Apr 9
You are just beginning or you have worked for awhile on putting together your family history. No matter what the situation, everyone comes across some stumbling blocks, those ancestors you don’t know where to research or you just not sure which direction to proceed with. Here are some key ideas to try when you’re stumped. First, remember y...
Apr 4
How frustrating when checking databases looking for a certain ancestor and you have a surname but can not locate that individual because no known given name matches. You look over vital records and might see a couple different given names for the same person, some of which are each totally different. You wonder if you have the right person or e...
Mar 30
Yes, Google is not the only search engine on the Internet, but it is one highly used and recommended by everyone. As with any search engine, the top items high up on a search will be those people or events related to celebrities, sports events, scandals or even where the closest place to order a pizza is found. Regrettably, archival records on our ...
Mar 28
There are all types of family lineage information available, you just have to be willing to look and review different sites to see if they can be of any assistance. The easiest ones to try in your own home or at a public library are those listed as ‘Free’ on the Internet. The following are just a few to get you started. To begin there is 'Bo...
Mar 24
Along Lake Michigan is the great mid-west city of Chicago, Illinois. It has served as a magnet for thousands of people to settle in and around this city for decades. You may well have ancestors who at some time lived in Chicago. There is an online site titled Chicago Ancestors, sponsored by the Newberry Library in Chicago which offers a variet...
Mar 18
FamilySearch.org is always free to the public. This non-profit Church of Jesus Christ of Latter–day Saints web site offers to millions of people around the globe the use FamilySearch records, resources and services to learn more about their family history. For decades it has been made possible due to the volunteers who transcribe and index th...
Mar 8
Compared to many of the other states of the union, the State of Florida may appear to be a fairly recently settled state. Yet, the history of this peninsula goes back to the oldest city in all of the United States, that of St. Augustine in the northeast corner of the region. It has been a colony of the Spanish, English, French and a territory of ...
Feb 29
Here is that special day once every four years where an extra day is added to the calendar to keep in line with seasons and astronomical events - calendars because the earth does not orbit around the sun in precisely 365 days. Since one can not add a ¼ of a day, the four quarters will make one day, so one extra day every four years is the soluti...
Feb 25
For our grandparents and great grandparents, most did not go to doctors on a regular basis. Instead people around 1900 (in many countries) used various home remedies, homeopathic methods or an array of ‘patent medicines’ such as Omega Oil which claimed to be "natures own remedy for pain, with a sparkling green color, and there’s nothing else ...
Feb 23
A most important vital record is the official death certificate issued by a state where an individual died. The person may not have lived in that state any length of time, but if they did die for whatever reason with a state’s border, the certificate of death would be issued. However, an obituary in a newspaper could be from another location, the...