Ancestry Magazine

I have just finished transcribing my great-grandmother’s diary, written in 1871 when she and her husband homesteaded in Nebraska,” wrote Faith Libelo.

Sometimes a knowledgeable genealogist is worth a million electronic sources.
This is the Age of Information, a major era in the development of humankind. Genealogy is experiencing the same pull toward high technology that all aspects of life are experiencing.

During 1997 there was a major change in the location of some of the most important archives for genealogists in the United Kingdom, with the relocation of the General Register Office and the Public Record Office into the Family Records Centre in central London.

Perseverance and luck pay off.
In my quest for information on my Lewis ancestors, I managed to gather many interesting and important facts.

Why it's helpful to know your ancestral tongue.
“Jean-Baptiste’s pig got into my garden and destroyed my crop of peas. . . . Pierre’s son chopped down my trees and hauled them away for firewood.”
When Canada was known as New France, notaries recorded all administrative, justice, and land-parceling matters. Their records produced anecdotes like the one above.

How one small town safeguards its history.
Family historians with a desire to preserve historic towns could model themselves after the residents of Calvert, Texas, a town that celebrates its past by developing profitable historic programs that boost its economy.

Hazards for the traveling genealogist
I am generations away from the rugged roads of the migration routes west in the United States, but anyone who installed a modem in a home computer in the 1980s is another pioneer with stories to tell. As with many middle-aged adventurers new to the dirt road which became the information superhighway, I was guided by my college-age son.

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Legal records reveal an ancestor's shady past.
An old saying warns us to be careful about delving into our family histories lest we uncover the proverbial skeleton in the closet. Prior to my most recent trip to France in June of 1997, that was simply an amusing concept which, as far as I was concerned, had nothing to do with me. After all, I was a Fontan!

Digital image storage preserves heritage.
The images were eerie, almost haunting, as they appeared on the computer screen, one after another, ten seconds apart. At first we weren’t certain what they were pictures of or why they were on display in the vending area at the genealogical conference we were attending. We only knew that these images were riveting, magnetic in their hold on us.