There is a reason why it is to the genealogist’s advantage to have as many indexes as possible to the same set of records. Redundancy is sometimes a good thing. There are times when the “new and improved” index is new, but not necessarily improved. The estate of Ephraim Puffer from Middlesex County, Massachusetts, is a […]

I’ve just finished up More on the Probate Materials on Ancestry.com (order here). I really enjoyed giving my first presentation on the probate materials on Ancestry.com and learned a lot doing it.  Now that I’ve had time to get into the materials more deeply and have had questions from attendees, viewers, and blog readers, we continued our discussion and discovery […]

When searches do not work the way I think they should I get confused. I’m confused again. Searches based on names that sound alike other names were created for those names that are spelled in a variety of similar ways, particularly ones that are not in the writer’s native language. Soundex, “sounds alike,” and other […]

There is still time to join me for part two of my webinar series on the probate records on Ancestry.com. We are looking forward to continuing to see how to effectively and responsibly use the material in this collection–and to know what is not there as well as what is.

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