http://freegenealogyguide.com Free Guide to Tracing your Ancestry and Researching your Family Tree. Fri, 14 Oct 2011 21:41:42 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.3 http://freegenealogyguide.com/real-lessons-genealogy/ http://freegenealogyguide.com/real-lessons-genealogy/#comments Fri, 14 Oct 2011 21:35:32 +0000 ezekias http://freegenealogyguide.com/?p=411
When I was in the third grade, I rode my bike to school, and all the way there my mind roamed the universe—castles and knights, cowboys, sports, outer space and comic book characters--but not one thought was given to school. I wasn't interested in school. It was only an irritant and a constant interruption of [...]]]> http://freegenealogyguide.com/real-lessons-genealogy/feed/ 0 http://freegenealogyguide.com/cousins-pogo-stick/ http://freegenealogyguide.com/cousins-pogo-stick/#comments Wed, 08 Jun 2011 18:58:53 +0000 ezekias http://freegenealogyguide.com/?p=399
I'd only seen them in comic books, but to my ten-year old mind, they were the coolest form of transportation known to man. It was my birthday, and my taste in toys had gotten so weird that my mother had no idea what to buy me for a gift. I really didn't have any ideas [...]]]> http://freegenealogyguide.com/cousins-pogo-stick/feed/ 2 http://freegenealogyguide.com/misleading-genealogy-advice-beginners/ http://freegenealogyguide.com/misleading-genealogy-advice-beginners/#comments Sat, 02 Apr 2011 23:15:44 +0000 ezekias http://freegenealogyguide.com/?p=392
Confusion. Busywork. Chasing your tail. Scattering your focus. Too many choices. Frustration. Loss of patience. These are things that continually plague new family tree researchers, and it's not altogether their fault. The blame lies with the do-it-yourself instructions being handed out (or sold) by pseudo-experts, and sometimes by real experts. It's not so much that [...]]]> http://freegenealogyguide.com/misleading-genealogy-advice-beginners/feed/ 2 http://freegenealogyguide.com/twin-hats-genealogist/ http://freegenealogyguide.com/twin-hats-genealogist/#comments Tue, 22 Mar 2011 20:39:15 +0000 ezekias http://freegenealogyguide.com/?p=386
Genealogists wear two hats. First hat is that of the rational, fact-finding researcher. This is the no-nonsense hat of the person who scours the information repositories, who photographs and scans, who copies, transcribes and indexes, who pins down significant dates and places, and who footnotes and documents every source. But there is another hat, that [...]]]> http://freegenealogyguide.com/twin-hats-genealogist/feed/ 0 http://freegenealogyguide.com/lazy-genealogists-ancestors/ http://freegenealogyguide.com/lazy-genealogists-ancestors/#comments Thu, 10 Mar 2011 23:08:47 +0000 ezekias http://freegenealogyguide.com/?p=381
If a genealogist from the past were to dog our steps these days, he would pound his fists while imagining how much more research he could have accomplished if he'd had access to a computer, and he could have done that research without having to travel. Travel? How about without leaving home? Or without even [...]]]> http://freegenealogyguide.com/lazy-genealogists-ancestors/feed/ 5 http://freegenealogyguide.com/insider-genealogists-obtain-census-information-released/ http://freegenealogyguide.com/insider-genealogists-obtain-census-information-released/#comments Tue, 01 Mar 2011 20:58:15 +0000 ezekias http://freegenealogyguide.com/?p=376
Genealogy is a waiting game—at least as far as U. S. Census records are concerned. Take the 1940 Census, for instance. Everyone knows it won't be available to the public until the second of April in 2012. That's because census information is kept secret for 72 years after it is taken. To protect the privacy [...]]]> http://freegenealogyguide.com/insider-genealogists-obtain-census-information-released/feed/ 0 http://freegenealogyguide.com/tweeting-descendants/ http://freegenealogyguide.com/tweeting-descendants/#comments Fri, 25 Feb 2011 20:09:43 +0000 ezekias http://freegenealogyguide.com/?p=366
Nothing excites a family history researcher more than discovering letters from an ancestor. Why is that? Well, for one thing, letters usually contain names and dates, mention relatives and explain relationships, but they also offer a much deeper layer of information from the standpoint of genealogy. Letters convey the mood of your family member at [...]]]> http://freegenealogyguide.com/tweeting-descendants/feed/ 2 http://freegenealogyguide.com/dad-versus-the-tv-repairman/ http://freegenealogyguide.com/dad-versus-the-tv-repairman/#comments Mon, 21 Feb 2011 23:27:08 +0000 ezekias http://freegenealogyguide.com/?p=361
Television was a big deal in the 1950s. Evenings started to revolve around whatever was on TV. Little TV tray tables were invented so families could eat TV dinners in the living room, while they watched family programs in front of the set. The only problem was when the television went on the blink. My [...]]]> http://freegenealogyguide.com/dad-versus-the-tv-repairman/feed/ 5 http://freegenealogyguide.com/the-social-security-death-index%e2%80%94how-do-you-use-it-for-genealogy/ http://freegenealogyguide.com/the-social-security-death-index%e2%80%94how-do-you-use-it-for-genealogy/#comments Sat, 19 Feb 2011 01:24:20 +0000 ezekias http://freegenealogyguide.com/?p=355
It's true that the name seems a little grim and impersonal—a government index of death—but what else are you going to call it? The name, Social Security Death Index is accurate, blunt and to the point. Back in 1935, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law, and that led to the Social [...]]]> http://freegenealogyguide.com/the-social-security-death-index%e2%80%94how-do-you-use-it-for-genealogy/feed/ 0 http://freegenealogyguide.com/how-does-a-genealogy-pedigree-chart-work/ http://freegenealogyguide.com/how-does-a-genealogy-pedigree-chart-work/#comments Sat, 12 Feb 2011 22:07:24 +0000 ezekias http://freegenealogyguide.com/?p=298
A pedigree chart is a symbolic way of drawing a family tree, sort of like a stick figure is a symbolic way of drawing a person. There are plenty of notions about its invention and history, one theory being that the chart was developed in sixteenth century England by the College of Arms in London [...]]]> http://freegenealogyguide.com/how-does-a-genealogy-pedigree-chart-work/feed/ 2