Michael John Neill's Genealogy Website
[This was originally published on my old blog site on 14 February 2015] On page 24 Elizabeth Shown Mills in Evidence Explained (2007, Genealogical Publishing Company) defines the following terms: original sources as “material in its first oral or recorded form.” derivative sources as “material produced by copying an original or manipulating its content.” Reasonable researchers may slightly disagree about […]
I’ve been thinking about standardizing the names of various relatives again. This does not mean transcribing them that way from original records. One should never change the spelling of a name from how it is listed in a document. But when I write about an ancestor or relative, which spelling should I use? I’m thinking […]
I received the research report from my German researcher as mentioned in an earlier post. I was fortunate in that everything on my list was located: the birth of Sophia Elisabeth Derle in Helmershausen on 29 September 1807. She was the daughter of Johann Heinrich Derle and Regine Dreißigackerin. the marriage of Johann George Trautvetter […]
Antje Albers appealed the rejection of her application by the Register of the North Platte, Nebraska, land office to apply for a homestead in Dawson County, Nebraska (north 1/2 of the south east 1/4 of section 14 in township 11 north range 25 west). The appeal written by her attorney, Thomas C. Patterson, is undated, […]
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[This was originally posted in 2013, but we’ve cleaned it up a little and reposted it here. Unfortunately I don’t know much more about Benjamin now than I did then.] Benjamin Butler (probably born about 1819 in New York State) has a been a thorn in my genealogical side for some time. He moved quite […]
This really isn’t entirely thought out, but if I wait until then it may never get written. There are many connections genealogists try to make between people. Some of these connections leave more records behind than others and some connections are suggestive of other connections that may assist you in researching the actual ancestor. The connections […]
It can be frustrating when a document or record provides fewer identifying details of individuals than we would like, particularly in newspapers. Sometimes it’s a matter of space and certain identifying details make the item too large to fit in the allotted space. Sometimes, particularly for death notices and obituaries, there may be a per-word […]
