Magritte’s “La Trahison des Images” (“The Treachery of Images”) (1928-9) or “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (“This is not a pipe”). René Magritte’s message was that images do not convey the full sense of an object. Observers are often fooled into thinking that a simulacrum is the real thing. In the field of genealogy research,…
By knowing just the first three digits of someone’s SSN, you can correctly guess their birth state. The nine-digit SSN has been used since 1936 to track a person’s wages for the purpose of accruing benefits with the Social Security Administration. The SSN has 3 sections. Area Numbers The first three digits of the SSN…
Today’s blog provides some tips on how to search State records. For our examples, we will be using the Illinois State Marriage Index: One of the Genealogists.com researchers was searching for a marriage of Nicholas Bradbury and Ida Allen. Example 1: I entered bradbury, nicholas in the Groom’s Name field and no results. I then entered…
In the last 7 weeks since creating the Facebook page for my family history research firm Genealogists.com, I feel I have learned a few things about postings that I would like to share. Since many (perhaps even most) of you have your own Facebook pages, please correct any of these learnings that you feel are…
(Gleaning Vital Information from WWI Draft Registrations) In 1917 and 1918, approximately 24 million men living in the United States completed a World War I draft registration card. These registration cards represent approximately 98% of the men under the age of 46. The total U.S. population in 1917-1918 was about 100 million individuals. In…
A boy went to war in 1914 and left his bike chained to a small tree. He never made it home. His family left the bike by the tree in his memory. This is that tree today. The story about the boy is not true. Unfortunately, you would be amazed at the number of people…
In addition to its marvelous postings, one of the additional benefits of the Genealogists.com Facebook page is the ability to request “lookups” (source documents) from the Family History Library. Because not everyone knows what is meant by “FHL Lookup,” we thought we should take a minute to explain what this means. First, a word about…