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!

Online Resources for Researching Your Norwegian Ancestry

June 21, 2019 by Legacy Tree Genealogists 4 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 Norway, to share his favorite online archives and record collections for researching Norwegian ancestry.There are about as many descendants of Norwegians worldwide as native Norwegians. Easy access to Norwegian record collections are therefore important for family history researchers worldwide. In this article, we share our favorite online archives and record collections most used by family history researchers to extend their Norwegian ancestry.1) The National Archives of NorwayThe National Archives of Norway (Riksarkivet) preserves the non-current records of government ministries and other central offices. Norway launched their first Digital Archives in 1998. It was run by the National Archives of Norway in collaboration with the University of Bergen and was among the pioneers of online publication of archival content. Since then the …

Stolen Handkerchiefs and Convict Ships: Tracing a Convict Ancestor to Australia

June 13, 2019 by Kim - Legacy Tree Genealogists Project Manager 4 Comments

This client project (shared with permission) delves into tracing the journey of a convict ancestor, sent to Australia for pickpocketing.One of our Australian clients came to us with an Oliver Twist-esque story about her teenaged ancestor who was convicted of pickpocketing in England in the 1820s and sent to the Australian penal colonies. She wanted to know—was he an impoverished pickpocket in a gang of young pickpockets, or might he have come from a respectable family and been wrongly accused? We were on the hunt to find out.The TrialJohn Coates was tried on 11 May 1826 in Middlesex, London’s Central Criminal Court, commonly known as Old Bailey—picture dark wood, long robes, and powdered wigs here. John Clark, John Coates, and Thomas Smith were accused of stealing a handkerchief worth 2 shillings, 6 pence from James Hardy. The three defendants were tried for Larceny from a Person during the Old Bailey May session. Smith was found not guilty. Twenty-one-year-old Clark and …

Legacy Tree Onsite: Beginner’s Guide to Jamaican Ancestry Research

June 10, 2019 by Legacy Tree Genealogists Leave a Comment

Legacy Tree works with researchers all over the world to access records for our clients. We asked one of our onsite researchers, located in Jamaica, to share her experiences with researching Jamaican ancestry.Jamaica is a multi-racial society. Though African ancestry occurs in eighty-five percent of the population, there are a large number of persons who also have European ancestry, East Indian Ancestry, Chinese ancestry, Jewish ancestry, and Middle Eastern ancestry. The first mistake made when starting to do Jamaican ancestry research is forgetting the fact that Jamaicans are “out of many, one people,” which incidentally is the coat of arms motto of the country.The History of JamaicaThe first inhabitants of the island were the pre-Columbian peoples, who settled the island in two different waves in 670 AD and 800 AD, culminating in a culture that is called Taino by academics today. The Taino were the people who greeted Christopher Columbus in 1494, when he first came to the …

Why Don’t I Share Any DNA with My Known Relative?

June 4, 2019 by Legacy Tree Genealogists Genetic Researcher 6 Comments

One of our genealogists shares her answer to the question, "Why don't I share any DNA with my known relative?" after her own surprising DNA results.Recently, Carolyn Tolman, Project Manager at Legacy Tree Genealogists, and I discovered we are fourth cousins. Her great-great-grandmother Rosa Clark is the sister of my great-great-grandmother Sarah Annie Clark.Not long after we made the discovery, we were sitting in a DNA chromosome mapping session together at Roots Tech. I leaned over to her and suggested we use our shared DNA to begin mapping our Clark DNA. We logged into our AncestryDNA accounts immediately but couldn’t find each other in our match lists! What if one of us had misattributed paternity? What if one of us is not biologically a Clark?!Maybe we had just missed each other while quickly scanning our DNA match lists. Thousands of matches aren’t easy to skim through, especially while listening to a lecture. We moved to GEDmatch where we could quickly compare our …