Michael John Neill's Genealogy Website
I still have room on my research trips coming up later this year. If you’ve been thinking of making a trip to the Family History Library in Salt Lake or the Allen County Public Library in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, consider joining us: Family History Library 2016 Trip–May 2016 Allen County Public Library 2016 Trip–August 2016
There is a reason why some affidavits in Civil War pension files sound so similar. It’s because the individual writing them out was following the instructions. The pension office did not one random statements in these affidavits. There were specific issues the affidavits were to address, generally related to how pensions were issued and how […]
Civil War pension files can contain a variety of information. The one for William Lake (Co.I, 49th Missouri Infantry) contains a copy of his family’s 1860 census transcription. Too bad I had already located them in the 1860 census, but a transcription from 1915 by the Department of Commerce (who used to oversee the census) […]
Genealogy is about analysis and interpretation. One cannot analyze or interpret if one cannot determine exactly what one is looking at. That’s the problem with the images of marriage records in the “United States Marriages” on FindMyPast.com. I can guess what am looking at. I may have a good idea what I am looking at. But the fact […]
Our earlier post on the United States marriage records at FindMyPast touched on the issue of citing those database entries. It was decided to put that discussion in a separate post. It must be said first that the “United States Marriages” database at FindMyPast is derivative in nature. That’s not bad, but researchers are advised to view images […]
For those of you who prefer serious posts, this is the time to move on. In reviewing a series of Union Civil War pension files, one of the affidavits indicated that the veteran’s birth was recorded in the family Bible along with the births of his thirteen siblings. Of course the other thirteen were not […]
The homestead application file for William Sartorius in Alberta, Canada contained an additional interesting letter from William over forty years after his homestead was completed. Satorius’ file is contained in the Ancestry.com database “Alberta, Canada, Homestead Records, 1870-1930.” Sartorius wanted to know how old he had claimed to be when he made his homestead application. A letter dated […]
[note: all search results displayed in this blog post were obtained on 5 February 2016] FindMyPast recently announced a database of United States marriages, purporting to eventually be the biggest one available. I’m not certain about that, but it certainly was an interesting one to search. Five Henrys There were five separate matches for Henry […]
This is one of those stories that’s been passed down for several generations and which I tend to follow up on it in fits and starts: John Lake’s murder in Chariton County, Missouri, in 1864 by Bushwhackers. The Kentucky native, according to family tradition, met his fate in his barn. That much of the story […]
