Archives for the ‘Digging’ Category

Finding the Voices of Our Families

By Curt B. Witcher • Jan 1st, 2006 • Category: Digging

For so many people, the excitement and passion surrounding family history is the quest of discovering who their ancestors really were. What did my great-great-grandfather think of farming?



Scrutinizing Broken Limbs on Family Trees

By Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG • Nov 1st, 2005 • Category: Digging

While most of us think of divorces as modern-day inventions, actually they have been around a long time in America. As early as 1639 in Massachusetts Bay Colony, James Luxford’s wife asked for a divorce because James already had another wife. A magistrate granted the divorce, took the now-former Mrs.



More Than Making the Grade: Using School Records for Genealogical Research

• Sep 1st, 2005 • Category: Digging

While energetic youth rarely look forward to the beginning of school in the late summer, genealogists should still take note: due to the types of records and publications schools generate and the importance of schools in communities, school records are a valuable resource. Among the more commonly used school records are attendance rolls and grade registers.



Prospecting for Genealogical Gold Out West

By Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG • Jul 1st, 2005 • Category: Digging

From the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Pacific Ocean has drawn Americans to it with an inescapable pull. Our ancestors walked and rode, measured and staked, dug and looted, and burned and planted all the way from Maine to California in their quest to find fortunes, make homes, and explore proverbial greener pastures. Fortunately for us, they documented their treks, too.James A.



Home Is Where the Heart Is: Exploring Home Sources for Research

• May 1st, 2005 • Category: Digging

Home is where the heart is—especially in successful genealogical pursuits.Advances in technology have provided us with remarkable databases of millions of names and an almost equal number of document images. Web pages and intuitive search interfaces are valuable to both novice and experienced researchers.



Finding Pennsylvania Dutch Families via Frakturs

By Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG • Mar 1st, 2005 • Category: Digging

While strictly speaking, fraktur refers to an ornate type of written or printed German (similar to Gothic lettering). It has become a generic term for the colorfully embellished German-American manuscripts that recorded births, baptisms, and marriages. They are now prized by folk-art collectors as well as by genealogists.



Cemeteries: A Source for History

By Curt B. Witcher • Jan 1st, 2005 • Category: Digging

Odd as it might sound to those not actively engaged in genealogical research, among the best places to begin discovering, exploring, and discerning the history of a community is in its cemeteries.



The Ladies in Your Lineage

By Laura G. Prescott • Nov 1st, 2004 • Category: Digging

It is a biological fact that we have an equal number of male and female ancestors. Yet it is an historic truth that there are never as many records for the females as the males in our ancestry. It’s the reason we reach so many dead ends and leave more barren branches on the right side of our family tree than the left.



Looking Again at FamilySearch

By Curt B. Witcher • Sep 1st, 2004 • Category: Digging

An in-depth exploration of the offerings at FamilySearch reveals much more than the library catalog you’ve come to appreciate.
Today’s family historians have a great advantage over the researchers of yesteryear in the quantity and quality of information that is as close to them as a keystroke and an Internet connection.



The Evolution of Published Genealogies

• Jul 1st, 2004 • Category: Digging

A bountiful harvest of relationships and background material await the careful researcher who investigates published family histories.
Genealogy librarians immediately recognize someone new to family history research when they’re asked, “Do you have the book about my family?”
There are two problems with this question.