The conflicting information in sources can be a brick wall in your genealogy search. If or when you run into this unfortunate situation, here's some tips to help resolve those conflicts! We’ve all been there – tracking down an ancestor and finding an answer we've been looking for on a document, only to find another record that says something different! The death certificate has a different date of death than the headstone, a census gives a different place of birth than a marriage record, … [Read more...]
10 Ways to Tell That…You Might Be a Genealogist!
Genealogy may not appeal to everyone, but those who catch the "bug" tend to get it bad! Do any of these 10 things sound familiar? * If you carry a “relationship calculator” card around in your wallet, you might be a genealogist. (Second cousin twice-removed, great-grandniece...) * If your Google home page displays the home pages to MyHeritage.com, FamilySearch.org, Ancestry.com, or FindaGrave.com, you might be a genealogist. * If every time someone mentions a major U.S. city, you … [Read more...]
Bronze Stars and Sergeant’s Stripes: Solving a Military Mystery
From a vague recollection and tattered photograph, our genealogists were able to piece together the details and help our client access key military records for her father. On 12 July 1973 a cataclysmic fire at the National Personnel Records Center destroyed between 16 and 18 million records, including 80% of the records of World War II soldiers. When a client asked us to help her locate information regarding her father, Danny*, we knew that this would require some creative research. The … [Read more...]
7 Reasons to Hire a Genealogist
With so many technological advances and record availability these days, one question we get fairly often is, “Why should I hire a genealogist? What can you do for me that I can’t do myself on [insert the name of any online genealogy site here]?” There’s really no quick answer to these questions, but there are a lot of reasons people hire a professional. Some of them include the following: Hire a Genealogist to Save Time. Learning more about your family tree can be extremely time-intensive. … [Read more...]
How to Find Family Photos Online
Finding photos of ancestors is one of the best ways to bring their heritage to life. Here's how to find family photos online. As professional genealogists, our job is to seek out the details of ancestors' lives so that our clients are able to understand the people with whom they share a connection. These bits of information can include occupation, military service, education, immigration, religion, and more. A question we get pretty often is "Can you find photos of my ancestors?" One of … [Read more...]
Research Pitfalls of Beginning Genealogists
Avoid these common research pitfalls that many beginning genealogists fall into! If you’re looking for ways to improve your research skills, it’s always best to take a personal inventory of your research practices and habits. Following are some errors that many beginners and hobbyists make which, if eliminated, could save time and increase accuracy immensely. Collecting Ancestors This is one of the most common mistakes. Simply copying down someone else’s tree or taking their … [Read more...]
When Pension Files are Genealogy Treasure Troves
Pension files can provide a wealth of information for genealogy research. We'll show you details pension files can contain to extend your family history. As a genealogist, I enjoy working with military records and documents and really like it when a client is interested in their ancestor’s military history, too. Tracing an individual from his enlistment, through his actual service and on to his discharge can provide a thrilling – and occasionally sobering – glimpse into the life of an … [Read more...]
Denied Access to a Vital Record? Try the Newspaper!
When privacy laws prevent researchers from finding genealogy records, newspaper records may provide the information you're searching for! Strict privacy laws, designed to protect both the living and the dead from having their identities stolen, can create some serious problems for a genealogist. Some states permit the acquisition of birth, marriage, or death records when the individuals named in those records have been dead for 50 years, or 100 years after the event was recorded. Other … [Read more...]