Tuesday, March 19, 2024 -
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Ancestral Discovery

Noncomputer-based genealogical resources

A guide to non-digital educational resources.

If — make that when — you hit the brick wall

In the genealogy world, we use the term “brick wall” when we seem to go as far as we can in finding a particular ancestor or branch. I hope this isn’t too...

The database with the most records is free

FamilySearch has many features, but this column will only deal with the database, since it’s the most popular one.

Genealogy databases

The major genealogy databases are Ancestry, FamilySearch, MyHeritage and FindMyPast. All have international record sets and are overlapping, but all have some unique...

Genealogical conferences

An important part of finding your ancestors (and not someone else’s with the same name) is developing your genealogical skills.

Trust, but verify

I want to share some other genealogical databases that are more general.

Our ancestors in the news

Here, we’re going to look at the value of newspapers. This insightful record set can give us details of our ancestors not found elsewhere.

Ancestral given (first) names

When doing family research, first — or given — names can also be perplexing.

Name that ancestor

For Jewish genealogists, names are one of the most challenging aspects of finding our ancestors.

Genealogy software helps organize your work

About creating online family trees: genealogy software can be a tremendous help in keeping your work organized.