Author: Bob Taylor

The Power of Photographs

The Deseret News (Salt Lake City, Utah) recently published an intriguing article titled “What the picture man told me” by Berkley Hudson. It’s a detailed account of how the author helped to rescue a huge assortment of photographs from the O.N. Pruitt photography studio. This studio produced high-quality black-and white photos around the 1930’s many of which told stories of...

Introducing Spotlight Videos

We’re excited to announce that we have created a new playlist on our YouTube channel, called Spotlights. These are 30-second videos that introduce some of the great features of The Family History Guide. These are ideal for sharing on social media, as warmups for family history presentations, etc. Each video has an end screen with a link that takes you...

Great Databases, Part 3

Here’s Part 3 in the Great Databases series of articles, highlighting cool and useful family history databases you can access online for free. See also the Part 1 and Part 2 articles for more databases to explore. Global Ancestor Hunt—Ancestor Hunt hosts 18 resource categories: yearbooks, obituaries, newspapers, church records, directories, naturalization, photos, cemetery records, voter records, probate and wills,...

New Look to Ancestry

Ancestry has recently made some welcome improvements in the look and feel of some of its basic screens, and The Family History Guide has made corresponding updates. Here’s an article from Ancestry that summarizes the new developments: https://www.ancestry.com/corporate/blog/ancestry-announces-new-visual-design-providing-more-modern-look-and-feel-setting-stage-more When you access your Ancestry homepage, there is also a “Take a Tour” button that introduces you visually to a few of...

Browsing The Family History Guide

With today’s advances in technology, we often become focused on getting quick answers to well-defined questions. Google, Wikipedia, and many other sites are wonderful resources for doing just that. However, there is another aspect to information-gathering, as Steven Johnson points out in his book Where Good Ideas Come From—”serendipitous browsing.” The hypertext nature of the World Wide Web makes it...

New QRB Video: Researching Records in Scotland

We have just published a new QRB (Quick Research Basics) video, narrated by James Tanner: “Researching Records in Scotland.” This video covers important details in Scottish history and introduces essential types of records in Scotland, including census, church and cemetery, emigration and immigration, military, probate and wills, etc. It also discusses the best sites for finding these records online. The...

Update: Ward and Stake Activities for Youth

Last week we introduced a new page in The Family History Guide called Activities Sheets, in the Faiths menu. These activities are designed for Latter-day Saint youth. We have recently made some changes and enhancements that you will want to note: The Activities Sheet page has been renamed to Ward and Stake Activities. It’s now located as a separate tile...

Great Databases, Part 2

Last week we introduced our Great Databases series of articles, highlighting cool and useful family history databases you can access online for free. Here’s the second article, highlighting several more databases, arranged by geographical area. Enjoy! Global Geneanet—This site hosts 1.5 million family trees with over 1.6 billion individuals. Its focus in mainly continental Europe, but it does have a...

Youth Activities Sheets for Latter-day Saints

We’ve added a new page, at the bottom of the Youth menu in The Family History Guide: it’s titled Activities Sheets. On this page you’ll find activities sheets you can use for planning and carrying out family history activities for Latter-day Saint youth, from scavenger hunts to a family history boot camp, and more. The sheets have links to downloadable...

Five Great Databases, from The Family History Guide

If you have been doing family history for a while, chances are good you’re familiar with the big genealogy companies, such as FamilySearch, Ancestry, MyHeritage, Findmypast, Geneanet, etc. However, there are literally thousands of other family history databases on the internet, and The Family History Guide has just-in-time links to many of the most useful ones. You can find them...