By Jamie Drake Lately, genealogy has gotten a reputation for being an expensive hobby. Newbies don’t know where to start, how to start, or even if they want to, and advanced researchers are tired of paying the hundreds of dollars a year it costs for subscription sites. So, in honor of all of us broke…
By Kathrin Kweseleit Throughout Europe, there is generally no overall standard for the beginning of church records. However, in German history there are good historical markers that can help get us started. On one hand we have the Reformation (which started in Germany around 1517) and on the other hand the Council of Trent (which…
By Kathrin Kweseleit When it comes to Germany there are a few known facts on German history and some well-meant prejudices that are common worldwide, like Germany is actually some sort of giant Bavaria with us all wearing ‘Lederhosen’ and ‘Dirndl’ while eating ‘Sauerkraut’. Or, that the last Emperor was a humorless weirdo and that…
by Jayne McGarvey, Professional Genealogist with Genealogists.com Regardless of whether you use a subscription service like Ancestry or Find My Past or a free service such as Family Search, it is tempting to pop their forename and surname into the little boxes and press Return, and then when you get a return of several thousand…
Written by Anne Sherman, Genealogists.com Genealogist The following eight tips will help ensure you get started correctly on the path of finding your ancestors. 1. Always start with yourself. Early on in my professional genealogy career I was contacted by a client who had already started on his research but wanted my help to go…
Birth certificates show they were born. Death certificates show they died. It’s the details in between that show how they really lived! Sometimes in the rush to explore the details of our ancestors and in particular their origins we forget the importance of just how much information can be gleaned from the original records pertaining…
Answers to Genealogy FAQs Are you new to genealogy? If so, then you probably have a lot of genealogy research questions. Some genealogy-related questions are more common than others. Here are answers to a few of these important questions to help you along your genealogy research journey. 1. How do I begin researching my…