Ancestry – The Family History Guide Blog

October 18, 2025

Name the Town, Find the Ancestors

I have a friend who was recently called to serve as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in the Birmingham England Mission. I sent him an email to ask what town he was currently in, and he said that the town is Bury St. Edmunds, in Suffolk county. That rang a bell, as I remembered...

Ancestry/Country Research/Research Comments: 0

April 28, 2024

New Goal in The Family History Guide: Artificial Intelligence

Over the past year, and especially in the past few months, artificial intelligence in genealogy has been a hot topic. RootsTech 2024 featured a number of presentations and videos on the topic, including a three-part series from James Tanner. We are excited to announce a new Goal for The Family History Guide: “Learn about artificial intelligence.” It’s included in the...

Ancestry/artificial intelligence/Learning/MyHeritage/What is new at The FHG

March 3, 2024

AI Update: Tools from MyHeritage and Ancestry

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is quickly becoming an integral part of how genealogy companies develop their tools and technologies. Two examples are MyHeritage and Ancestry, who have been in the family history business for many years. You can learn about some of their latest efforts in this article. MyHeritage MyHeritage.com has released two interesting tools: a search engine for records based...

Ancestry/artificial intelligence/MyHeritage/Technology

August 15, 2022

Universal vs Private Family Trees: Pros and Cons

Note: This article was published previously on the Genealogy’s Star site. This is a blog post spoiler. When you weigh the pros and cons of universal family trees against those of private family trees, the universal tree always wins. By no means, am I undertaking to compare individual programs, the issues I see of overriding importance duplication of effort...

Ancestry/FamilySearch/Research

July 18, 2022

New BYU FHL Video: Research with The Family History Guide

On Thursday, July 7 we recorded a new webinar video for the BYU Family History Library, titled Research with The Family History Guide. It covers the following important areas of research: Research Intro—How to use the collector page for research in The Family History Guide Sources—Introducing genealogy sources and their importance Research Basics—Getting organized, basic research concepts, and strategies to...

Ancestry/Country Research/FamilySearch/FS Partners/Records/Research/U.S. Research

May 15, 2022

Goldie May Subway Map Now Works with Ancestry.com

Note: This article was published previously on the Genealogy’s Star blog site. https://youtu.be/9K2E6ZPWxfY Goldie May’s timeline tool, called the Subway Map, now works with Ancestry. You can watch the short demo above to see how this works. You can also view all of the current and future videos from GoldieMay.com on the Goldie May YouTube Channel. See https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDuk8GVz6D_jiyvEFSGJnKw/featured New...

Ancestry/U.S. Research

April 10, 2022

1950 U.S. Census Project Moving Rapidly Forward

Note: This article was published previously in the Genealogy’s Star blog site. If you go to the FamilySearch 1950 U.S. Census Project page at https://www.familysearch.org/getinvolved/1950 you will see that four states have been completed and that only two more are open right now (as of the date of this post). Checking handwriting recognition from Ancestry.com is a different experience from indexing. The...

Ancestry/FamilySearch

March 27, 2022

Changes to Ancestry.com: More than Cosmetic

Note: This article appeared previously in the Genealogy’s Star blog site. Around the time of RootsTech 2022, Ancestry.com introduced some substantial changes to their website without much publicity. Here is an article that gives an overview of the changes. “The New Look and Feel of the Ancestry® Website.” One improvement includes putting a link to your family tree right at the...

Ancestry/Navigation

January 30, 2022

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...

Ancestry/Navigation

May 24, 2021

What is in a name? Taking Your Genealogical Research to a Higher Level

Note: This article appeared previously in the Genealogy’s Star blog site. My Great-great-grandfather’s name was David Thomas b. 1820, d. 1888. He was born in Wales. Sometime, probably after he died, he “acquired” a middle name and became “David Nathan Thomas.” Here is a photo of his grave marker with his name as “David N. Thomas.” However, every...

Ancestry/Country Research/Records/Research

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