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Genealogy is the most wonderful of pastimes. I love it, and you should, too. There are endless reasons why. Genealogy is one of the fastest growing hobbies in the western world, as more and...
Every family history begins close to home. Before you search old courthouse books, census pages, ship lists, military files, or newspaper ar...
Have you ever wondered where your inner strength developed? Have you wondered about the people who may have passed you your intelligence, yo...
If you had to choose one record set to build a family history, the United States census would be it. No other source tracks families so cons...
DNA testing has changed family history in a way few people could have imagined even twenty years ago. It used to be that most people built a...
DNA genealogy is one of the most misunderstood parts of family history research. A lot of people buy a test thinking it will hand them a fin...
Are you looking for some productive genealogy projects to do in April? As the first full month of spring, April offers some interesting and...
Last month was one of those good, steady months in family history where I didn't uncover some huge surprise, but I still got a lot done. I d...
The founding of the United States is often treated as a closed chapter, something contained in a handful of documents, a few familiar names,...
Easter is on a different date each year. It can get confusing. How do you keep up with a holiday whose date is constantly changing? It can b...
In the years surrounding 1776, the American colonies were not shaped by a single voice or a single source of information. There was no unifi...
The founding of the United States is usually told through public moments. Documents, debates, and decisions take center stage. The Declarati...
When the United States first began to take shape as a nation, it didn't just need laws and structure. It needed a voice people could recogni...
By July of 1776, the arguments had been building for a long time. Tensions with Britain were no longer new. Colonists had already spent year...
When people think about the founding of the United States, they usually begin with the Declaration of Independence. That is understandable....
Artificial intelligence is showing up almost everywhere now, and genealogy is no exception. It is being used for transcriptions, translation...
Artificial intelligence is becoming a bigger part of genealogy, and one of the newest examples is MyHeritage's Scribe AI. This tool is desig...
St. Patrick's Day has a way of turning people's thoughts toward Ireland. Even those who do not spend much time looking into family history o...
Why do we move the clocks forward in spring and back in fall? In this episode, we trace the history of Daylight Saving Time from its early i...
March is a month of change. Winter begins to loosen its grip, the days grow longer, and it starts to feel like it is time to get moving agai...
Most family historians spend a lot of time thinking about what they still have left to find. There is always another record to track down, a...
By the middle of the nineteenth century, the United States had reached a point where a simple decade-by-decade household tally no longer sat...
The first six U.S. federal censuses, from 1790 through 1840, were created primarily for government purposes. They were designed to measure p...
If your genealogy research feels stuck, the problem may not be missing records. It may be that you are asking the right questions in the wro...
If you use United States census records often, you notice that the questions change when the country changes. The format changes when techno...
Someone asked me a hard question once, and I think a lot of people have asked it in their own minds, even if they never say it out loud. The...
By the time you reach the modern era, birth records feel straightforward. You search an index, order a certificate, attach it to your tree,...
Since Valentine's Day falls in February, it is a good time to explore how our ancestors celebrated the day of love and how their traditions...
Birth records did not shift from "nothing" to modern certificates overnight. For centuries, most births were documented through churches, to...
Birth records can feel like a modern invention because we usually meet them as government certificates, neatly formatted and easy to file. T...
Same name ancestors can fool even careful researchers because the records are close enough to look convincing. The county fits. The time per...
Same name problems rarely get solved because you find one perfect record that settles everything. More often, the break comes when you stop...
Same-name problems are one of the biggest sources of bad trees. You find a record for a name that fits the right county and the right time p...
I'm Done Being Mad I didn't wake up calm. I woke up tired. Tired of being irritated at ink. Tired of being annoyed at paper. Tired of holdin...
Every family tree is built as much from absence as it is from presence. Names, dates, places, and relationships draw most of our attention,...
Divorce Records Are a Genealogy Goldmine Divorce records are one of the most overlooked sources in family history research. Many people assu...
Before welfare offices and Social Security checks, there was something older and far more personal. There was each other. When I look at my...
There comes a point in genealogy when you sit back, stare at the screen, and realize you are not moving forward anymore. You are still worki...
There is a moment in almost every genealogy project when temptation shows up. It does not usually sound reckless. It sounds reasonable. It s...
Coming Back to the Paper Trail Last time, we stood inside a gap, ten years of a man's life with no clear paper trail. No neat answers. No sa...
There are times in genealogy when the records speak clearly. Names line up, dates behave, and places make sense. You can follow a life forwa...
Genealogy has ruined me in the best way. I can be perfectly content all day, and then I see a hint, a record index, a cemetery photo, or a s...
Federal homestead records sit in a sweet spot between law and lived experience. They were created to document a legal transfer of public lan...
When you first start researching your family, it is easy to believe every question has a record waiting somewhere. A birth certificate, a ma...
Marriage records are one of the three core types of vital records every family historian should learn to use. Birth, marriage, and death rec...
January is basically the genealogist's secret power month. The holidays are over, the calendar is wide open, and you can finally hear yourse...
Genealogy has a built-in problem that never goes away. You are trying to rebuild real lives from records that real people created, and peopl...
Genealogy teaches you something early. The record is rarely clean. Ink blots. Misspelled names. Ages that shift from census to census. Peopl...
All month, we have looked at how different places celebrate the season, with food, songs, family gatherings, church services, and small cust...
Well, two big reasons show up in the history. One reason is a theological calculation that shows up early. A Christian writer named Sextus J...
In Poland, Christmas takes a different form than in many places. The most significant family moment often happens on Christmas Eve, not Chri...