We recently asked Sunny Jane Morton, co-author of How to Find Your Family History in U.S. Church Records: A Genealogist’s Guide, to put together a short list of important or surprising features of American church records prior to 1900. Whether you are looking for a specific denomination, or want to test your knowledge of church records[…]Read more
All censuses taken since 1790 are tabulated and organized by the counties within each state or territory. By federal precedence, the county is the basic unit of jurisdiction for census demographics. Alaska is the only state without counties; therefore, judicial districts are used as jurisdictions for the censuses taken there. In Louisiana, the term “parish”[…]Read more
Chapter Two of Morton and Henderson’s How to Find Your Family History in Church Records answers the question, “How can I use church records if I don’t know my ancestor’s denomination?” Given the wealth of information awaiting genealogists who delve into church records, this issue is fundamental to people who have hit a brick wall[…]Read more
It is a postulate of Irish genealogy that the destruction of the Irish Public Record Office in late June 1922, resulting in the loss of a vast collection of Irish source records at the outset of the Irish Civil War, was the greatest tragedy in Irish genealogy. Among the losses were centuries of census, probate,[…]Read more
If you still haven’t purchased your desk copy of The Researcher’s Guide to American Genealogy, 4th Edition, the best textbook in the field of American genealogy, consider the comments in the following reviewers. We ran them before, but the recommendations bear repeating, in our judgment. The reviews appeared in the prestigious Midwest Book Review, a[…]Read more
Although the term Ashkenaz originally referred to a place now in Germany, it is broadly used these days to refer to all European Jews. This guide is intended as an aid to researchers who are searching for Ashkenazic Jewish ancestors from Eastern Europe who immigrated to the United States primarily between 1880 and 1924. In[…]Read more
We were delighted to receive two stellar reviews of our new book, How to Find Your Family History in U.S. Church Records, by Sunny Morton and Harold Henderson. The first appeared in Randy Seaver’s daily column, “Genea-Musings,” and the second, in ‘A Week of Genealogy,” written by Dr. Margaret McMahon. We’ve reprinted both of them[…]Read more
In addition to the royal descents of immigrants to the American colonies, Quebec, or the United States, The Royal Descents of 900 Immigrants to the American Colonies, Quebec, or the United States traces the lineages, through such immigrants, of many modern royal figures. The late Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, and the current Queen are[…]Read more
For the past month or so, we have been spreading the word about an extraordinary new reference work for Connecticut researchers, Finding Early Connecticut Vital Records: The Barbour Index and Beyond. This is one of those books that one cannot praise too highly, for it is nothing less than a comprehensive bibliography of Connecticut birth,[…]Read more
One of the difficulties researchers with Welsh ancestry face is pinpointing the location of ancestors possessing surnames. Authorities John and Sheila Rowlands have taken some of the difficulty out of this process in the updated version of their book, The Surnames of Wales, by showing the greatest areas of concentration where such surnames do and[…]Read more
