Michael John Neill's Genealogy Website
from 13 March 2014 on our old blog site I’m still reading Genealogy Standards. Reading it again is perhaps a more accurate word. It is important for those who purchase the book, either as a part of their certification process or just as a part of their own genealogical education, that they remember what the Genealogy Standards is […]
Depending upon migration patterns, analyzing shared matches you have with a DNA match (especially one without a tree) may only add to your confusion. A new match on AncestryDNA descends from a sister to my great-grandmother Tjode (Goldenstein) Habben. I clicked on our shared matches only to be reminded that when your family lived in the same […]
There are more entries in the Warsaw, Illinois, newspapers for the name of Trautvetter than I will ever be able to read through. Fortunately this is one that I did not miss. January of 1900 apparently found John M. Trautvetter in the Hancock County, Illinois, jail for failing to pay nearly $300 in fines related […]
I copied the entire file several years ago when I was in Salt Lake City at the Family History–The People of the State of Illinois vs. John M. Trautvetter. The intention was to perform more research on the case after I got home. I realized today that further research into the case never happened. It got […]
These Ancestors cannot be displayed The ancestors you are looking for are currently unavailable. They may be hiding in offline resources which will require you to contact repositories via more archaic methods. If they are dead, rest assured they are not creating more descendants. Please try the following: Click the surname change button, or try […]
There’s still quite a bit of truth to this… from the Ancestry Daily News Michael John Neill – 10/16/2002 As genealogists looking to the past, we are forced to focus on paper records left behind by our forebears. We also use historical records and information about larger historical movements and cultural trends to reasonably infer […]
The name’s the same does not mean the ancestor is the same, even if descendants of those “same name” people share DNA. The way AncestryDNA‘s shared “hints” work is that if you share DNA, have posted your online tree, and you and the person with whom you share DNA has posted their tree and your trees […]
It’s always the connections that we do not know that can confuse us beyond belief. In 1860, the household of farmers Charles and Rachel Cox in Montebello Township, Hancock County, included several of their children a farm laborer, George Kraft. The Coxes were Kentucky natives (aged 64 and 56 respectively) and comparatively well-off with Charles […]
Wilhelmina and George Kraft and their next-door Kraft neighbors were not the only Krafts living in Nauvoo, Hancock County, Illinois, in 1870. Six pages away the household of Lewis Kraft was enumerated. It’s difficult to say how far Lewis was from the other Krafts. There are no street names or addresses in this enumeration and […]
A while back we ran a series titled “Ancestral Clues and Lessons.” In honor of “International” Women’s Day, we’re linking to those postings on some of my female ancestors: Ida (Trautvetter) Neill–born 1910 Illinois Ida May (Sargent) Trautvetter Miller–born 1874 US Midwest Fredericka (Sartorius) Janssen–born 1865 Illinois Anna (Dirks) Goldenstein–born 1861 Illinois Anke Hinrichs (Fecht) […]
