancestor has been identified, and […]
The past doesn’t become easier to understand until you stop expecting it to behave like the present. The Insight Historical records make far more sense when you understand the world your ancestors lived in. Naming traditions, spelling variations, migration routes, census instructions, occupations, social customs, and even the meaning of common words were often very […]
A hint may point you toward the answer, but only the record can help prove it. The Insight Modern genealogy websites have transformed family history research by making billions of records searchable from home. Along with those records come hints, suggested matches, user-submitted trees, and automated recommendations designed to help researchers discover possible connections. These […]
When female ancestors disappear from your research, entire branches of the family tree can disappear with them. The Insight Many genealogists unintentionally spend more time researching male ancestors because surnames are easier to follow through historical records. Family trees often grow outward from a familiar surname, making it easy to overlook the women whose names […]
Most genealogists know how to search newspapers. Far fewer know how to truly research them. That difference matters. Because newspapers are unlike any other genealogical record source. They are messy, inconsistent, emotional, fragmented, and often difficult to search effectively. Names are misspelled. Articles are hidden in unexpected sections. OCR errors distort people and places. Important […]