Mind the Gap
Filling out families is something I do when I am stumped on direct ancestor research, but it is also an important part of genealogy. ...
Micro Films = Maximum Frustration
To date I’ve ordered seven microfilms from Salt Lake City. They are ordered online from LDS’s Family Search website, cost about $8 eac...
For Posterity’s Sake
In a box of papers I inherited from my father, I found his basic military service record from his time in the navy. This was a document th...
How Assumptions Can Slow Down Research
One set of my great-great-grandparents, Patrick Connell and Bridget McHale, were from Ireland. I knew from the census that they were both...
When Death is Only the Beginning
I’d initially had a frustrating experience with death records, but it’s amazing what a little distance will do. I left the search for death ...
Instincts and Surprises
On the 1891 census, my great-great grandparents, Patrick and Bridget Connell, had a 16-month-old girl named Mary living in their household...
Turning Lead into Gold
I'm not a packrat. I don’t hold on to things that have no obvious usefulness unless they are very, very special. But thankfully my m...
A Genealogical Gold Nugget
Everyone knows that documents are the key to tracing ancestors. But family photos play a significant role in genealogy research too. Not onl...
Where in the World is Georgina Dawson?
Georgiana (also called Georgina) Dawson is my great grandmother on my father’s side. I learned this by finding my grandfather in the 1901...
The Ancestral Home
When I discovered my great-great grandmother's maiden name was McHale, I immediately went looking for its meaning. On Ancestry.com,...
The Luck of the Irish
As you may recall, I received a crushing blow to my research plans when I learned that virtually all Irish census records had been burned ...
Death Records: Why do I need them?
During my visits to the Victoria Genealogy Society's resource centre, I was asked over and over again by the volunteers if I'd fo...
Better Luck Next Time
I wasn't having much luck with my great-great grandmother either. Although I had found her family in the census in 1861, I didn't...
The Mysterious Lowes
I had waited anxiously for two weeks until the document came. I was so excited when I opened the mailbox that day in week 13. This would ...
The Irish Problem
While awaiting a certificate for one branch of the family, I moved on to other family members. Actually I moved back to the Irish connect...
What's in a Name?
The great-grandparents on my grandfather's side were Joseph Henry Lowe and Georgina or Georgiana Dawson. I knew when they were marrie...
Angel from Down Under
I'd received marriage certificates from the UK for both sets of great-grandparents. I now had maiden names of my great-grandmothers, ...
The Importance of Eliminating the Wrong Ancestors
One of the reasons I had the time to work on the website was that I was waiting for documents. I'd ordered two marriage certificates ...
To Blog or Not to Blog
I had decided that a website was really the only practical way to disseminate the information I was gathering about my family's his...
Disseminating Information
Each time I confirmed some data or came across an interesting tidbit of information, I called my sister to tell her. But not having don...
A Foray into Other Research
I was still waiting for documents in the mail, and having sorted out my services (free trials and library visits) and genealogy app (GRA...
Free Trials
By week seven I still didn't have a genealogy program and was only doing a free trial with one of the subscription services. I'd...
Why You Need Original Documents
I’d had success the previous weeks finding some ancestors using just online databases, but I'd hit a wall on one generation because ...
The Consequences of Spelling
I’d found my grandfather’s family in the census and rather than try to go backward in his lineage, the following week I moved on to my g...
Help!
On my next day off, I was standing in the genealogy society office telling my story to the first volunteer I could find.
The Real Starting Line
By week three, I had put together a list of information that could be used to launch the search of my father's family in a seri...
No Going Back
After only a few days of searching on FamilySearch.org I realized I was hooked and that there was no going back. Actually, going back wa...
A Genealogy Fledgling
The journey into my family's history started with a simple question from my sister at Christmas. She asked, "What's our f...
