When researching our ancestors, one of the most important events is obviously their birth (otherwise they wouldn’t be ancestors – but I digress). Determining the date and location of birth is important as we document the major events in their lives. Most folks limit their search to the obvious repositories, whether online or not. But there […]
Category: Miscellaneous
When I first started my ancestor research, after I had gotten over the initial excitement of reviewing census records and interviewing my living relatives, I almost immediately began trying to find my immigrant ancestors and how they got to America. Through free repositories such as Ellis Island and Castle Garden and other sites, as well […]
MyHeritage continues to add or update its records collections at a fast pace for us to search. For the period of November 1-30, 2023, There are 27 new and 13 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 […]
In many genealogically related documents (especially newspapers and census records), nicknames were frequently used, as those names were more often used than the “formal” given name of the person. Your search index database is not smart enough, for example, to interpret ‘Sadie” for the formal given name of “Sarah”. Thus, you will need to use both names separately in […]
Military records are yet another very useful set of records that will help you in finding more about your ancestors. There are a ton of records that are available for free online, and there are some very robust collections (such as Fold3 and Ancestry) that have sizable online military collections as well. Typically, military records […]
In census records, birth, marriage, and death indexes, as well as newspapers, you are likely to find abbreviations of people’s given or first names. So, when searching online, it behooves us to search with the abbreviation of that first name as well as the full first name. I did a search for “Thomas Johnson” in […]
One of the often overlooked genealogical documents are passport applications and the passports themselves. For United States passport applications, required reading is from the U.S. National Archives – Passport Applications. The history, types, limitations, and how to access the microfilms of registers and indexes are included. So what unique and interesting information can be found […]
There are a bunch of different documents and records that the genealogist and family historian can utilize to find out more about one’s ancestors, no matter whether they be related to life event dates or locations or include other information. I have found that funeral and memorial books hold a ton of interesting information, much […]
If you are like me, you want to know as much as possible about the lives of your ancestors. Determining their stories is a challenge, especially if there is no one alive who remembers the ancestor that you are researching. But fortunately, there are a number of documents that record at least, the occupation of […]
A major goal for genealogists is to seek records and determine relationships. Many records such as census records and birth, death, and marriage certificates have evidence you need right there on the document. But there are lots of documents and other materials that simply provide clues. They do not have the answers written on them. […]
