Yesterday Ancestry.com announced that it will no longer sell its popular Family Tree Maker software, and the Internet lit up. Genealogists everywhere began blasting Ancestry’s decision and wringing...
Dec102015
Research Tools
Nov252015
Gratitudes for Thanksgiving 2015
As I was sitting in a car being driven through Chicago en route from Rhode Island to Minnesota, reading compiled military service records and pension files for five Civil War veterans pulled from the collections of the National Archives by a researcher in Washington, DC, and sent to me...
Oct132015
Reading the Newspapers
I’m currently working on a research problem where the answers are not jumping forward. The goal is to identify the father of a female ancestor who lived from about 1820 to 1890. The records of the research subject, her husband, and her children don’t identify her father, but I...
Jun102015
Welcome, Evidence Explained, 3rd edition!
The third edition of Elizabeth Shown Mills’ Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace was released last month. Just as weighty as its predecessors, EE3 can be intimidating, particularly for those who are just beginning to work with source citation. It’s tempting to “grab and get out”–find...
Mar232015
Timelines
Timelines are one of the most useful tools in the family historian’s toolbox! I’ve been using timelines since I started researching my family history. Pedigree charts and family group sheets are great for summarizing relationships and storing facts, but they have lots of limitations. For family historians interested in...
