Genealogy-enthusiasts will oftentimes be approached by budding researchers and asked to give lessons, crash-courses, or a few tips on tracing family trees. While there’s no official guideline for research, the following brief outline can be very helpful in introducing newbies to genealogy. It goes over a few of the basic record-categories (census, immigration, and vital records) and discusses free websites to get [...]

In this installment of Genesis of our Genealogists, meet Karina Morales, one of our Case Managers who, among other things, specializes in Mexican, Hispanic, North American, and some Irish research.
INTERVIEW WITH KARINA MORALES
1. Where did you grow up?
I was born in San Luis Potosi, San Luis Potosi, Mexico, but I grew up in Chicago, Illinois.
2. [...]

Back in June 2010, the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Micheál Martin, announced its intention to make available a Certificate of Irish Heritage for the millions of people worldwide with Irish ancestry who don’t quality for Irish citizenship by descent. Usually one has to have a grandparent born in Ireland to quality for Irish [...]

The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) is the main repository of genealogically relevant records for the six counties of Northern Ireland, and it also holds records pertinent to the whole historical province of Ulster (nine counties). The PRONI facility on Balmoral Avenue, Belfast, closed in September and is scheduled to reopen on 30 [...]

As a genealogist, one thing I have to be constantly aware of is variant name spellings. There is nothing worse to me than having spent an hour searching a complicated name index for several variants, only to get to the end and realize I forgot one variant of the name. And then have to go [...]

Last week I was researching an Irish family. From the 1911 census, I knew that Michael was married to Mary, was born in County Westmeath in about 1850, was married before 1892 (oldest living child was born 1892), and I knew the names of their living children. My plan was to go after the couple’s [...]

Freeholder records are a record source that likely seems pretty obscure to most researchers. Many people probably have never heard of a freeholder. However, we have made an inventory of freeholders, freemen, and voting records for Ireland available on our web site. I compiled this inventory because there wasn’t a good overall inventory of where freeholder [...]

This week at the National Genealogical Society conference here in Salt Lake City, I was thrilled to see the progress being made by FamilySearch in publishing/indexing European records. Many new European records are available on FamilySearch’s Record Search site including from Austria, France, Ireland, Russia, and Ukraine, among other countries. These are some of the [...]

Many people ask us at ProGenealogists about obtaining Irish citizenship through their ancestors. Ireland’s laws on this subject are more liberal than most other European countries. If one of your grandparents was born on the island of Ireland (including in present-day Northern Ireland), you can obtain citizenship in the Republic of Ireland by documenting your grandparent and your [...]

There is exciting news from the principal repository of records in Northern Ireland; that is, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) in the city of Belfast. First, the PRONI (as it is often called) is getting a new home in 2011. The move will mean that is present Balmoral Avenue site will be [...]