Can you read shorthand? I certainly cannot. Shorthand testimony was taken in regards to the naturalization of Jane Alice Donald in Adams County, Illinois, in 1921. The material appears with other loose naturalization-related documents from Adams County, Illinois. It’s not often I discover this much shorthand in a record–let alone an entire record written in […]

I really like this picture of my great-grandparents and their two youngest children. Unlike many photographs I have, it doesn’t seem staged–the clothes are on the line, after all. And the daughter seems to be shooting her father a funny type of look. But identifying the picture got me to thinking… I’m still toying with […]

On paper, I’m 1/8th Irish. My great-grandfather, Charles Neill, was born in 1875 near West Point, Hancock County, Illinois, to parents who were natives of Ireland. My DNA ethnic test results tell a different story. We’ve mentioned before the difference between a paper pedigree and where your DNA says you originate. The DNA ethnicity goes […]

Genealogy is not a mad rush towards Charlemagne. It is a slow path, filled with frontier brush, Southern sweat, and New England winters. Instead of leading to castles and mansions, that path often leads to one-room cabins, coal miner’s shacks, and urban tenements. And it leads to the people who made the fabric of this […]

Join me for three days of research at the Allen County Public Library in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, this coming August. Details are on our announcement page.

The word “negative” can be confusing when applied to evidence. Negative evidence is “evidence” because it is something we expected to find and did not. The word “negative” is used in the sense of “not finding evidence” that we expect to find. “Negative evidence” does not mean evidence that indicates something did not happen. A […]

originally published in August of 2013 on our old site How closely do you look for clues in the backgrounds of pictures? When the below was enlarged, there was a faint shadow as shown in the oval: Had I not known where the photograph was taken, the church would have been a clue. It is […]

Due to popular demand we are offering live sessions of these two presentations I gave earlier this year. (view our list of recorded presentations) Sifting Through Your AncestryDNA Matches–Followup to “Working with AncestryDNA Matches” This session assumes listeners/attendees have a basic understanding of what AncestryDNA offers, how to navigate their AncestryDNA matches, how to track […]

Knowing what you are looking at is crucial to evaluating genealogical information. Campbell County, Kentucky, has two courthouses. Many of the county’s records have been microfilmed by the Genealogical Society of Utah and are available on microfilm at the Family History Library or online digitally. Some of the card catalog descriptions of microfilmed materials do […]

It took me forever to find it and it just about took me forever to cite it as well. My citation format for this 1852 marriage record from Campbell County, Kentucky, is not in proper  Evidence Explained format. But the essentials are there: the original creator of the record the names of the principle individuals on the record […]