Michael John Neill's Genealogy Website
It always pays to read the details. Genealogical discoveries, large and small, are often obtained from thinking about the implications of everything written in a document. That’s true with the appraisement of the estate of Mimka L. Habben in Hancock County, Illinois, in the spring of 1877. Illinois state statute dictated what was to be […]
What makes for engaging family history? I am certain it’s not a mere rambling of names and dates–even if there are a great deal of documents in chronological order. That’s a great way to share and preserve what has been located, but I’m not certain it is all that engaging. I’ve read a great deal […]
I’m occasionally reminded when going through my AncestryDNA matches that shared matches are helpful, but that they can be misleading as well. My match Linda shares 28 cM with me on 1 segment. She is a descendant of my 3rd great-grandparents Clark and Mary (Dingman) Sargent. The shared match with whom I share the most […]
I’ve not read it yet, but this looks interesting–The Birth Certificate: An American History, by Susan J. Pearson and published by the University of North Carolina Press . Given how genealogists rely on civil records of birth and how they have changed over the years, there hopefully will be some good background information in here. […]
The 17 December 1878 statement of Thomas Tredway indicated that Jemima DeMoss and Elisha Meads were married in Harford County, Maryland, “at her fathers [John DeMoss, Jr.] house in Harford County” on 9 November 1817. I do not think that’s strong enough evidence to conclude that Jemima’s mother was deceased on the date of Jemima’s […]
My ahnentafel chart (an ancestor table that lists direct-line ancestors) had blanks in it. I don’t have any gaps until I get to my third-great-grandparents. That’s where the blanks in my pedigree start. I don’t have the names of three of my Irish ancestors in that generation. And it grows from there. In my 4th […]
The ability to merge sources (particularly census) into a tree at Ancestry.com is really a nice one. However, one must be careful not to indicate that a source says something it does not. The reasons are pretty obvious–but here’s an example with the names changed. Thomas Smith was born in Harford County, Maryland, on 2 […]
ThruLines at AncestryDNA is meant to be a tool to help analyze matches that have at least a partial family tree attached to their DNA results. The purported tree connecting you to the DNA match may or may not be correct. The white boxes (John G, John M, and Theodore Trautvetter) in the illustration are […]
Ancestry.com’s ThruLines is a means to facilitate working with DNA matches that have trees attached to them. ThruLines then extends the tree in an attempt to show you how you connect with the DNA match. People are only in your ThruLines if they are: a DNA match to you, have a tree attached to their […]
