Beginning in 1907, the Roman Catholic Church worldwide required that a Catholic person’s marriage be reported to his or her place of baptism. The 1907 decree Ne Temere required that marriages be noted on one’s baptismal record. They are usually noted on the side of the baptism record. Compliance with this decree varied, especially in [...]

There are many excellent resources out there for the genealogists studying their English heritage. We all know about sites such as Ancestry.com, FindMyPast.com and the the like. However, the English county record offices and other county-level governmental bodies are slowly but surely digitizing a great deal of old records. It is interesting that many of [...]

With the holiday season in full-swing, I thought it would be fun to use various holiday words and phrases and see if I could find people in historical records that carried these words and phrases as actual names. Here are a few that I found:
1. Mary Christmas
There are many instances of this name appearing, but [...]

Do you ever find wonderful information in a book on the Google Books website, only to quickly become discouraged because you can’t figure out how to print a page of the book and you don’t want to spend a lot of time transcribing the information in it? I have, and I’m guessing many others feel [...]

Most people upon hearing the term “vital record” instantly assign it a credibility that it may not deserve.  For example, Massachusetts has a series of vital records books affectionately called “the tan books” also known as Massachusetts Vital Records to 1850. The books are organized by town and as one would expect, they list births, [...]

One overlooked genealogical treasure when researching modern ancestors is modern day pension benefits. Recently, I was put in a position to place my mother, who had lived with me many years, in an assisted living facility. My husband had sustained an injury that needed my additional care and attention.
As I went about arranging my mother’s situation, [...]

Most genealogists are aware of and familiar with Find A Grave. It’s essentially a site that helps you find the graves of people, as the name might suggest. For a website that was not originally created with genealogy in mind, it is incredibly useful for genealogical purposes.
I discovered it about two years ago, and I [...]

Much talk goes on in our office about those who are Native American and those who are not. This is because many people request our services to find their Native American ancestors and most often documentation shows that they are not. This is true because most of the people who submit these requests are Caucasian. [...]

Seguido hay comentarios en nuestra oficina sobre quiénes son indios americanos y quienes no lo son. Esto es porque diario recibimos peticiones de personas que quieren que les ayudemos a documentar su genealogía india americana. Y como las peticiones casi siempre vienen de personas caucásicas, sabemos por experiencia que la mayor parte del tiempo la [...]

My husband and I are currently moving and he is, unfortunately, often traveling for business. This presents some challenges as there are many things to do and he is only here occasionally to help. In a recent late night conversation over the phone he asked if I had put up Christmas lights yet. Silly me–all [...]