Have you ever considered making a locality guide for your research? What is a locality guide, you say? It’s a document you create that contains key snippets of information relevant to genealogical research in a specific locale. The idea is to have one central guide that you can refer to time and time again when […]
New Work on Free African Americans
Paul Heinegg has done it again. He’d already spent decades of his life compiling information about free African Americans during the colonial era in Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. He mined some of the most challenging record sets in genealogy—scant and hard-to-read court records, tax records, fragments of colonial census records, […]
Those Doggone Nicknames
My collateral ancestor Mintie was called by her middle name Lucinda in almost every record during her lifetime *except* the bible record above and one census: Nicknames, middle names and initials will get you every time in genealogical research. They still get me every now and then and it kinda drives me just a little […]
She Might Not Be a Widow
Before I get into this post, I want to let you know how excited I am about the next webinar I’ll be presenting on Saturday, June 26, 2021 at 1:00 pm EST. Aaron Dorsey and I will be presenting on Finding the Last Slaveowner: Guidance and Case Studies, and this will be a 2-hour extended […]
Why You Must Use JSTOR In Your Genealogy
If you aren’t using JSTOR already for your genealogical research, you will be once you finish reading this post. I absolutely love this resource. JSTOR is a database of academic journals, books, and primary sources. As such, it contains thousands of articles on subjects directly relevant to genealogical research. Articles might be 4 pages or […]
Finding Living Descendants
Happy New Year everybody! I haven’t posted in a long while because I’ve been busy giving genealogy webinars, managing a child in remote learning, and going back to work myself. The silver lining during the past year has been the webinars I’ve launched. I’ve seen an amazing response and more are to come. I plan […]
Upcoming Deed Records Lecture!
This Sunday, November 15 at 3:00 pm EST, I am excited to offer my first Zoom Webinar: “Fruit of the Earth: Using Deed Records to Uncover Your Ancestors.” Deed records are one of genealogy’s most trusted and voluminous record sets. But the legal jargon can be confusing, and besides, what if your ancestor didn’t own […]
Finding That Maiden Name
Finding the maiden names of wives is a problem all researchers will face sooner or later. When marriage records are missing there are several strategies we can use to uncover these names. Death Certificates We can use the records of a couple’s children to uncover information about that couple. I have used this in every […]
Don’t Go Looking for Slave Records
If a beginning researcher walks into a library or archives and asks to see the slave records for a community, the archivist will likely be confused. Most of the records used to study enslaved persons aren’t called that. They are Probate Records. Land Records. Court Records. Tax Records. Even Vital Records. If they were simply […]
A Valuable Strategy for Civil War Pensio...
Cluster research works. You will find more information about your ancestors if you study the lives of those in the community where they lived. I swear by this and I’ve discussed it here over and over again. One source that illustrates this clearly is Civil War Pension Records. Don’t just check research your ancestors and […]