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To make specific connections between people, you need to fix them in a specific place. Each individual needs a name, a date, a relationship and a place. When professional genealogists start a research project, we start out by asking a question structured like the following: If you ask me for help, the first thing I…
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In English legal history, a married woman was “covered” under her husband, who was authorized to act in their shared interests. This concept called “coverture” explains why a woman in England and former English colonies like the U.S. took her husband’s surname, and often was known only by her husband’s name (Mrs. John Smith) instead…
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The National Genealogical Society (NGS) is also partnering with America250 to celebrate our nation’s founding and history. Family history is America’s story. They have a free download booklet (“toolkit”) with dozens of good ideas that you can implement, or help your neighborhood, community group or church group to implement, to help honor your ancestors. The…
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Here is a great resource I just ran across. If we want to know what we can learn about our immigrant ancestors, we need to know a bit about the laws in place at the time they came
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A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, yes, but is your ancestor Jon or John? Doing genealogy, we need to understand our ancestors in their own historical context. Names and proper spellings have evolved over time. With the advent of the computer for record keeping in the 20th century, it became essential…
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Too many people with the same name, from the same town. Too many public trees with guesswork instead of research work. As a professional, I begin work on a client’s tree by verifying existing relationships and dates and places. If you tell me another professional has verified a certain branch, I can accept that and…
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When you look at a person entry on the shared tree in FamilySearch, sometimes you see a blue box. These are under the category of Research Help and are called record hints (or sometimes just blue hints). These are potential matches from the millions of indexed records in FamilySearch’s collections. They hire programmers to write…
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As part of America250, FamilySearch is encouraging people to discover their place in America’s history. Once you create an account on FamilySearch (which is always free), you add stories and memories of your ancestors to the shared Family Tree on FamilySearch. A central part of America’s history is that we are, as stated the title…
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Want to start doing your family history research? Started your family history research but have questions? Here are a few resources to consider: Rootstech sponsored by FamilySearch. The convention occurs every year at the beginning of March, but recordings of lectures are available year round. Free. FamilySearch Research Wiki. Over 150,000 articles on a wide…
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We are all part of America’s history. Most people never get publicity or their names in textbooks. That’s why it is so important to record the history of our family members. We should remember their lives, as they built this country for us. FamilySearch, the world’s largest free shared tree and document repository, is collaborating…