Michael John Neill's Genealogy Website
Ancestry.com‘s “U.S., School Yearbooks, 1900-1990” was recently updated. The yearbooks are indexed, but effective use is to browse the geographic listing and determine whether the locations of personal interest are included. Keep in mind that over time schools merge, consolidate, close, change names, etc. Those administrative details will impact how you look for the school […]
Ancestry.com is slow to move on some things when it moves at all. Ancestry.com tags records to geographic locations to help users find them in their catalog and to help researchers find people in search results using geographic search parameters. That’s all fine and good when the materials are cataloged correctly. When they are not […]
The 1788 deed from Jonathan and Jamime Puffer and Matthias and Mary Rice to Luke Brooks for eight acres in Stow, Massachusetts, was not one that I simply stumbled upon. I was trying to determine if the Mary Brown who married Matthias Rice in 1773 was the same one who was the widow of Ephraim Puffer […]
I submitted my father-in-law’s DNA test data to GedMatch (http://www.gedmatch.com). It’s going to be a while before I can really analyze the matches and results there, but that did not stop me from looking at them. The closest match turned out to be a DNA submission for someone who is a known second cousin of […]
AncestryDNA updated my “Ethnicity Estimate” today. As usual, I’m taking this with a huge shaker of salt only to be used on buttered popcorn while watching entertainment. Keeping in mind that these estimates are based on ethnicity reports from submitted tests (and I think a few known migration details from history) and are “further back” that […]
On 1 July 1788 Jonathan and Jamime Puffer, along with Matthias Rice and Mary Rice, deeded eight acres in Stow, Massachusetts, to Luke Brooks. Like most deeds during this time and place, a metes and bounds description of the property is included. There’s an interesting phrase after the description of the property’s location: Reserving to […]
It’s a rush to judgement to say that “old genealogies are worthless.” When analyzing information from pre-1900 genealogies, it’s advised to keep in mind the likely way that information from the book was obtained. Generally speaking, genealogical facts in these publications came from one of three places: other published books correspondence with living family members […]
I’m working on the parents of a Joseph Daby of Stow, Massachusetts, who died by 15 June 1767 when his will was admitted to probate in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. He’s the father of Mary (Daby) Puffer Brown, my ancestress. Work on Mary is incomplete, particularly after her second husband Amos Brown died in 1766, but […]
