Melanie Mayo

Who Counts as Family in a Family Tree? Who to Add and Who to Leave Out

The term family tree is defined as “a diagram showing the relationships between people in several generations of a family.” Add your parents, grandparents and great grandparents and you’re well on your way to building your own tree. But, as we all know, family is an incredibly complex concept with biological, legal, social and emotional elements. And, for this reason, the question of who counts as family in a family tree is far from simple. 

5 Things You NEED to Know Before You Visit a Cemetery this Summer

Summer is the season of travel and while we are wandering the world many of us are also planning a visit to a cemetery or two. If you’re going to try and find a burial site, no matter its age or location, you’ll want to take a few very important things into consideration before you head out.

6 Uncommon Places to Find a Missing Birth Date for Your Ancestor

We all have those ancestors who make us want to pull our hair out. You know, the ones we just can’t find key pieces of information about – like a birth or death date? Locating a date of birth can be especially difficult because oftentimes only ages are listed on old records. And even on records that usually do list a birth date this detail is sometimes left blank because the informant didn’t have the needed information (this is common on death certificates). But finding an actual date of birth (rather than an estimated year) is important to your research. This article will go over a few common places to find birth dates and then jump into several sources that are often overlooked by researchers.

New Online Mayflower Collection Lets You Search to See if Your Ancestors are Descendants of the Original Pilgrims

The online research site American Ancestors, from the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS), has just released the largest collection of authenticated Mayflower passenger genealogies ever online. This database is a digitized version of the Mayflower Families Fifth Generation Descendants, 1700-1880, a series of books created by the General Society of Mayflower Descendants and featuring more than a half a million names of individuals who are known to have descended from those who took part in the pivotal voyage.

This Curious 1880 Census Recorded the Insane, the Sick and the Poor

If you are one of the millions of people who have an ancestor that lived in the Unites States in 1880 and had a physical or mental impairment or illness – or who was homeless, an orphan, an alcoholic, a prisoner, who was living in an institution or poor house, or who received government assistance – you’ll want to know about these often overlooked census schedules.

DNA Testing is Not a Shortcut to Your Family’s History

Genetic testing has made family history a topic of interest to more people than ever before. But it has also provided an easy deception. While modern ancestry tests do share fascinating information about a person’s heritage, the results are only valuable, or accurate, within the context of family history research.