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This talk is being given for the Sioux Valley Genealogical Society Just in time for celebrating Veterans’ Day, and continuing our celebration of America at 250, this talk focuses on finding veterans in our family trees. U.S.military records are valuable sources of genealogical information which are sometimes overlooked. This talk will illustrate the genealogical…
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This talk is being given at and on behalf of the Brookings Public Library In this talk, professional genealogist Sarah Busse Spencer provides an overview of immigration to the United States and reasons immigrants left Europe. Learn about the most important record types for researching immigrants to the US, as well as essential charts and…
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We recently toured the “Anne Frank House” exhibit visiting the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. It was an amazing exhibit, very well curated, showing the history of the family of Otto and Edith Frank before the war. Otto was the only member of the 8 who hid in the Annex who survives…
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When you decide you want help with your genealogy research, do yourself a favor and hire a professional. You could of course pay a friend to do some research, but here are some reasons to hire a professional. If your research concerns ancestors from German-speaking lands or from the former Russian Empire (today Poland, Estonia,…
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“My grandma does genealogy.” “Oh, that’s my great aunt, in our family.” Many a family has someone who does family history. Ever notice how so often those self-appointed guardians of family history are retired, or otherwise have spare time? How many of you have avoided starting your genealogy because you think you don’t have time?…
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Ancestry.com, as of this writing, costs between $25 and $55 per month. MyHeritage.com, likewise, costs today between $100 and $400 per year. And so on. In my home state of South Dakota, libraries used to provide access to Ancestry Library Edition. When funding was reduced in 2025, libraries no longer included Ancestry in their databases.…
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I wrote last week about why you need to know your ancestors’ religion before seeking German records, especially before the 20th century. At the time, I mentioned how the Catholic church began recording marriages and baptisms and deaths. Lutheran churches began recording baptisms in German speaking countries, some as early as 1540s. These records predate…
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Why leave your homeland? The many and varied personal reasons can be generalized as: One example of a “push factor” is described in this blog about Mecklenburg, a region in the eastern portion of Germany. Between 1820 and 1890, new laws freed the serfs from their land without specifying where they should live. To marry,…
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The first thing to know when searching for ancestors in Germany is the religious identity. Of course, when working with immigrant ancestors whose decendants live in the United States, the first step is finding the name of the hometown. That’s a different post. But for anyone who has narrowed down a German ancestor to a…
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A client recently asked me to look up an ancestor born in Belgrade, Serbia. First, I looked up a little about the history. Like many countries in Europe, and most countries in Eastern Europe, Serbia was part of other countries, kingdoms or empires for most of its existence. In addition, the language we know as…