Browsing public family trees online can be exciting. You might suddenly come across a treasure trove of information about one of your ancestors — their parents’ names, other children, or even further generations back. But that doesn’t mean making your own working tree public is a good idea. In fact, it’s much wiser to keep … Read more
This might be a quick and common sense tip for most folks who regularly work on family history research, but I was reminded of something today — you absolutely must back up your genealogy research. I learned this lesson the hard way when I was just a teenager. I started climbing my family tree when I was … Read more
Just a quick announcement. Ancestry is running a limited time promotion through the weekend (ending at midnight, September 1, 2014) with free access to over a billion new global records. As an added perk, you don’t need to enter a credit card to access these records during this promotion (though that’s a requirement for the standard … Read more
One of the best family history research tools on the Web also has the potential to cause the biggest headaches — other family trees. The great thing about being able to browse others’ family trees is that some distant relative is probably researching some branch of your tree. Those people may have access to information … Read more
Family history research today can be much easier for amateurs and professionals like, especially when starting to work on a new family tree. One tool we now have that wasn’t available in the not-so-near past is the social network. You might think of social networking as chatting with your friends online using Facebook. But social … Read more
Whether you’re brand new to genealogy of you’ve been researching your family tree for years, you might have considered launching a family history blog. But should you? A family history blog is a personal blog that details your own personal history. While this is a broader genealogy blog with tips and resources too, I have … Read more
I just wanted to share a quick tip with any other family history buffs who have struggled to find their relatives in the 1940 U.S. census when searching on Ancestry.com. A couple of weeks ago, I searched for several ancestors (as soon as it became searchable there actually). And I had very little luck. On … Read more