Family history research is full of terms that you may never have encountered before you began constructing your tree. Every genealogist, no matter how experienced, will find themselves pulling out the dictionary as they dig deeper into history. One of our favorite resources to draw from when encountering a word or phrase that we have not heard before is …
Genealogy Glossary: Confusing Research Terms and Their Meanings Read More »
Most family historians are familiar with the idea of transcribing records. We do this as part of our own family research when we document a new source in our tree or carefully record the text of a family record for posterity. Many of us have also spent time transcribing for repositories, such as FamilySearch, who have managed to …
The Smithsonian Needs Your Help Transcribing Records Read More »
Here are memories of life on an Illinois farm, as recalled by my mother, Adra Erickson Wallin (1922-2010)… “I was born at home (all four of us were), at the farm at Barbers Corner on August 18, 1922, at six in the morning. A nurse and a doctor came—Dr. Ludwig—but I was born before he …
One Girl’s Childhood During the Great Depression Read More »
Spring is in the air and lazy days of summer are in the immediate future. My thoughts wander as I view fresh flowers sprouting and buds appearing on the trees. In genealogy lessons, instructions are to create a research plan, stay focused and be diligent. While I agree, when spring fever arrives I find it …
Robert Evans Griner (1767_1827) eloped with Priscilla Knight (1774-1848). They migrated to what they thought was north of Duck River near Hickman County Tennessee that in those days was the border of lands of the Native American Chickasaw Nation, and there they built a cabin. The United States Army troops advised them that they were …
The End at the Inn: My Griner Ancestors and the Mysterious Death of Merriwether Lewis Read More »
“The grandson wants to remember what the father wished to forget.” –anonymous One of my great-grandfathers was a Swede named Charles Anderson (1859-1916), a boatman on the canals of northern Illinois—and he was quite a character. Grandma never talked about him—but being a big fan of black sheep stories (especially when the aforementioned stories come from …
Thank you to Michael Elwood Pollock for this guest post. You can read more about Michael in his bio at the end of this post or on his website, Anquestory. I recently attended with my fiancee the funeral of a young man who not only died too young, but to whom my fiancee had been …
Thank you to Bob Vornlocker for this guest post. A recent German Genealogy Group experience with creating an on-line index for the records of Most Holy Trinity Church in New York, in its early days a German parish, has prompted me to write this update to an article originally published by the GGG and Dick Eastman, …
Thank you to W Paul Featherstone for sharing his one-name study. It began back in 1995 when I was given my Featherstone lineage back to the 1500s by another researcher, also a Featherstone, who had studied and produced around 20 odd trees just involving North and East Yorkshire. Her sources list now contains 67 pages …
Hello chaps, When I was a teenager, my Aunty A (whose real name was Annie Jane, but she’d never admit to it – and whose husband, I understand, didn’t tell her for months that he’d registered their baby daughter’s name as something other than they had agreed – fancy calling your child, in all innocence, …