My time at the Salt Lake Family History Library is precious. There are so many records available to search through. Every time I leave I find myself wishing I had had just 15 more minutes and reviewing in my head the list of searches I was not able to get through.
In my quest for an [...]

As a genealogist and recent transplant to Utah, I thought I would share some tips as a newbie at the Family History Library. I moved here from Atlanta in April to join ProGenealogists and first used the library in May. For those who can’t pick up and move to Salt Lake City but plan to [...]

One of the most useful, but lesser known resources at Ancestry.com, is their vast collection of city directories.   City directories offer a small glimpse—a year-to-year census if you will—into your ancestor’s life.  I have used city directories to help me determine:

Where an ancestor is located in a census record
When an ancestor died
When an ancestor immigrated [...]

I have a third-great-grandmother, Mary J. Freeman, who I recently decided to focus on in order to learn about her origins, which I only knew from census records as New York. Her husband was Royal Oliver. I found four records on FamilySearch accounting for their marriage in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1856, though they varied a [...]

I recently posted a short article relating why ProGenealogists is the ideal research team to take on our clients’ British ancestry projects. I’ve been meaning to put a brief article online on this topic for a while. At ProGenealogists, we’re invested in helping people make the next step in their family history. We find that [...]

Sometimes it takes hours to find a little bit of information. Recently I was looking for a possible death of a child that possibly immigrated in 1884 to New York City. The name of the child was Boruch but may have been changed to a more English sounding name. The last name of this family [...]

If you are anything like we are, you are probably addicted to the Family History Library Catalog. We check the catalog multiple times a day in our research, primarily so we can develop our research plans. It isn’t often that the catalog is down, but when it does happen, it can really thwart our research. [...]

I got involved in genealogy when I was 20. I had always been interested in flipping through the pedigree charts and family group sheets that my brother had compiled as a Christmas gift for our mom several years ago, but the actual research was a mystery to me. Once I started learning how to research, [...]

One of my favorite websites lately is the Family Search Pilot. I know this site has been available for a while, but it has also undergone a few changes since it first debuted. This website has a great deal of original records, and it’s free! I love that the indexing is all done by volunteers. [...]

ProGenealogists features a diverse group of genealogists specializing in European research – from Ireland to Germany, Italy and Russia - among many other countries. Yet, ProGenealogists is based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Sometimes I speak with people who wonder how we can be such experienced experts in European research if we live in the American [...]