Over the next few weeks and months we will be highlighting different aspects of the groundbreaking book, Ancestoring: Understanding Records, Family and Ourselves, by Darcie Hind Posz, Certified Genealogist and Fellow, American Society of Genealogists. As Darcie emphasizes in Part One of her book, “Understanding Records, it is important not only to find a record[…]Read more
Most families know precious little about the women on their family trees who joined religious life. Historians, too, have largely overlooked the estimated 350,000 Catholic women religious (nuns and sisters) in the United States between 1790 and 1990. This, despite their enormous collective contributions to the nation’s humanitarian, educational, and social services infrastructure. Instead, the[…]Read more
The third chapter of Elizabeth Shown Mills’ masterful guidebook, Your Stripped Bare Guide to Citing and Using History Sources, lays out the criteria for the construction of citations. In a sense, this chapter specifies the building blocks that all citations must include in order to fully account for an historical source. And, as Ms. Mills[…]Read more
Onomastic used to mean a lexicographer who put proper nouns, such as personal names, in alphabetical lists. Then came along the twentieth century and onomastics transformed into the study of the history and origin of those proper names, under the umbrella of onomasiology, which involves comparing terminology for similar concepts. A professional who works in[…]Read more
British genealogist Jane Roberts writes the blog, Past to Present Genealogy. Ms. Roberts devoted her posting of January 23, 2025, to a lengthy review of Roberta Estes’ book, The Complete Guide to Family TreeDNA. CLICK HERE to read the full review. One aspect of the review that readers will appreciate is her discussion of the[…]Read more
Henry Z (“Hank”) Jones, FASG is the author of Psychic Roots; Serendipity & Intuition In Genealogy (view here) and several highly regarded books about the Palatine immigration to colonial America. Here’s what he had to say about Darcie Hind Posz’ new book, Ancestoring: Understanding Records, Family & Ourselves: “Ancestoring is a genealogical groundbreaker: the first Quantum[…]Read more
The first reviews of Dana Ann Palmer’s Ultimate Guide to Mastering FamilySearch are in, and they couldn’t be better. Linda Stufflebean writes the Empty Branches on the Family Tree blog, one of the most popular genealogy blogs on the Internet. She also monitors other postings and publishes a weekly listing of the most valuable articles[…]Read more
FamilySearch’s new Full-Text Search feature allows users to search for names and other words found in its records. Author Dana Ann Palmer knew the Full-Text Seach was in the wings, and she was able to incorporate a 30-page, detailed, and illustrated chapter all about it (Chapter 4) in her sensational guidebook, the Ultimate Guide to[…]Read more
The late Lloyd DeWitt Bockstruck was one of the leading genealogists of the second half of the 20th century. Mr. Bockstruck worked as the long-term manager of the genealogy department of the Dallas Public Library. A leading genealogy educator, he spoke widely at conferences throughout the United States. He served as registrar for multiple lineage[…]Read more
Throughout December we devoted considerable space in Genealogy Pointers to Dana Ann Palmers’ remarkable new book, the Ultimate Guide to Mastering FamilySearch. In the process, we emphasized the vastness of FamilySearch itself and the fact that anyone can use it at no cost. Although we don’t have the time to go into it here, under[…]Read more
