Surnames vs. Titles
Titles Aren’t Big in America It’s definitely not part of our American heritage to have aristocratic titles, though it is and has been part of the heritage of many countries that contributed boats and boats of immigrants, Britain, Germany,...
Read moreDo Surname Suffixes Help or Hinder the Research Process?
Compound Surnames – Suffixes Surnames began as a way to distinguish men of the same first name, John the Barber, John the Miller, John the Carpenter, John the Baptist, John the Red, John the Farmer, etc., etc., etc. Then...
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Compound Surname Research Issues
Last Names – Surnames Compound word surnames have idiosyncrasies which create indexing and researching issues in records across the United States. This is true when compound word surnames are misunderstood like many Spanish names that consist of two surnames,...
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Van Gogh and Beethoven – In Addition to Greatness, What Do They Have in Common?
Compound Surnames – Prefixes Compound surnames differ with regard to prefixes, varying by person, family and era. Compare Ludwig van Beethoven and Vincent Van Gogh. Beethoven is Beethoven and Van Gogh is Van Gogh and yet they could have...
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Brian Sykes, Genetics and Genealogy
When The Seven Daughters of Eve by Brian Sykes was published, I read an excerpt that made me want to read it. The queue to read it was crazy, months long. When it finally got off the reserve hold list,...
Read morePolitics and Facebook
I Would Be Interested in Listening to a Politician Who – Early this summer, Christie Spencer, Julie Scott and I agreed we are tired of negativity in politics. I want both parties out of my wallet and my private life. As...
Read moreAn Old Line Proved Wrong
A common lament amongst experienced genealogists is that the Internet enables dabblers in family history research to add generations of ancestors “just by clicking on the leaf,” many times without any or even partially realistic attribution. This is true....
Read moreGenealogy and Etiquette
A friend called me last week and wanted to know again and exactly, why I didn’t put my genealogy on the web in one of the many linked genealogical options available, specifically Ancestry. I explained the issue as many...
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One Hypothesis Proven, More To Go
One Hypothesis Down, Two to Go (Continuation of What to Do While Waiting for the Mail to Arrive) Family History Research – Tennie Bray – Part Three Tennie (Hobbs) Bray’s obituary listed her surviving siblings, the same children enumerated...
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Gone-Away Lake
Here along the Front Range we had a hard summer, the man against nature theme was unrelenting in June, with fires burning in and out of control. In Aurora in July, 58 people were wounded and 12 murdered by...
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