Aug 25
Need some images of a hometown, a historic region, a view of a homeland, of a farm, or city? Using the following public domain photo sites will help located and allow you to download needed images to make your family history complete. For example, you found that your parents came down to the Ft. Lauderdale / Miami area in 1940 or 1941 on vacatio...
Aug 23
To truly get an idea of how life was for some of our ancestors you have to know what life was like and what was done and expected of people, the accepted culture of a certain time. This is especially true for the treatment and expectation of females. Ladies owning property and voting in elections is a fairly newer concept. Our female ancestors wer...
Aug 21
These maps known as Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps are of small, medium and large sized towns and cities date back to the 19th century and well into the 20th century. They can be very important in locating where a family business, shop and neighborhood would have been at a specific time frame. The Sanborn Company (started by Daniel A. Sanborn), an Am...
Aug 17
Newspapers from an ancestors hometown are such a wealth of information. You might first think just locating obituaries in the newspaper, but really there is so much more you might find. Even checking neighboring communities' newspapers can carry news and advertisements of families, events and businesses in a certain hometown. With so many newspaper...
Aug 13
City directories are a very valuable tool for family history researchers. Here can be located an ancestor's exact name spelling, where they lived, if a female was a widow, their occupation, or a business they worked for or owned. Now this is for searching for an adult, minor children would not be listed in a directory. The Rochester city direct...
Jul 30
The use of city directories can be extremely successful in locating additional information on an ancestor. City directories allow users to find former city residents, their occupations, local businesses and their locations. With any luck you can trace a relative during a certain scan of time, where they lived (street) and what their occupation hap...
Jul 26
This summer how about trying something a little different to involve more family members in knowing, appreciating and learning about their ancestors. Of course attending or sponsoring a family reunion is the best method. Bring together cousins, aunts, grandparents to share stories and especially heirlooms, artifacts and photos can spark many pe...
Jul 20
The Colorado Historical Newspapers Collection is available online. The search process is made very simple. Place the keyword, surname, topic you wish to see if there were any newspaper articles covering between 1859 and 1923. Keep in mind there can be articles in the numerous Colorado newspapers to select from which are about events and people out...
Jul 10
So much unknown and yet there is a great deal a family historian can piece together about their ancestors. After gathering vital records, documents, journals; a researcher really needs to take some time to see if any patterns of behavior emerge and if such actions can be directly traced to a historical event. Examples of how historical events c...
Jun 2
The Tennessee State Library and Archives has an online collection of digital newspapers, Civil War records, county records and photographs. One of their most recent additions are the vital records for 1962. These records include Births- Marriages and Deaths. What is especially good to now are the birth records are also released since those could ...