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Some newspapers are notoriously bad about spreading obituaries and other items out. Make certain if you are cropping an item from a digital image of a newspaper that you get the entire item. Reading it before you crop it will go a long way to ensuring that happens. Time saved will be lost when you go to read the item and realize that you got a little “crop happy.”
There were several migration trails across the United States beginning with the earliest days of settlement. Those trails are important and researchers need to be aware of them. However some people don’t exactly follow the trails. And some people are part of group of migrants connected by ethnicity, religion, or other shared social bonds who move together over decades. These longer, smaller, and more personal migrations are often referred to as migration chains. There are a variety of records that can provide clues as to such migration chains, including: county histories, academic studies of migration, pension affidavits, church histories, and others Such records have given me evidence of migration chains, including: Dunkards who moved from Maryland to Kentucky to Indiana to Illinois and Iowa starting in the late […]
My Grandma always told me they went four counties away (staying within the same state) to get married because “your Grandpa just decided to.” They weren’t hiding the marriage from their relatives and were well over the legal age to marry. From what I heard about my Grandpa, he never did anything on a whim. Chances are your ancestor did not pack up and move for no reason either. It might have been because local soils were getting depleted, former neighbors wrote home with news of “prosperous times further west,” a new political allegiance increased the chance of sons being drafted into military service, Pa got a military bounty warrant, or one of several other reasons. Have you tried to find out what might have motivated your ancestors […]
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I spent some time looking for information on an ancestor in the mid-1800s whose maiden name I thought was Franciska Haase. Several records, including her marriage record which listed her as “Miss FranciskaHaase,” provided that maiden name. It was not until I altered my approach and considered that Haase was the last name of her step-father that I was able to actually locate her. Consider that the last name you think is the maiden name could actually be the last name of a step-father. It’s also possible that the marriage you think is your female ancestor’s first could actually be her second.
Indexes that take us to one page are great, but they can be limiting if we only look at the page referenced in the index or linked to from the online search results. Some US federal censuses have more than one page. The 1840 census in particular contains names of Revolutionary War veterans on the right hand page–which many researchers fail to look at because it’s the “next image.” Deed books can contain multiple deeds from the same grantor recorded sequentially–if they were brought in for recording at the same time. For one reason or another the others may not have been indexed. When you find a deed always go a page or two before and after. Neighbors on the next census page may be relatives. Occasionally siblings […]
Whenever a person dies with minor children, it is advised to search for all the records of the settlement of their estate. Parents or siblings of the deceased (particularly males before the 20th century and often afterwards) could have been appointed administrator of the estate or guardian of the children. Sometimes the relationship will be spelled out and sometimes it will not. In 1865, Joseph Belles petitioned the Fulton County, Illinois, court to be appointed administrator of the estate of Peter Belles as Peter’s children were all minors. Joseph in his petition of 4 May 1865 stated that he was the father of Peter Belles. Not every estate of this type will state the relationship between the administrator and the deceased and there may be no relationship. But […]
It can be tempting in cyberspace to fire off a message about that ancestor who frustrates us. Providing scant details about our problem ancestor also frustrates those who read our query and either makes them unlikely to help us or causes everyone to waste time in a cycle of probing questions to determine what the poster actually knows. There are some very helpful people on some message boards who simply won’t take the time to reply vague queries such as “I’m looking for an ancestor’s parents.” In that vein, consider including the following information in your query: what you know about the ancestor (approximate dates and places of birth, marriage, and death) where the ancestor lived–a summary of locations in chronological order if possible really unusual alternate spellings of […]
Do you have family photos that you have not digitized? Consider this a reminder from Mimke and Antje.
Some lines are arbitrary. Some lines are crossed intentionally and others are moved to where we passively cross them. As your research moves in time and place, ask yourself these questions? Have I crossed a political line? What was legal or acceptable practice on one side of the line may not be true on the other. Have I passed through a significant historical event? How did that impact my ancestral family? Have I changed religions? Record keeping practices may have changed. Church organizational structure may have changed. Am I at a new stage in a person’s life? Researching a child is different from researching a seventy-year old. Have I crossed an economic border? Researching a person who lives hand-to-mouth is different from researching someone for whom money really “isn’t […]
Indexes in some print publications do not include every name mentioned in the book. Some materials only index names of key individuals. I’ve been reading Fields, Fens and Felonies: Crime and Justice in Eighteenth-Century East Anglia which contains two references my relative’s 1764 conviction in County Suffolk. His name does not appear in the index.
The introductions to some books are full of acknowledgements and thanks to those played a key role in the books. Introductions to genealogical publications, particularly transcriptions of original documents, may mention how the records were accessed, the condition of those records, what records were missing, etc. Those are details someone using the book needs to know. When using any published transcriptions of original records, read the introduction, preface, etc. There may things in there a researcher needs to know to use the publication effectively. I’ve been reading Fields, Fens and Felonies: Crime and Justice in Eighteenth-Century East Anglia–the author discusses his process in the introduction. That was an education in itself.
This session focuses on starting your German research. The session will include an overview of German genealogical sources (both online and offline), naming patterns and concerns, maps and other geographic finding aids, basics of terminology and handwriting, and more. Intended for those who have not really started researching their German ancestors in Germany. Download is immediate. Presentation can be viewed more than once. Handout included. Order today–introductory price expires 18 July.
Genealogists can easily develop tunnel vision. Sometimes it serves a good purpose and at other times it can cause us to lose our perspective. For some reason I always imagine my ancestors as being older than me and if I’m not careful I tend to see them as having always lived their life as an older person. That’s a mistaken assumption and one that can at times cause me to make incorrect assumptions about behavior and motivations. A 25-year old is at a different stage in their life than a 75-year old. It seems obvious, but like many obvious things sometimes we need a reminder. I was reminded myself when looking at a deposition made by my great-grandfather, Charles Neill. I always mentally picture him as older with gray […]
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