The Legacy Tree Genealogists Blog

Hand-picked, tested and trained, our professional genealogist team knows how to find your story. We search the world for answers. Find the un-findable. And we’re experts at everything from tracking down rare international records to analyzing DNA test results. Based near the world’s largest family history library in downtown Salt Lake City, we also work with researchers and archives around the globe. Contact us today if you would like help discovering your ancestors!

Time + Place= Records and Family!

October 15, 2018 by Jim - Legacy Tree Genealogists Editor Leave a Comment

If there’s any problem that’s bigger than not finding anything about your ancestors, it’s finding too many records with people of the same name to make sense of it all. That’s when genealogists use the concepts of time and place in genealogy like a set of cross-hairs to hone in on records that relate to their family.Time and Place in Genealogy ResearchWhat does "time and place" mean to the family historian? It means putting yourself in the time and place of the ancestor for whom you are searching, which will result in enhancing your chances of doing the most thorough search of all available documents.Navigating Family Tree HintsIf you are building a family tree online – whether it’s on MyHeritage, FamilySearch or Ancestry.com – the website is likely to serve up hints about the ancestors whose names you enter as well as suggestions for their ancestors.Learning the history of an area you are researching – as well as things such as the naming practices of a particular time …

using social columns for genealogy research

Finding Amelia Winter: Using Newspaper Social Columns to Find Female Ancestors

October 5, 2018 by Katy - Legacy Tree Genealogists Project Manager Leave a Comment

Searching for a female ancestor? Check the newspaper social columns!Tracing our female ancestors and learning about their lives can be a difficult proposition in American family history research, so it is important to leave no stone unturned and utilize all the tools available to the genealogist in that endeavor. One such crucial tool in the 19th and 20th centuries is the local newspaper, and the social columns in particular.Newspaper Social Columns: 19th Century Social MediaIn the years prior to the online connectedness of Facebook, blogs, and Instagram, communities used a section of the local newspaper to report on the goings-on of the neighbors. Even in the smallest, rural communities, the daily or weekly publications were home to brief social commentary—who had a baby, who was sick in the hospital, who was in town visiting relatives, and who attended Mrs. Smith’s 75th birthday party. In most cases, these kernels can be fun bits of information, flesh on the bones of our …

Legacy Tree Onsite: Genealogy Research in Vienna, Former Center of an Empire

September 28, 2018 by Legacy Tree Genealogists 2 Comments

Legacy Tree works with researchers all over the world to access records for our clients. We asked one of our onsite researchers, located in Vienna, Austria, to share his experiences with genealogy research in Vienna archives and offices.Until 1919, Vienna was the capital of one of the largest empires in Europe, and many people passed through Vienna, or produced records that are now held in archives in Vienna. With close to two million inhabitants, Vienna is a population center likely to be involved when researching families from the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.When the parish books of Vienna’s Catholic parishes for births, marriages and deaths from before 1938 (births from before 1918) were put online a few years ago, the necessity for onsite genealogy research in Vienna was significantly reduced.However, many other records are still offline and can be found in different places around town. Here is a selection of archives, offices and other places, and what they hold in …

school records for family history research

School Records: An “Out-of-the-Box” Family History Resource

September 21, 2018 by Lori - Legacy Tree Genealogists Project Manager 2 Comments

Have you used school records in your family history research? If not, you may want to start!Fall is definitely on its way. There is a crispness in the air, the leaves are starting to change colors, college football is in full swing. And for many, the kids are back in school. Backpacks, pencil boxes, notebook paper, and crayons have become a regular part of life again along with paperwork—and there is a lot of it. The school has registration packets to be filled out for each student. Every teacher has their own paperwork that needs to be filled out. There are lunch forms and school nurse forms and the list goes on. As the mother of nine children, I have done my fair share of complaining about the amount of paperwork I have to complete so that my children can go to school. And it’s the same exact paperwork that I have filled out for the past ten years.School Records Can Be a Valuable Genealogy ResourceAs a professional genealogist, I have worked with different kinds of …