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 [...]

This post has been a few months in the making, but I finally have the time to sit back and let the words flow. Do you ever stop and marvel about the widespread interest in genealogy not just in the United States, but also in other countries? Sometimes I am amazed by the connections we [...]

Some of my colleagues love ordering certificates through VitalChek.com. I have had several unpleasant experiences with it in the past, but I have not given up on the idea because it really is amazing when you can get the certificate you need in just a few days rather than the weeks or months it might take to [...]

Sometimes in research we are so focused on the ancestral line that we neglect some of the collateral lines. It’s really a shame, too, because these collateral lines can sometimes provide excellent gems of information.
I was recently researching in the Ohio death records available on the New FamilySearch Pilot. (I’ve already gone into my thoughts [...]

The collection of records at Ancestry.com continues to grow. Lately Ancestry.com has begun to fill in holes for researchers who have been studying their London ancestors. Anyone with experience of London research will know just how challenging, and most of all, how time consuming it can be. The transcription of Church of England burial and [...]

Searching for a birth or death record in Arizona? The Arizona Department of Health Services has made it very easy with their online “Arizona Genealogy Birth and Death Certificates” website.  This site allows access to the digitized images of county or state issued birth and death certificates. You can search the database for births that [...]

Por lo general los registros de la Iglesia Católica son los primeros que se consultan para hacer investigación genealógica en México. Esto es porque es más probable que la familia haya bautizado a sus hijos pocos meses después del nacimiento del niño(a) que los haya registrado con las autoridades civiles. Sin embargo, puede tomar mucho [...]

Generally in Mexican research, Catholic parish records are consulted first because people were more consistent in baptizing their children within a few months of the child’s birth than they were in registering their children’s births with the civil authorities. However, when doing research in big cities, plowing through the hundreds and even thousands of baptismal [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]