As part of an ongoing project, the War of 1812 military pensions are available for free on Fold3.com. As we’ve mentioned before, these pension files (actually all military pension files) can be a wonderful source for genealogical information. Lately my own use of these materials has focused on establishing micro-migration chains from one small area […]

A recurring source of frustration for me are digital images made from pictures with nary any provenance. If I see a picture online that someone purports to be my 3rd great-grandmother and it’s the only picture I’ve ever seen of her anywhere and there’s no “source” listed or included with the image, how do I […]

Just because two individuals have the same last name does not mean that they are related. Researchers working on a Smith family know that two people with this common last name are not related, but what about a more unusual surname? Well it depends on the origination of the name (and that even is not […]

Receipts from estate settlements are also great places to get signatures. This one comes from Hancock County, Illinois, in 1871, when Barbara Trautfetter/Trautvetter is signing for her share in the state of Michael Trautvetter–her brother-in-law.She made her mark on this one, but all the others signed their name. Remember that making a mark does not […]

I’ve never been a huge fan of migration trails. Of course, how our ancestors got from point A to point B is important. However, what is generally more important is why our ancestors went from Point A to Point B. Usually that “why” was a person. A friend, relative, or former neighbor found out about […]

Loose ends in genealogy research are a dime a dozen. The problem is that sometimes it takes more than a dozen dimes to pay for tying them up. There were two George Trautvetters from Hancock County, Illinois, who served in the Civil War. There was George A. who served in Company H of the 49th […]

One flower was all I left because it was all I really needed to leave. Life intervened and I was unable to make my cemetery visits in time for Memorial Day. My visit to graves was nearly a month late, but I’ve decided that the timing is not necessarily what’s really important. It’s the visit […]

This is part of one of the online trees for a relative of mine. I’ve eliminated the name and the precise date of birth because I’m more interested in how Ancestry.com handles citing sources than who this specific individual is whose birth is being cited. I’ve also seen problems like this countless times so I […]

One clue to learning more about your ancestor is determining why he moved from one point to another. Sometimes the reasons are clear after a little study of local history if the reason he moved was because of the destination–called the pull factor. If you don’t know where the ancestor was from, it may be more […]

It was bad enough that AncestryDNA was algorithmically extrapolating ancestors from their seemingly a·mor·phous “Big Tree” in the separate ThruLines section of their DNA analysis site. While Thrulines is decidedly not perfect, if one is aware of its limitations and uses it carefully (with their brain turned on and critical thinking skills engaged), use can […]