Archives

Bible records can resolve so many questions if the entries were kept contemporaneously with the events they chronicle. Transcriptions and digitizations need to include title pages, family pages, pages of insertions, copies of the insertations and photographs of the...

Preservation vs. Access Where would historians be if families across the country had not contributed their massive manuscript collections to various repositories over the last four hundred years? I wrote a lecture about finding the right repository for your family...

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...

“My family has ALWAYS spelled our name this way, so that can’t be the right record.” How many times have you heard that from another researcher or even thought that about one of your own surnames? In addition to...

Given names can be so important in family research. Examining family names for three or more generations can give clues to who was important, who was beloved and who wasn’t, especially if the family included some unusual names. A...

Researching in military records comes to mind around Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. In the genealogical community, one of the more frequently researched series of records are the Revolutionary War Pension Application Files from the National Archives...

Step-Family vs. Nuclear Family Research Describing a family, most people start with the parents, father, mother, then children oldest to youngest, finishing up with the baby. This is true today, and was true 200 years ago. It is a...

Name Clusters and Namesakes Given names patterns can lead researchers both backward and forward. Check all grandchildren and grandparents for naming clues and possibly great-grandchildren and great-grandparents. Name clusters offer heritage traces, just as namesakes do. If you are...