Sometimes one has to shift one’s point of view. You can tell people that everything’s “not online.” You can type it in uppercase letters to visually shout. But, for some, until you show them something interesting that was “not online,” or you tell them that you solved a problem with sources that were only in […]

This comes from a map in the Railroad Collection at the Library of Congress. This one for Hancock County, Illinois, was one of Galbraith’s railway mail service maps, published in Chicago in 1897 and drawn Frank H. Galbraith. It can be seen completely at https://www.loc.gov/item/98688467/ I’m trying to figure out what each of the pictures […]

There are several reasons why deeds don’t often tell genealogists as much as we would like, but here is a good one: money. This image comes from the 1891 Illinois Revised Statutes and indicates that the current recording fee at that point in time was 8 cents for every one hundred words. Chances are no […]

The 1910 census for your relative indicates that she was 60 years of age and was born in Ohio. You have a date of birth for your ancestor of 5 January 1850 with the location being Jackson Township, Coshocton County, Ohio. If you connect sources to dates and locations in your genealogy database, should you […]

The image in this blog post is a marriage bond signed by a Thomas Brown and Alexander Riley in 1830 in Bourbon County, Kentucky, and was made from a digital image of the bond which appeared on FamilySearch.  The signatures from both bonds have been contrasted in the image shown below:

I’m wrapping up some issues we had with our coupon on our webinar closeout offer. Coupon code SAVE50PERCENT at checkout will reduce your order price by half. We’ve extended it for some regular readers who missed our offer over the weekend. Downloads are immediate. Viewing can be done whenever. The final shutdown of will take […]

I’m currently booking speaking engagements for later in 2019 through 2020. View my list of topics (new ones can be developed) or the “about me” page.

note: This was written some time ago and was intended as fiction, food for thought, or a warning. Take your pick. Jefferson County—A Digitized County (c) 2010 Michael John Neill(do NOT copy/paste without permission) Jefferson County Historical Society Meeting, 1 April 2010, secretary’s minutes“The monthly meeting was brought to order….. “Michael Neill mentioned that his […]

One of the necessary items of citing genealogical sources is what copy of a document was actually used. The image shown here is a handwritten copy of the Declaration of Intent for Rolf Habben, made out in Hancock County, Illinois, in 1886. This image was made from a photocopy of the copy which was contained […]

Tips and Tricks of Deciphering German Handwriting: A Translator’s Tricks of the Trade for Transcribing German Genealogy Documents by Katherine Schober is not going to make you an immediate expert. Only practice can do that and no book, no matter how detailed and exhaustive, can include every little nuance. Humans create handwriting and individuals variants […]