Michael John Neill's Genealogy Website
Ancestry.com recently announced the release of “Alberta, Canada, Homestead Records, 1870-1930.” The images are decidedly better than the microfilm copies I received years ago of the homestead application of William H. Sartorius. Sartorius homesteaded in the Islay, Alberta, Canada, area (Coordinates: NW Section: 4 Township: 51 Range: 4 Meridian: 4). Sartorius has two homestead applications. These materials […]
The devil is, as they say, in the details. There’s an apparent bit of coding detail that’s not quite right at FamilySearch as far as the “United Social Security Death Index” is concerned. At least that’s how it appears from my informal study. Three entries are anecdotal and most certainly not a random sample, but there’s an apparent problem […]
I’ve requested three Civil War pensions from my researcher contact at the National Archives and he tells me that they are not at the National Archives. Based on suggestions from him and another genealogist, I’ve decided try contacting the Federal Personnel Records Center in St. Louis for copies of these records to make certain they […]
[This was posted to my blogs several years ago, but thought it appropriate to post it here again since we’ve moved to the new domain. Our one exception is to occasionally repost posts from the old domain that have been fairly popular.] All content on Rootdig.com, Genealogy Tip of the Day and my other blogs is […]
One of the challenges of using microfilmed images is that a sense of perspective has been stripped away. The clues of color and the unwritten and undigitized contextual clues one has when one holds the actual paper are gone. The problems are not so bad when the digital images are of bound books or individual […]
These are a little tongue-in-cheek. Well, at least some of them. It’s also not meant to be complete either and is based upon personal frustrations. Your frustrations may be different. Genealogy would be easier if: Brothers would not marry women who shared the same first and last name before marriage. Expand previous rule to state […]
It was fortunate that Reka Behrens (born around 1870 in Adams County, Illinois) the daughter of Volke (Behrens) Sartorius married a Civil War veteran. That means her widow’s pension may contain some information about her date of birth and perhaps some testimony from one of her relatives about something related to her early life. Or […]
