By Bonnie Samuel The funeral home record for your ancestor is a resource not to be overlooked. The record not only lists the financial detail of services rendered for the last event of a person’s life, but often bio and family info collected for the clergyman’s eulogy. You may find cause of death listed, an…
By Ericka Gizzard Do you know that real estate adage, “Location! Location! Location!”? It seems that everything in real estate rests on one point: location. In family history research, we should have an adage too: “Document! Document! Document!” Everything in your family tree really does come down to the documentation that you have to back…
By Ericka Grizzard As a genealogical researcher one of the most common sentences I hear is: “I need a birth record for my great-grand-so-and-so born in 17 or 18__.” I then have to break it gently that, although one of my greatest wishes is to make records magically appear, such a record has a higher probability of…
By Jeanne Rollberg Early religious records around the world are gold mines for genealogists as they seek key information that may not be found in civil records or newspaper resources (such as birth, marriage and death announcements) for certain time periods. People investigating religious records may find baptism, marriage, and death information in some denominations’ church…
More thoughts from Jayne about how to encourage kids to be involved in genealogy and family history. If you missed Jayne’s first post about this topic, you can read it here. Putting our “little darlings in control”…Of a camera or video that is. Most kids now days can run rings around the average adult when…
By Jayne McGarvey This is the first in a series of two posts with ideas for helping children and youth to become interested in family discover. Sharing our love of genealogy or family history with our children or grandchildren is one of the best ways of ensuring that we leave a legacy that will be…
By Jeanne Rollberg Do family historians have an opportunity to discover vibrant lives in cemeteries? Maybe so. American humorist and author Fannie Flagg’s new book, The Whole Town’s Talking, speaks to family researchers even though it is fiction. It’s a multi-generational story about a Scandinavian immigrant who emigrates to the Midwest, settles there, and helps…
By Jamie Drake Well, the results are in. You may be surprised, shocked, or even just bored with your ethnicity report. Now what do you do? How do you do it without hiring an expert and spending a small fortune? There are a lot of really great resources on the internet to start with. Put…
By Jill Moore Have you ever been tempted to buy those genealogical compilation CD’s from Ebay or Amazon? For what seems to be a relatively reasonable price, each one appears to be chock full of regional books that are often billed as vintage, antique, hard to find or out of print. Each listing tantalizingly gives…
By Nikki Paine One of the oldest English directories is the London directory for 1677, held in the Guildhall Library in London. It demonstrates that directories have been in existence for several centuries, but, just as we have thrown away our out of date telephone directories, our ancestors have done the same with their directories.…