Years ago, as a beginner genealogist, I held many misplaced beliefs that wasted my time and valuable resources. Looking back, I wish I had known that these ideas were hindering my career as a family historian. Here are four mistakes that have limited my genealogy research over the years.
DNA testing for genealogy is more common than ever, but it’s also expensive. Although we’ve seen prices drop quite a bit in recent years the cost is still too much for many to justify. If you’ve been holding off on testing your own DNA, or on expanding your testing to relatives whose information may help your research, the information in this article will help you overcome this cost-hurdle.
Are you encountering a lot of indexes in your Ancestry research? This technique will show you how you can find many of the original records online for free.
Genealogy organization. How important is it? If you’re trying to build an accurate family tree, the simple answer is very. Here’s how to accomplish it with one smart tool.
Unlike many of the resources we cover here on Family History Daily, such as these free US state genealogy resources, ArchiveGrid does not provide direct access to records online. Instead, it is a catalog of catalogs.
If you’re not obsessed with using newspapers in your genealogy research you are missing out on one of the greatest sources of rich family history details available.
FamilySearch.org, which holds the largest collection of free family history data in the world, is currently recruiting genealogy enthusiasts for its online World Indexing Event 2017. And they want you. For 72 hours between Oct 20 and 22 thousands of …
Can You Read the Text on This Old Genealogy Record? If So, Your Help is Needed .
By Alexandra Mendez-Diez Even when we find what we’re looking for in historical archives it can often feel like there is something missing from the results. A big part of why we conduct genealogy research is to get to know …
Your Ancestors Probably Prepared Meals from These Old American Cookbooks .
Thank you to Barbara Lockard for this article. From The Robinson Argus, February 17, 1886, Robinson, Illinois: A company of children, mostly boys, aged from seven to fifteen years from the New York Juvenile Asylum, will arrive in Robinson at the …
250,000 Rode America’s Orphan Trains: Were Your Ancestors Among Them? .
The first thing most family history researchers do when they encounter a genealogy website is to begin searching for their ancestors in the general (main) search form provided by the site – which is often located on the homepage or in another easily accessible area. All large genealogy research sites center around these main search forms which are designed, generally, to look for records in all searchable collections at one time.
General search forms that dig through millions, or even billions, of records are certainly handy. If you have never used a site before – or have not searched for a specific ancestor – these forms can be a great way to gather the low hanging family history fruit, so to speak. They provide a fast way to turn up easy-to-find records with little effort. But, despite this obvious convenience, they may often be stifling your efforts.