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June 14, 2020

How to Read an Old Document

How to read an old document Genealogists who are involved in doing their own original research inevitably run into handwritten documents that are difficult to decipher. The difficulty arises from a number of factors: the document is written in a language unknown to the researcher the creator of the document had poor handwriting skills the document is written in a...

Research

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

What’s New in The Family History Guide

Here’s a recap of the latest happenings with The Family History Guide: 1. QUIKLinks Reach the 5,000 Milestone Recently we added about 50 new QUIKLinks in The Family History Guide to record collections from FamilySearch, Ancestry, MyHeritage, and Findmypast. That puts the total number at over 5,000 (and growing). You can find QUIKLinks where you see the lightning-bolt icons in...

What is new at The FHG

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

June 7, 2020

Genealogy and Paleography: How Are They Complementary?

Editor’s Note: This article by James Tanner was published in the Genealogy’s Star blog site and is used with the author’s permission. William Shakespeare’s Will by an unknown scribe – Unknown source, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1382708 I can assume that if you have been reading this blog at all previous to this post that you already know something about genealogy. But I...

Research

May 31, 2020

The Family History Guide on Facebook

As you probably know, The Family History Guide has two associated Facebook pages: Our public page, at https://www.facebook.com/TheFamilyHistoryGuide A private Group for trainers and consultants, at https://www.facebook.com/groups/thefhguidetraining/ If you are interested in joining the Group, please request membership. For the past few weeks, we have been adding helpful family history tips to these pages, with a wide variety of topics...

Facebook/Research/Social Media/What is new at The FHG

May 31, 2020

The Basic Steps in Cleaning Up the FamilySearch Family Tree

Editor’s Note: This article by James Tanner was published on the Genealogy’s Star site and is used with the author’s permission. Whether you are currently deeply involved in researching and adding new names to the FamilySearch.org Family Tree or just now beginning to learn about how to sign on, we all have the same basic challenges. I know I have...

FamilySearch/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

May 24, 2020

Memorial Day: Remembering Those We Lost

My brother-in-law, Mark Sargeant, served in the United States Army for over 20 years as a Military Intelligence officer. His duties took him and his family to Arizona, Germany, Georgia, Kansas, and Nebraska. He retired in late 1999 and worked for 10 years for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, assisting with the security of missionaries in Africa...

Memories/U.S. Research

May 24, 2020

How to Analyze Genealogical Sources: Part Five

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by James Tanner in the Genealogy’s Star blog site and is used with the author’s permission. Analyzing genealogical records and documents boils down to making decisions about the accuracy of the records and documents. One of the most common categorizations of documents makes a distinction between an original document and a copy. This...

Country Research/Research/U.S. Research