Family Heritage
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Regions of America
Mar 15
From Colin Woodard in his book "American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America" he sees that America is “our continent’s famed mobility has been reinforcing, not dissolving, regional differences, as people increasingly sort themselves into like-minded communities.” Woodard breaks the nation into 11...
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19th Century Names on Ships’ List
Mar 13
If you have managed to get a rough idea of when you ancestors arrived in America, you just might be able to view the passenger list, handwritten by ship officials, with that ancestor listed. It can reveal some interesting information, especially the spelling of the ancestor's name. True, there can still be errors in the spelling but seeing ...
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250 Hometown Newspapers
Mar 9
The site 'SmallTownPapers' you have free access to more than 250 current small town newspapers in the United States. Look down the list of states and names of newspapers in that state available. From the newspaper's main page on the SmallTownPapers site, click the Scanned Archives tab and then the Browse icon to view the available years. Ne...
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Women’s History Month
Mar 7
There are several federal governmental agencies and museums honoring America's women during March. From the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution, and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Besid...
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Leap Year–Leap Day
Feb 29
Every four years there is an extra day added to the calendar, always at the end of February and it is February 29. With the seasons and astronomical events (because the Earth does not orbit around the sun in precisely 365 days) changing over the years and only in whole numbers, it has become necessary to add the extra day every four years. ...
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Sticky Backs and Photo Booth
Feb 19
It is the early 20th century and in England a fellow named Spiro Grossi, from Brighton, England, was a young man in his 20s whose occupation was that of a 'Photographic Printer' in Liverpool. He then moved to Manchester, where Grossi operated two photographic studios, one at 5 Marsden Square, the other at 84 Market Street. He developed th...
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Mourning Jewelry and Others
Feb 17
In the last half of the 19th century, our ancestors then practiced a popular method of remembering the departed relatives and in a way forever keeping them with the living. It was the custom for decades to have some form of mourning jewelry or art form. In the 21st century it might be a bit morbid, but for our ancestors it was very important to the...
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Scanning those Photos
Feb 15
There are several different types of photo scanners available on the market, so select one you can easily use. If you get a flatbed style, then if a photo is in an album that can't be removed, then you can still scan it in the album. The portable scanners do work quickly, scanning many photos in a short time, but works with single photo at a time, ...
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Other 1890s Census Records
Feb 13
A major gap in the U.S. Federal Census exists with most of the 1890 Census destroyed in a 1921 fire. You can trace your ancestors from 1880 to 1900, but that leaves 20 years unaccounted for. Here are a few ideas to help bridge the gap in your research. First, if you have already researched and know some family branches did not arrive in Am...
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Railroad Men – WW I – UK
Feb 3
Since railroad travel became an important method of transportation beginning in the mid-1800s, those who work for the railroad systems across the globe have been numerous. You may have had an ancestor who served in some form for a railway system. To investigate one time frame and location, the United Kingdom's National Railway Museum has p...