A reader asked about the dots that appeared after the two names in the image used to illustrate the post about an 1880 census entry, “Who are Those Chains?” I’m usually pretty good at looking for any and all clues. However, in my focus on the “chains” and who they were I overlooked the dots. […]

Add this to the list of spelling variants that I had never thought of: Sonis for Louis The “Iowa State Census-1905” database at FamilySearch contains several entries for the first name of Sonis. Based upon the actual card, I’m surmising that the intent was probably Louis, although one can easily see how the initial letter in this […]

Ancestry.com recently indicated that their 1905 Iowa state census database is “updated.” It is difficult to remember what was on the site, so I can’t say if the database is new or not (and even “updates” are not always significant ones). There is no indiction the database version Ancestry.com has of this record comes from FamilySearch. The “Source […]

The information on the 1900 census form seems redundant: year of immigration to the United States and number of years in the United States. After all, shouldn’t the knowledge of one allow us to infer the other? Couldn’t we just subtract the year of immigration from 1900 and arrive at how many years the person […]

There’s a reason why solid genealogical conclusions should not rest solely on one printed word in one newspaper. In fact genealogical conclusions should generally not completely rest on one piece of published information.  A newspaper item from 1966 was used as an illustration recently for Genealogy Tip of the Day. The tip hinged on the phrase “On […]

  One can discover a variety of items in the classified and advertising section of newspapers. Advertisements can document a relative’s existence in  certain area, let you know when your relative’s estate was going through probate, tell you know what movies were playing when your grandparents were dating, and let you know if you missed out […]

After researching my maternal Ostfriesen families for thirty years, I’m reasonably familiar with most renderings of their first and last name. Even if I’ve never seen a specific variant before I can usually determine what the clerk was trying to render on paper. Until I came across the Chains. I was not even looking for […]

This is a lesson in what not to do. In the fall of 2015 my great-aunt sent me a picture of my late mother and my grandmother. I had never seen the picture before and was fortunate to get it. I immediately took a picture of the photograph with my phone in order to share […]