Author: Kenneth R Marks

A courthouse fire may have destroyed important records—but “burned courthouse” does not automatically mean “nothing survived.” The Myth Few discoveries discourage a genealogist faster than learning that an ancestor lived in a “burned county.” The courthouse burned. Records were destroyed. Therefore, the records you need no longer exist. Sometimes records truly were lost. Fires, floods, […]

An address can be much more than a place where your ancestor lived—it can connect people, records, and different periods of a family’s life. Addresses are among the easiest details in genealogical records to record and forget. We enter a street address into our family tree, note where someone lived, and move on to names, […]

A military headstone in a cemetery may honor a veteran whose remains are not buried anywhere beneath it. The Myth Finding a veteran’s military headstone or marker in a cemetery seems to answer an obvious genealogical question: This is where the veteran is buried. Usually, a headstone does mark a burial or interment. But the […]

The names surrounding your ancestor in a record may reveal relationships and connections that the record never explains. Names appearing around your ancestor in a record are easy to treat as supporting characters. A witness signs the document. An informant supplies the information. Then our attention goes immediately back to the ancestor. But those seemingly […]

Whether a husband’s naturalization made his wife a U.S. citizen depended on when it happened—the law changed dramatically in 1922. The Myth When an immigrant man became a naturalized U.S. citizen, his wife automatically became a citizen too. For many years, that was generally true. But it was not true throughout American history and applying […]