Michael John Neill's Genealogy Website
I’m always tentatively excited when I get a new match that appears to fit into my family of my great-great-grandparents, Samuel and Annie (Murphy) Neill. The key word is “tentative.” I’m always hoping it will help to to connect back to earlier generations of my Irish heritage. This match, “S,” was noticed because it was […]
A “reasonably exhaustive search” in the genealogical lexicon means, generally, to look at everything that could reasonably answer a genealogy problem or question. That’s a good approach, but sometimes “brute force,” or looking at everything and anything works as well. And, “brute force” may give you answers to questions you did not even know you […]
In performing a manual search of naturalization records for Hancock County, Illinois, I discovered a large number of naturalizations that took place on 12 October of 1858. There were a total of twenty-two men who became United States citizens on that date. Given the location and the population of the county, that seemed like a […]
The Library of Virginia Chancery Court records website has added images of court records for Orange County, Virginia, to their website. Counties are being added on a continual basis. This is an excellent way to preserve these records and make them available to researchers. There is one court case in which I’m particularly interested: one […]
The photograph of my Mother pushing a doll in a stroller was taken in the 1940s. That I’m sure of. What I am less certain of is the location. Given where Mom and her grandparents lived, I’m reasonably certain the photograph was taken in Hancock County, Illinois. But where within the county I am not […]
The schedule for the Southern California Genealogical Society’s annual Genealogy Jamboree has gone live and registrations are now being processed. I’ll be giving two talks. One is on converting ancestral stories to children’s stories and the other is on DNA analysis when you have quite a few double and triple relationships to reasonably close cousins. […]
I recently rediscovered a letter my grandmother’s niece wrote to her in 1938. A little Google searching determined that the niece recently passed away and I decided to reach out to her one grandchild. I mentioned the letter and offered to share pictures of it if she was interested. She was happy to get a […]
