Michael John Neill's Genealogy Website
From the blog post on FamilySearch: Beginning December 13, 2017, patrons visiting FamilySearch.org will see a prompt to register for a free FamilySearch account or to sign in to their existing account to continue enjoying all the free expanded benefits FamilySearch has to offer. We’re just passing this along. The free account (I’ve had one for years […]
Religious newspapers can provide details on individuals not given in other publications. They can be easily overlooked by researchers, particularly if they are not easy to locate or if researchers only focus on traditional newspapers. As more and more newspapers generally become available in digital format online, access is even easier. This 1885 obituary for […]
Admitting mistakes may make me look like I don’t know what I’m doing. But it may keep others from making the same mistake, so here we go. Years ago I located land records in Campbell County, Kentucky, for several members of my Trautvetter family while at the Family History Library in Salt Lake. Copies of […]
Benjamin Butler is one of those problem people. A few years ago I made a chart of the children who are enumerated in his households between 1850 and 1880. Of course, pre-1880 census enumerations do not give relationship to the head of the household and it’s possible all these children are not his. Some of […]
If ever there was an ancestor who was full of genealogical lessons, it’s Ira Sargent. Born in the early 1840s, probably near Darlington, Ontario, Canada, he was actually named William Ira Sargent. For quite some time early in my research I was unaware that Ira was his middle name and that his first name was […]
In June of 1892, Christ Troutfetter received a patent for 160 acres in Thomas County, Kansas. In an attempt to ferret out neighbors who may have filed homestead claims near Troutfetter, I decided to search for his parcel in the tract books from the Bureau of Land Management. The patent gave me the legal description […]
Crista Cowan of Ancestry.com answered a question about “hints” on Ancestry.com for my “Genealogy Tip of the Day” page recently and I thought it would be good to include her answer here (indented) with some comments from me. Remember: the hints and suggested records are not comprehensive and not perfect. Sometimes I use them when I’m working […]
GoogleBooks contains a wide variety of material and one never knows what snippet of information one will run across or who it will be about. It’s not just the rich, famous, and well-heeled who appear in old published items. It could be your run-of-the-mill ancestor looking to trade his shotgun in 1916. The Fur News was published […]
