Category: Records

5 Steps to Improving Your Family History Experience

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by James Tanner on the Genealogy’s Star blog site and used with the author’s permission.   When you are working on researching your family history, you can easily get sidetracked by failing to focus on the fundamentals of historical research. Sometimes finding an obvious match for your ancestor will send you off on...

Searching through Layers of Sources to Find Your Ancestors

Editor’s Note: This article, written by James Tanner, was originally published in the Genealogy’s Star blog site and is used with the author’s permission. It is probably evident that all sources are not created equal. Some are much more equal than others. (Attribution to George Orwell). As I have been doing research, I have noticed that source records are often...

Sources, Hints, and Record Searches

We recently made some important updates to a few of the Goals in The Family History Guide. They have to do with record sources, hints and searches in FamilySearch Family Tree. Here is a summary of the changes that were made: Project 1: FamilySearch, Goal 8—Adding Sources Choice B: “Browse and sort existing sources in your family tree.” This updates...

Where Are the Daughters?

Editor’s Note: This blog post from Liz Kennington was originally published on February 2, 2019 and is reprinted here with her permission. One of the difficult things about doing family history work is finding all the women in the family. Even if you don’t know a wife’s maiden name, you at least have a clue when there is a “Mrs” mentioned....

The Value of Church Records in Family History

One of the most rewarding things about doing family history research is the things you can actually discover from all kinds of records.  The facts recorded in birth, marriage, and death records on one family can really paint a picture of what life was like for those who have gone before.  Some call it “putting the flesh on the bones” when we can acquire information that goes beyond names,...

It’s a New Year – Let’s Start This Week to Record Our Personal Histories!

It is nearly 2019 and I would guess that for most of us, it is a hard fact to comprehend. We contemplate the past year, and although so much happened, it is the pace at which it transpired that makes us worry about the new year approaching and then suddenly being a memory. Finding a way to record the events of our lives...

Resolving Dead Ends in Trees, Part One

Editor’s Note: Thanks to our guest blogger, Karen Meyer, currently serving as an Area Temple and Family History Consultant in the Scottsdale (AZ) Coordinating Council, for this blog post. In Part One,  she outlines some common causes for dead ends in family trees and how to address them.   Problem #1: Too many Census Data Sheets for the same year. One...

The Family History Guide: Essentials for Everyone

One of the reasons for the remarkable growth of The Family History Guide is that it offers something useful and important to just about everyone. We’ve done a bit of thinking on this topic and come up with a list of 10 family history “audiences” and what might appeal to them in The Family History Guide. Some of us, of...

How To Create and Reap The Benefits of Family History Blogs

As a creator of seventeen family history blogs (with plans for more), I am obviously and unabashedly a proponent of this simple way to record, track, organize, access and share family history!  Blogging is now easier than ever. With the varied platforms available and an abundance of online help, why not take advantage of this fantastic family history tool to...

Before Google … City Directories

Remember the Yellow Pages—those hefty dictionaries of domiciles and dwellers, delivered to your front porch? With the rise of Google and other Internet sites, printed phone directories have become a memory for most of us, as it’s faster and easier to find addresses and phone numbers on your phone, tablet, or laptop. So let’s turn the clock back a bit....