Michael John Neill's Genealogy Website
Updated 18 July 2016. Due to numerous requests, we are offering a new section of this course. The structure will be a little bit different, but the content will all be the same. Registrations can be processed here.Those who registered for an earlier session but had issues attending can join in this session at no […]
New webinar! 25 Brick Wall Strategies It’s over. Order it here. If you’ve enjoyed our “Brick Wall” series, this one will revisit some of our more popular approaches along with new examples and a few new tricks thrown in the mix. Sometimes it never hurts to hear something again, if only for the reminder. This […]
It’s always advised to look at the original record. Transcriptions can easily be incomplete or incorrect. Those who simply copy a transcription into their database without questioning it can create additional confusion for themselves. The 1880 United States census transcription at FamilySearch (and Ancestry.com) indicate that the ten-year old Jennie Smith living with the Seymour and Elizabeth Brownson in […]
I have James Rampley in the 1850 Hancock County, Illinois, federal United States Census and yet I really don’t know where he lived. At least I don’t know very precisely based upon what the census tells me. The entire 1850 census of Hancock County, Illinois, does not include any township, city, or village designations. All […]
This was originally posted on 14 April 2012 and has been slightly edited. [This is a slight diversion from our usual topics on Rootdig, but there is a genealogy slant.] My paternal grandmother began baby sitting me when I was a few months old and my mother returned to work in August of 1968. A regular ritual […]
It is not often one gets direct, in-your-face evidence of a name variation. Usually one has to use other clues to confirm that references to individuals with slightly different names are, in fact, the same person. That’s not the case with this envelope in the pension file of Charles Hartsell who saw Civil War service […]
I’ve been reading “guides” Ancestry.com has to their search settings. And I’m a little bit confused. From the Ancestry.com discussion of “name settings:” Soundex Variations: Soundex is a common algorithm used to generate alternate spellings of a surname. If you choose this option, any record that contains one of the Soundex variations for a surname might appear in your […]
Sometimes I think people make genealogical proof entirely too difficult, too academic, and too “out of reach.” It’s not as difficult as some think it is. It’s not as difficult as some would have us to believe. There’s no secret to genealogical proof. And it certainly is not the same as mathematical proof, although there […]
