family

  • Slang of the 1960s

    Jan 9

    The 1960s was such a transition from established-traditional lifestyles to a more carefree-anything goes attitude. You surely have relatives who lived during that decade and remember it well. As with every decade there are certain words and phrases one can associate with the era. The words can come from events happening, music styles, cultural ...

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  • Skills Your Great Grandparents Had That You Don’t

    Jan 6

    It seems like every generation laments about how little the younger generations know. In general, this complaint is about the skills that the older generations learned and the younger generations don't know how to do. There are several skills that your great grandparents had that you probably have no idea how to do. Writing Letters Today, peo...

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  • New Years Day Postcards

    Jan 1

    The tradition of sending postcards was equal to sending Emails, Twitters or Facebook messages today. It was a simple and easy way to stay in touch, express feelings and an offer of something pretty, funny or charming for a friend of family member to have. The hay day of sending postcards was from the 1890s to the 1920s. Every holiday, season or sp...

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  • Thanksgiving Meals—Vintage

    Nov 26

    To get an idea of what your ancestors might have had for their Thanksgiving meal go to the local newspapers. Using Chronicling America (free), Newspapers.com and NewspaperArchives (both with a free trial and fee based) and plugging in a specific year or range of years and locations can producing some interesting information. Use some key words...

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  • Gen Gathering – Acts of Kindness

    Nov 21

    Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness (RAOGK) was a very valuable asset for many family history researchers to have a photograph of an ancestor's headstone, copy of a death certificate, a microfilm copy of an old newspaper clipping, etc. Unfortunately the former RAOGK had to close down awhile back due to the death of its creator. New on the Interne...

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  • Collections of U.S. Historic Photos

    Nov 7

    There is a saying: "A photo is a window into the lives of your ancestors." Never were there truer words. Many of us would given anything to have some image of a grandmother, great uncle, etc., but don't give up -- many people have located images of ancestors they never knew existed. Yes, there will be some that were never taken, so of course don't ...

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  • Familypedia

    Oct 29

    Just like having an encyclopedia on family ancestors, the online site of Familypedia, is a web site with 167,770 online articles about deceased individuals plus another 277,546 genealogy-related pages and growing! People are encouraged to create a new web page for any individual at any time. The best is that any user can also edit each existing ...

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  • Great Chicago Fire

    Oct 8

    If you had ancestors living in the city of Chicago, Illinois in 1871, they were surely affected by the events of Sunday, October 8 through the 10th in that year. That rather hot day for October, was when a fire started on the O'Leary property on DeKoven Street about 9 p.m. There have been many theories as to what started the fire including the O'Le...

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  • Get Back on Track

    Oct 7

    Yes, it happens you have been away from actively doing your family tree and now you want to kick start the research. Or you have been working on the family history and are running into road blocks. Here are a few suggestions to 'get back on track' and have success. If you haven't already, go to the closest Family History Center (Church of the La...

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  • Copyright Photos

    Sep 3

    We all love to add photos to the family tree / scrapbook / history of our ancestors when we can locate them. However, there arises the question of copyright to photos. The law protecting the creator of a photo is copyright law. The first thing to determine is approximately when the photo was produced, especially if it was done in a professional ...

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