One of the reasons millions of Americans—and especially descendants of New England colonists—have royal ancestry has to do with inheritance practices of western European nations. As Gary Boyd Roberts explained in the Volume 19:3 (2018) issue of American Ancestors Magazine, “Younger sons or daughters of kings (who are entitled to nothing) become or marry nobles,[…]Read more
Land records–grants, deeds, mortgages, surveys, and more–are among the most valuable resources for genealogists to prove relationships and to point to new relationships. Why? One of the strongest motivators for American immigration was land, and one of the strongest motivators for migration within America was land. Because of this, land records are the most common[…]Read more
(This article first appeared in the September 4, 2008 posting on our blog) I’m a firm believer that genealogy should be fun. If we lose sight of the enjoyment of solving puzzles and discovering new information, genealogy simply becomes work. To me having fun while researching takes many forms: talking to myself (statements like “well,[…]Read more
To celebrate the release of the new fourth edition of Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace, EE’s author offers guidance drawn from the new edition. This is the fourth in our four-part series. ( View Part 1 | View Part 2 | View Part 3 ) Citations are flexible structures. They are not rigid formulas from which we dare[…]Read more
Reviewers have praised Elizabeth Shown Mills’s fourth edition of Evidence Explained for its new chapter: “Building a Citation.” Step by step, this tutorial explains the building blocks of a citation and how to layer those blocks to handle today’s complicated online sources. Mills’s tutorial concludes with fourteen universal templates that can be used to cite[…]Read more
Before the Internet was generally in use, people seeking their family trees sooner or later went to an archives in search of information. We spoke with relatives to elicit stories and details about the family. Some hung around cemeteries or called in at the local Registry of Deeds or the Probate Court. Pastors and parish[…]Read more
Let’s say you are looking for the German origin of one of your ancestors, and you’ve exhausted your English-language sources. You are familiar with German genealogical words and phrases because you own a copy of Ernest Thode’s German-English Genealogical Dictionary. You’re reasonably confident that the missing ancestor came to the U.S. from Berlin, so what[…]Read more
To celebrate the release of the new fourth edition of Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace, EE’s author offers guidance drawn from the new edition. This is the third in our four-part series. ( View Part 1 | View Part 2 ) Previous posts in this series introduced the concept of layered[…]Read more
In previous issues of “Genealogy Pointers,” we have pointed out various features of Roberta Estes’ new book, The Complete Guide to Family TreeDNA. We will continue to do so in the weeks and months to come. The book is currently available in e-Pub format and a black and white print edition. Based on popular demand,[…]Read more
In her August 30, 2023 review of Generation by Generation: A Modern Approach to the Basics of Genealogy, by Drew Smith, organizational expert Janine Adams observed, “Like Drew, I wish a book like this had been around when I started doing genealogy research. It’s so clearly laid out and clearly written, with bits of humor[…]Read more
Consider the following 17th-century Virginia land patent abstract: “MATHEW PRICE, son and heire to JOHN PRICE, late of Va., labourer, 150 acs. Henrico Co., upon Turkey Island Cr., 23 May 1638, p. 558. E. by S. upon sd. Cr., W. by N. toward Bremo, S. by W. upon land granted to his late father, now[…]Read more
To celebrate the release of the new fourth edition of Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace, author Elizabeth Shown Mills offers guidance drawn from the new edition. This is second in our four-part series. (View part 1) Technology has complicated the process of citing our sources. With digital images delivered online or through other[…]Read more
