Tag Archive
The Real Lessons of Genealogy
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 [...]
Misleading Genealogy Advice for Beginners
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 [...]
The Twin Hats of a Genealogist
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 [...]
How Insider Genealogists Obtain Census Information Before It Is Released
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 [...]
Are You Tweeting Your Descendants?
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 [...]
The Social Security Death Index—How Do You Use It for Genealogy?
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 [...]
Genealogy: Dead or Alive?
Isn’t the pursuit of the ghosts of the past a study in death itself? There is a certain musty smell to old papers and books, which reminds us that the person who wrote them is no longer alive. Ancestral birth certificates, and marriage records, and death certificates of a person are documents of a life [...]
Is Amanuensis Right for Genealogy?
Not the process of amanuensis; the process is fine. It’s the word which may not be suitable. The derivation of amanuensis is Latin, translatable as a “manual laborer,” or a person who executes a function by hand. The term particularly refers to the act of writing down another person’s words. The word came into being [...]
Why Your Kids Hate Genealogy
Just ask them. They’ll tell you it’s boring. As soon as you drag out the old photos of their ancestors, you’ll see them cringe. First of all, these people aren’t smiling. They look miserable. No wonder, just look at their uncomfortable clothes. You can’t see their necks because they have their shirts and dresses buttoned [...]
DNA Genealogy Tests – Are They Overrated?
The first time I watched a T.V. show where DNA was used to connect a suspect to a crime scene, I thought, “Hey! This is better than fingerprints.” And it was. It wasn’t long before I saw DNA used on talk shows to prove that men who didn’t want to be the father of a [...]
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