Immigration Records are some of the richest genealogy record sets and can provide excellent clues and data about your ancestors. Specifically, when they came to America or traveled but did not immigrate. Emigration records can tell you when they left their homeland and can direct you to when they might have immigrated if you are […]
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.
This past week (September 20 – September 26, 2025), the following additions were made to The Newspaper Research Academy: ✅ Free Resources – 2 New Articles were added – 59 Total ✅ Research Guides – 5 New Guides were added – 38 Total ✅ On-Demand Webinars – 0 New – 14 Total ✅ Premium – […]
Reclaim the Records is a non-profit organization that strives to obtain genealogical record collections that “ought to be” in the public domain but are restricted by government organizations. They file FOIA and Open Data requests to obtain the records and if that fails to succeed, they go to court. Once records are obtained, the organization […]
NARA has a great list of 35 Genealogy Research Topics, which has links to further detailed discussions about the topic, as well as guides to other relevant resources and links to collections (both online and offline). The following PDF lists all the Genealogy Topics, along with the inks to the NARA site. Download the Quicksheet […]
The Ellis Island Database is one of the most popular databases for researchers trying to find their immigrant ancestors who arrived at the Port of New York. It has passenger records and ship manifests for about 65 million people, and it has records from 1820 to 1957. The following PDF discusses how to search the […]
From the folks at Elephind: After months of development (and your patience — thank you!), Elephind is faster, smarter, and packed with new search features to help you uncover history like never before! Over 13 million pages and growing! Elephind has already indexed over 13 million pages of history — with another 15 million being added […]
When researching your genealogy, it helps to know where documents and other resources are. Here is a list of 50 top institutions in the United States. The list includes museums, genealogy centers, libraries, societies, etc. Visit these websites and the institutions in person if you are able. Download the Quicksheet To obtain the three-page Quicksheet […]
This past week (September 13 – September 19, 2025), the following additions were made to The Newspaper Research Academy: ✅ Free Resources – 2 New Articles were added – 57 Total ✅ Research Guides – 3 New Guides were added – 33 Total ✅ On-Demand Webinars – 0 New – 14 Total ✅ Premium – […]
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 and 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. I hope that you […]
MyHeritage continues to add or update its record collections at a fast pace for us to search. For September 1-15, 2025, there are 3 new and 18 updated collections. The new and updated collections are: I hope that some of these are what you have been waiting for! Good Luck and Happy Hunting!