Always, Always, Start With What You Know…
Except When You Can’t! You Hit a Brick Wall and Need To Take a Flying Leap Over the Wall, Through the Wall, Around the Wall. You dearly hope a hypothesis will catapult you over the wall or at least build a...
Read more
Caroline County (Va.) Register of Colored Persons of Caroline County, State of Virginia, cohabiting together as Husband and Wife on 27th February 1866.
It is hard to set out families prior to the 1880 census with certainty. The 1850, 1860 and 1870 federal census list household members by name but do not include relationships. Inferences can be made when the male head of...
Read more
Three Books for the Ages
Old Turtle, Jonathan Livingston Seagull and The Little Prince Philosophers for Kids Bonnie and Jack, Mele and Malakai, Erin and baby Grace, you all make me think of books to have at home for the kids and for you....
Read more
When All You Have to Work With Are Initials
Find Mrs. J. R. Evans. Mary Ann (Smeck) Barlet and Tobias S. Barlet of Reading, Berks Co., Pennsylvania had three children; William Edward, Emma Rebecca, and Hannah Mary. The eldest son died young. When Emma Rebecca (Barlet) Bradshaw died in...
Read more
Philadelphia Church Records Filmed, Digitized and “Indexed”
Philadelphia research isn’t easy. Even the maps make it hard. It’s a city between two rivers, the Delaware on the East and the Schuylkill on the West. S. A. Mitchell published a colored map with the wards identified, but...
Read moreUse the Power of the Gathering of the Clan at Thanksgiving
Get a larger audience for your letters! If you have been putting off writing a letter to an unknown fifth cousin, because you have to actually mail it and you aren’t sure if she will respond and you have...
Read moreTreasures Salvaged From the Flood
Weird Artifacts Amongst some curious odd sports equipment, baseballs, softballs, squash balls, raquetballs, golfballs, gloves, etc. retrieved from the flood two months ago, I found an autographed baseball from David Dymecki, a boy couple years behind me at William...
Read more
Kids’ Toys for the Ages
The American Girl Doll Catalogue came today. A marker of the passage of time, I recycled it instead of reading it. What a mix of history, dolls, reading, collecting, and memories. Over the past two decades, I have purchased...
Read moreWin Win Negotiations
or Better Yet, Win – Win – Win The person you best in a business situation in your twenties will turn out to be the one person who can help you solve a difficult business complication in your forties....
Read moreNaming Patterns for Women
The Maternal Line or the Umbilical Line Remember the Ladies! Maternal naming patterns are much harder to spot since surnames change on each marriage and every generation. Sometimes a pattern may become apparent by looking at a straight maternal...
Read more
