Category: Research

Goldie May, Your Research Assistant for FamilySearch

Note: This article by James Tanner appeared in the Genealogy’s Star blog site and is used with the author’s permission.   https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/goldie-may/dhmlghokhgphidijmacfnmegmkkhpdik Goldie May is a free, new, innovative Chrome extension that guides users through basic genealogical research. You may or may not be acquainted with Chrome extensions but they are extremely useful and I have some I use every day as I...

What’s New in The Family History Guide

Over the past few weeks we’ve added several new Choices and one new Goal in The Family History Guide. Here’s a recap of the key additions to the site, with links provided to the supporting content in The Family History Guide: FamilySearch “Where Am I From?” FS Project 4: Goal 10, Choices A, B, C, and D. The “Where Am...

Historical Images Tool Finds Unindexed Records in FamilySearch Catalog

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by James Tanner in the Genealogy’s Star blog and is used with the author’s permission. https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/explore-historical-images/ To begin discussing the new Historical Images Tool, I think it is a good idea to know what it does and does not do. To understand what it does do, you need to understand why the tool...

How Complete Were the US Federal Censuses?

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by James Tanner in the Genealogy’s Star blog and is used with the author’s permission. https://www.census.gov/history/pdf/wright-hunt.pdf Gaining a historical perspective is difficult. Very few genealogists have an extensive background in history and particularly the history of the places where their ancestors lived and died. For example, let’s suppose that in the year 2020...

New: Updates to Country Pages

In The Family History Guide there are links to about 70 country pages for research. These include some “collector pages” such as Central America, East Europe, Pacific Islands, and South America. There are also links to resources for hundreds of smaller countries around the globe. In preparation for RootsTech 2020 (Feb. 26-29), we have updated quite a few of the...

Don’t Forget the Unindexed Records on the FamilySearch Website

Editor’s Note: This article by James Tanner was published previously in the “Rejoice and Be Exceeding Glad” blog site and is used with the author’s permission. Don’t Forget the Unindexed Records on the FamilySearch website As of November 2019, there were 1.73 billion digital images published only in the FamilySearch.org Catalog. This compares to 1.4 billion images published in the searchable FamilySearch...

22 Million Completely Searchable Books and Records on the Internet Archive

Editor’s Note: This article by James Tanner originally appeared on the Genealogy’s Star blog site and is used with the author’s permission. 22 Million Completely Searchable Books and Records on the Internet Archive One of the least known valuable genealogical resources is the Internet Archive or Archive.org. This website is rapidly becoming the largest, free, downloadable, completely accessible collection of books...

Researching in U.S. Counties

Doing family history research in the United States? You’ll enjoy the resources in the Family History Guide; there are separate research pages for each of the 50 states, plus Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico. And when it comes to doing county research, we’ve got you covered there as well. Under the main picture on each state page, there is a...

Expanded Commentary on the Rules of Genealogy: Rule Eleven

Editor’s note: This article by James Tanner appeared previously in the Genealogy’s Star blog site and is used with the author’s permission. Expanded Commentary on the Rules of Genealogy: Rule Eleven I have slowly been going back to the list of the Rules of Genealogy and writing about each individual rule. There are presently 12 Rules. Here is the current list...