How I wish the 1910 census had been microfilmed in color. If so, these abbreviations might have been a little easier to see and it would have been a little more obvious that they were written by someone other than the census enumerator–although it’s still possible that they were written by the enumerator. This is […]

Sometimes it’s good to be exceptional and sometimes it’s good to be average. Exceptional scores are great for academics and athletic competition. For medical tests it’s best to be average. That’s true for DNA as well. When looking at the amount of shared DNA you have with a known relative, it’s good to be average–or […]

I posted this to my twitter account, but am posting it here as well as I think it’s pretty true for the most part: DNA analysis is probability, statistics, set theory, logic, and biology. Refuse to learn any of those and you might as well analyze the pattern in your tea leaves. You don’t have […]

I only know who one of the people in this photo is. The young lady on the far right is Tena/Trientje Janssen Ufkes (1895-1986). Tena was born in Bear Creek Township in February of 1895 and died in Carthage, Hancock County, Illinois, in 1986. I do not know who the others are in the picture. […]

It has been a while since I posted an handwriting sample for interpretation. I know what the last name here is for the second person listed on this 1900 census entry from upstate New York. Wondering if site users have any ideas what it might be. It makes a good point how why searching online […]

Genealogy Tip of the Day (one of our sister blogs) was started ten years ago on a whim. Tips are short, practical, and based on my own research. They were intended to be shorter than the longer things that usually appear on Rootdig. It’s hard not to repeat a topic and our content runs from the […]

Blogging about it must have gotten me put back in two circles at AncestryDNA. My list is now up to 20: Hinrich Jansen Ufkes (1797-1873) and Trientje Eielts Post (1803-1878) Christianna DeMoss Rampley (died after 1830) Johann Luken Jurgens Goldenstein (1814-1891) and Tjode Anna Focken Tammen (1824-1882) Hinrich Jacobs Fecht (1823-1912) and Maria Gerdes Wilken […]

For some time I was in 20 DNA circles at AncestryDNA. Today I am down to 18. I’m not certain which two I have been removed from. I’ve not changed my tree there in ages, but it is possible that someone else in the circle removed their online tree, made a change to it, or […]

Sometimes statements are clear at the time they are made because there’s unstated context that those hearing or reading the statement know. That point of reference is often used to interpret the statement correctly and those details were common knowledge to someone reading the item when it was printed. It’s not that old statements were […]

Error messages at  Ancestry.com can be frustrating. We’ve added a little editorial comment to this one. Hopefully you’ll get a chuckle out of this as it was the intent. Sometimes when things don’t go right a little laughter helps. It lowers the chance I throw something at the screen. Happy researching!