Conflicting Sources: Compare, Contrast and Conclude
A distant cousin, Kim Livaditis, recently asked me about P.E.B.C. Henritze of Abingdon, Washington Co., Virginia and specifically about his second wife and daughter. I have researched nearly every known Henritze descendant of Balthaser Henritze and Dorothea (Rapp) Henritze,...
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Newspapers: Research and Sources
Researching Newspapers Titles, Dates and Sources Knowing a newspaper existed in a specific town or city is the first step to finding copies, reading, researching the time and place needed for information about specific ancestors or projects. Knowing the...
Read moreI Didn’t Touch that Newspaper
Researching Black Newspapers The process by which I added papers to my checklist was simple. It was source by source, list by list, one by one. Around twenty years ago while researching my book, Bibliographic Checklist of African American...
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Genealogical Quilt Books
Genealogical Quilt Books Luckily for us, my mother gave us a beautiful quilt as a wedding present, made by her grandmother Flora Anna Coogle Armstrong, and great grandmother Minnie Araminta Sibert Coogle. My mother set aside one for each...
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Marriages or Unions – Proof in the Census?
Marriage records are not all retrievable. When you are frustrated about the lack of information regarding a marriage; when civil marriage records can not be located, sometimes the reason is easy, obvious and still unsolvable: The Big Lie to...
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Favorites – Genealogical Research Libraries
Favorite Top Ten Genealogical Research Libraries in the United States My favorite research libraries in order from East to West: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. D.A.R. Library, Washington, D.C. Western Reserve Historical Society Library, Cleveland Allen County Public...
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Truth or Myth – Born at Sea
Born At Sea A couple of weeks ago, a television commercial by Ancestry caught my attention. The actor wondered why his grandparents never mentioned they lived next door to the Wright brothers. How could that fact, amongst all others,...
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Spierling – Chicago, Cook Co., Illinois Research
Large City Research Sometimes researching in a large city is problematic, too many people with similar names, hard to differentiate. Various immigrants with strong accents made the census much harder to use. The Soundex program was a huge help...
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Death Certificates – Sources Created under Stress and Grief
Last month to the shock of his family and friends, my brother-in-law, Paul Shea Zak passed away unexpectedly from a heart attack. He was the youngest; we were stunned. Unlike his brothers or me, Paul was gregarious, hundreds of...
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Was William Phillip Breitenstein Really Skipped in Both the 1880 and 1910 Census?
William Breitenstein of Louisville, Kentucky Genealogical research into the federal census of Jefferson Co., Kentucky brings up a couple of questions. William Phillip Breitenstein was enumerated with his father Jacob Breitenstein and mother Maggie in 1860 and 1870 in...
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