Michael John Neill's Genealogy Website
The records that I needed for Clinton County, Illinois, are not accessible online and making a personal trip is not practical at this point due to other time commitments. It’s important to remember the research goals when hiring or contracting any research. My goal is to try and document children of Harrison Ramsey who […]
It could be said that it feels sometimes like AncestryDNA keeps quite a bit of our data from us. MedBetterDNA is another extension for Google Chrome that provides some additional functionality to the AncestryDNA results page. There are several things this extension allows us to do, but this is almost enough for me: the ability […]
If your relative applies for something based upon a certain act of Congress, do you look for the text of that act? There may be something in the act that gives you a clue about your ancestor. Acts related to military pensions may have required a certain length of service. Acts related to widow’s pensions […]
I was reminded of the importance of searching the Bureau of Land Management website for 19th century ancestors. Potential ancestor Harrison Ramsey was born in the late 18th century and lived in Clinton County, Illinois, in the 1840s-1850s. He actually appears in the BLM database of federal land patents three times: once for a land […]
The obituary of my great-grandmother’s sister indicated that she died in a Keokuk, Iowa, hospital in December of 1927. Wanting to view her death certificate, I decided to search “Iowa, Death Records, 1904-1951” at FamilySearch. A few quick searches turned up no entry for Ella Shipe or any reasonable facsimile of her name. Since I had […]
In “Picking Low Hanging Fruit on GedMatch Part I” a potential discovery was made on the parents of Lucinda (Ramsey) Trask who died in Mercer County, Illinois, in 1861. In reviewing what I could find on her probable parents, I was trying to focus on something that would concretely tie her to her family of […]
In “Label Your AncestryDNA Matches” we discussed the Google Chrome extension that Blaine Bettinger has created that gives AncestryDNA users eight different colors to use in categorizing matches. As we mentioned, give the color scheme some thought before you start using it and tagging your matches with a color. Nothing is worse that realizing after […]
Recording released–order for immediate download. This presentation discusses a variety of ways that researchers can make more effective use of their genealogical research funds. This discussion will include, but not be limited to: Effective use of mailing lists, message boards, and Facebook groups Local societies and libraries Non-local Professionals versus locals “in the know” Alternate […]
It’s not just students that you may find in yearbooks in Ancestry.com‘s “U.S., School Yearbooks, 1900-1990.” There are teachers and other school employees as well. This 1941 Gridley, Illinois, yearbook from Gridley High School contains a picture of my great aunt, Margaret Habben. She taught in Gridley before enlisting in the Women’s Army Corps during World […]
