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Author: Zach Matthews

November 9, 2020

Finding Value in Land Records

Land records might seem not to have any value to genealogical research, especially with the emphasis on vital and census records for most upcoming genealogists. However, they can be extremely helpful in locating where a family may have lived, especially when census and vital records are not available in that area for one reason or another. One reason is that...

Research/U.S. Research/Uncategorized
October 18, 2020

Going through Town Records

When you think of doing local family history, you probably think of records held at the county level. This is especially true for many of the Midwestern and Western states, where records are kept in county and state archives. However, in other parts of the United States, such as the New England area, local records were originally kept at the...

Records/Research/U.S. Research
September 6, 2020

Discovering History in Geography

A crucial part of genealogical research is knowing the history of the location where your ancestors grew up. As a student majoring in family history at Brigham Young University, one of the many requirements that I have to accomplish in order to graduate is to take several history courses. The first few courses cover a brief overview of U.S. and...

Country Research/Records/Research
August 10, 2020

“Remember Me…”

On August 1st, as part of our anniversary, my wife and I went and visited the This is the Place monument in Salt Lake City. Although the walkout to the monument was closed, we went to the adjacent Heritage Village and saw the various replicas of houses and stores that were, at one point, built by many of the early...

Families/Memories/Records/Uncategorized
July 13, 2020

How to Include the Family in Family History

When it comes to spending time with family, engaging in family history ideally should be inclusive and involving everyone, right? The question, though, is how to do just that. After all, it can be quite difficult to get the whole family to gather around a laptop and have them help you index or search for records. Besides, someone might say...

Family History Activities/FamilySearch
June 28, 2020

How Social Media and Family History Brought a Family Together

It is quite amazing to think about how far we have come with technology. Since the creation of the Internet, there have been many changes in the way we shop, research, communicate, and even in how we do family history. More particularly, social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, have made it easier to write and share content...

Memories/Social Media/Technology
June 21, 2020

MyHeritage’s New Photo Enhancement Feature

Once again, MyHeritage has recently announced a new feature that continues to make photographs come to life. This new feature allows people to take their old photographs of their ancestors and enhance them. Essentially, the feature ‘cleans’ the photo from static and aging in a way that makes the pictures look like they came out brand new. Combined with their...

Family History Activities/MyHeritage/Technology/Uncategorized
June 14, 2020

Indexing in Other Languages: An Ever-Growing Need

A few days ago, my wife decided to do some indexing via FamilySearch while I was messaging my grandmother. As we were talking, I mentioned that my wife was indexing, and my grandmother made the following comment in response: “We’re running out of indexing projects for English.” This comment stuck out to me, knowing what I know about my grandmother....

Family History Activities/FamilySearch
June 7, 2020

Freedom on the Move: How Runaway Ads Contribute to African-American Family History

With the events going on at this time, many people are looking back in history to reflect on the difficult journey to freedom for minorities in the United States, particularly the black population. Anyone who has taken a U. S. History course should be aware of the horrific institution of slavery and its overall impact on not just U.S. society,...

Family History Activities/Research
May 31, 2020

Putting Your Ancestor into Historical Context

In my last blog post, I used several examples from my research of Gideon Tripp and his father-in-law Benjamin Watts, along with both of their families. I worked on these two families as part of a research project for a class I took earlier this year. As I was researching their residence in Sangamon County, Illinois from the mid 1830’s...

Country Research/Learning/Stories
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