I just read on Dick Eastman’s site that Walton County, Georgia’s Besse Cooper is the World’s Oldest Person at 115 years old. I was curious about Besse. Who was she? What led to her longevity, her ancestry, her lifestyle, occupation? What could I find out about her online? What an amazing life she’s led so [...]

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 [...]

It was exciting to work on the Tim McGraw episode of “Who Do You Think You Are?”. A lot of hard work went into determining which stories could be used from the research conducted by ProGenealogists (a Division of Ancestry.com), Ancestry.com, ShedMedia, and some local researchers. Southern States work is not easy and numerous records [...]

I recently entered the genealogical world. Three months ago was my first time ever doing anything with genealogy work. The task can seem very large and hard. For those starting genealogy the key is to just jump in. Don’t get overwhelmed with everything. Start little by little. As you start to use all the different [...]

Let’s get excited about finding out more about our family and where we come from! I was thinking about how I, as an individual, am not just one life but a whole network of lives that come together as one. One of the things I love about family history is learning about all those lives [...]

One of my colleagues introduced me to the finding aids created by Stephen P. Morse. His website offers a number of tools that make searching various online databases easier. I frequently use his Ellis Island Gold Form when I’m having a hard time finding a passenger list, and I’ve recently discovered his handy tool to [...]

I’ve recently started reading a book by my great-grandfather. It is a biographical book about how the events in his life brought him to his rather liberal political ideas. As I’ve read the book, I’ve let out a few sighs at how little family history information the book includes. I have to keep reminding myself [...]

Recently I’ve rediscovered the joys of city directories. A city directory makes a wonderful census substitute in non-census years. Bear in mind however, that directories, like most records we find for our ancestors, are male oriented. The person usually listed is only the head of household and as you know more often than not that [...]

Continuing our role as “volunteer editor” for Family Tree Magazine’s recently released annual list of “101 Best Websites” for 2010, here are some sites the editors should (and may) have considered this year:
“Best Sites for Western US Research”
The ten websites in the magazine’s list are very helpful, yet they cover only four states, a major [...]

Family Tree Magazine has just released their annual list of “101 Best Websites” for 2010 with a bit of a twist. Having published ten such lists over the past decade, the magazine’s editors always provide interesting selections, often with some theme. This year they decided to dispense with references to subscription sites as a nod [...]