Genealogical Value of Legal Notices in the Newspaper
Administrator’s Notice Legal Notices or Advertisements were placed in the local newspaper according to the laws and customs in each state. The Administrator’s Notice was to the local townspeople, asking those indebted to the estate to pay up and...
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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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...
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...
Read moreThoughts about Fires and Genealogy
I think I measured once and it is three miles from our house to the high school, a staging area for the fire fighters for the Flagstaff fire. The fire was actually more behind Bear Mountain in Skunk Canyon...
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Researching Conrad Brown, Charles Gile Willson or William Monroe Miller
When Christina Brown wife of Conrad Brown appeared in the will of Balthaser Henritze, my heart sank a bit at the thought of tracking down Browns. However, it wasn’t so bad, the family generally stayed in Reading and Conrad...
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Hundred of Families and Thousands of People Located in the 1940 Census
In the last 90 days, I have searched and read the 1940 federal population census for hundreds of families and located thousands of people in multiple states, some indexed, some not. Ancestry has indexed: Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware,...
Read moreHidden Chronicles and Genealogy
The funniest thing happened on the way to researching the other day on the computer. Two different friends of mine who are also on Facebook were listed playing Hidden Chronicles, a specific computer Facebook/Zynga game. These two women don’t know each...
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