records
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Got a Spare Moment?
Jul 18
So you think you don't have enough time to spend on doing your family history --- yes you do ! It is all how you approach and use your time. Here are a few ideas of making some headway in your research in just a few moments. Review just one branch at a time and write the name of the ancestor you have the least information about. Now that ...
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UPDATED – Helpful Forms and Sheets
Jul 13
Organization is so important when doing your family history. Remember you are recording and looking up about two major family branches — your mother’s and your father’s side. Each of those branches had two more branches, your grandparents, so now you have four major branches. If you don’t use some helpful forms and organizational sh...
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Human Error and your Family Tree
Jul 5
You quickly find there is alot of room for 'human error' when working on your family tree. First are the primary and then secondary resources you use. Census records, birth, marriage and death records are all important and considered primary sources. However, they were still created by a person -- so human error can be involved. I have neve...
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Free Indexes on Ancestry.com
Jun 29
The Ancestry.com site (a subscription fee source) is a super collection of databases and records which can really benefit all family history researchers. However, many of their online databases through Ancestry.com are FREE and available for anyone to use even if you have no paid subscription. The list (scroll down) of available databases is tr...
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Bible Records Database – DAR
Jun 21
One of the important research sources are found in the family Bibles - the record pages of births-marriages and deaths. Here one or more family members over the years the Bible was held by the family made a written record (sometimes the only record) of major family events such as birth dates, marriage ceremonies and death dates along with those i...
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Getting Beyond that Brick Wall
May 31
Experienced or a novice, everyone hits a brick wall in trying to locate even a small amount of information on a specific ancestor or even a whole branch. A few ideas just might provide some inspiration for you put a crack or even break through that brick wall. First: Be patient -- you may not solve the problem of finding your great grandfather, b...
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Online at the National Archives
May 21
The National Archives collections in Washington, D. C. is an excellent resource for any family history researcher to check. If you did a couple years ago, do the search again as new things are added or you know additional names on the family tree. To get an idea of the numerous topics to select from, this site page has the listing of to...
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U. S. Passports
May 17
If your ancestors ever had a passport from the United States you will want to see if the passport application is available through the free FamilySearch.org site. The available passports information / images on the site from the United States is over 3 million. The years covered are 1795-1925, many decades worth. Early passport forms in 1790s...
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OCR – From Print Image to Text
Apr 23
It can be so helpful to have many of the family print documents converted to a text form, especially one that can be edited. It is another way to 'SAVE' the family information by making in text form. Examples include obituaries, those newspaper copies that are kept in file folders. If you have it as a scanned image and then convert using OCR (Op...
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Immigrants to England – 1330 to 1550
Mar 13
Most family researchers are happy if they can locate ancestors back 100 - 150 years. That is an accomplishment verifying actual relatives who were 2 to 4 generations back. There are others doing their family tree that can take the lineage back even further-- even to 17th through 14th century. Now available through the United Kingdom Natio...