After a brief fright in recent medical examinations I have learned the importance of knowing your health family history! Knowing about your family’s medical past truly can lead you to a healthier and more prepared future. It is an important factor in your family history that can literally change the way you live your daily [...]

I recently ordered a birth certificate for a client’s ancestor who was believed to be born in Tennessee. After the usual wait time I received a certified record of “no record found.” Before simply accepting that the record was a lost cause, I took a few steps to determine the search parameters that the Tennessee [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Most people know more about their family history than they think they do. I often run into clients who assure me that the minimal information they’ve provided is ALL they know. Usually after a brief review of their information, I come up with several questions that I think they can probably answer. They usually can.
I [...]

Is a godparent the same thing as a baptismal sponsor? Who can be a godparent?
Yes, generally the term godparent is equivalent to baptismal sponsor. Who, then, can serve as a baptismal sponsor at a Catholic baptism? Technically, canon law (church law) requires only one sponsor for baptism, but there can be two sponsors, one male [...]

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 [...]

What is a “conditional baptism”?
Consider the language of the following baptismal record from 1913 in Quebec Province, Canada:
“We, the undersigned parish priest, have received the abjuration from heresy of _____, Protestant, adult: also her profession of the Roman Catholic Faith. We have given conditional baptism and absolution.”
This individual was a Protestant being received into the [...]

This morning I did something that I’ve never done before. I printed an Application for License to Marry from the Salt Lake Couty Clerk’s website and filled out my half, the bride’s half, of the form. I am getting married soon, you see, and my fiancé and I are getting our marriage license today.
As I carefully printed [...]

For all those of you out there doing New York City research, you have no doubt probably found the online vital record indexes on sites like ItalianGen (www.italiangen.org) or GermanGen (www.germangenalogygroup.com) most valuable. I use these sites on a regular basis because I generally find references to such records as marriage, death, birth and naturalization fairly quickly. [...]