The following excerpt is from the book, Tracing Ancestors Among the Five Civilized Tribes, by Rachal Mills Lennon. This body of work has been the best-selling guide to a very difficult area of research for over a decade. Ms. Lennon, M.A., CG, specializes in resolving difficult Southern research problems and reconstructing obscure lives, especially those of Native[…]Read more
Martha McCartney uses recent historical scholarship as she sets the stage in her remarkable book, Virginia Immigrants and Adventurers, 1607-1635: A Biographical Dictionary. We’re focusing on this unprecedented trove of information, formatted as an easy to use biographical dictionary of early Virginia immigrants, and sharing an excerpt from the book. Soon after the fateful landing of 1607, thousands[…]Read more
In 1663, England’s King Charles II ceded the Carolinas to Anthony Ashley Cooper and seven other proprietors who had supported the Stuarts in ending the Cromwellian Revolution and returning Charles II to the throne. Although the Crown did not divide the Carolinas into two quasi-self-governing regions until 1691, British colonists established the first permanent settlement[…]Read more
Utilizing census records are a fundamental resource for any genealogists. There are two situations discussed here where the federal census records leave information gaps. Namely, when you’re searching for a relative before the federal census of 1790, and when you can’t find someone you know should show up on a federal census. A relative who predates[…]Read more
Cemeteries can be an incredibly rich source of information for your family history research, and just one of the places where you can collect your dead relatives. Whether you are there for research or just to visit, cemeteries can also be incredibly beautiful, with meaning built into the landscape. Atlas Obscura spent time uncovering the meanings behind some of[…]Read more
Editor’s Note: This morning I came across a YouTube instructional video on how to clean a gravestone. The method, although appearing very effective from a visual perspective, recommended scraping the stone clear of debris and then using astringent chemicals to clean the stone. This seemed harsh to me, so I went looking through our old posts to see if[…]Read more
Editor’s note: The following post on the importance of knowing the county in order to properly utilize census records, and how shifting boundaries can affect that search, is written by author William Dollarhide. An excellent source that can be used to visualize the county boundaries for every county in the U.S. and for each census year[…]Read more
As a body of records, naturalization and denization records are of considerable value, but, until recently, were very difficult to access. Comparable in many ways to census records, naturalization records are a mine of priceless information and include such items as place and date of birth, foreign and current places of residence, marital status, names, ages[…]Read more
The US Library of Congress (LOC) is the greatest repository of published works in the country including genealogy, local history books and periodicals. Whether or not you are planning to visit the LOC, located in Washington, DC, in-person soon, it will benefit you to visit its website. To get on the LOC site, start at its homepage:[…]Read more
Are you getting the most out of tax lists for your genealogy research? Do you even know where to start? As Cornelius Carroll states in the beginning of his book, The Beginner’s Guide to Using Tax Lists, “Tax lists are one of the most valuable, but most neglected sources of genealogical information. They cannot only be[…]Read more
No Passenger List? No official U.S. government passenger lists exist prior to 1820. What miscellaneous lists that have survived and been transcribed or published cover only a fraction of the immigrants who arrived in the Americas before 1820. If you do not possess a passenger list for your immigrant ancestor, are you at the end[…]Read more
Editor’s Note: The following post is written by Genealogical Publishing Company author Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips. His books tread into territory that has been previously underreported, colonial white slave children. In his post below, Dr. Phillips discussing some of his research efforts that went into the making of White Slave Children of Colonial Maryland and Virginia: Birth and[…]Read more
