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November 29, 2020

Finding Your Ancestors Using Land and Property Records

Note: This article by James Tanner was published previously on the Genealogy’s Star blog site and is used with the author’s permission.   For genealogical research, there are two main components of land and property records: maps and documents. Using both, when they are available, is a great benefit to research. This is especially true because often the documents, especially...

Records/Research/U.S. Research
October 18, 2020

Going through Town Records

When you think of doing local family history, you probably think of records held at the county level. This is especially true for many of the Midwestern and Western states, where records are kept in county and state archives. However, in other parts of the United States, such as the New England area, local records were originally kept at the...

Records/Research/U.S. Research
October 5, 2020

Genealogists! Free Yourselves from the Paper Prison

Note: This article by James Tanner was previously published on the Genealogy’s Start blog site and is used with the author’s permission.   Regardless of how tech-savvy genealogists may be,  collectively, we seem to acquire huge piles of paper. We can scan the documents, letters, certificates, photos, and other important paper-based items but we feel duty-bound to keep everything. Granted,...

Country Research/Records/Research
September 6, 2020

Discovering History in Geography

A crucial part of genealogical research is knowing the history of the location where your ancestors grew up. As a student majoring in family history at Brigham Young University, one of the many requirements that I have to accomplish in order to graduate is to take several history courses. The first few courses cover a brief overview of U.S. and...

Country Research/Records/Research
September 6, 2020

When Is a Brick Wall Not a Brick Wall?

Note: This article by James Tanner was published previously on the Genealogy’s Star blog site and is used with the author’s permission.   As I have written and presented previously, the concept of a “brick wall” in genealogical research is not very helpful. Here is a video I did a couple of years ago about how to resolve the problem....

Country Research/Records/Research
August 10, 2020

“Remember Me…”

On August 1st, as part of our anniversary, my wife and I went and visited the This is the Place monument in Salt Lake City. Although the walkout to the monument was closed, we went to the adjacent Heritage Village and saw the various replicas of houses and stores that were, at one point, built by many of the early...

Families/Memories/Records/Uncategorized
August 9, 2020

Genealogical Research: How far back in time can you go?

Note: This article by James Tanner appeared previously in the Genealogy’s Star blog site and is used with the author’s permission. Why You Can’t Trace Your Lineage Back to Adam It has been quite a while since I posted this video to the Brigham Young University Family History Library YouTube Channel. The video has had about 4,000+ views but the subject...

Country Research/Records/Research/U.S. Research
August 2, 2020

Introducing Filae, a French Genealogical Treat

FamilySearch has added a new Partner to its collection: it’s the French genealogical records site Filae. If you have French ancestry, or think you may have, Filae is a resource you definitely should check out. You can access the FamilySearch Partner page for Filae here. Signing up for Partner access enables Filae to access information in your part of the...

Records/Research
June 28, 2020

Languages, Scripts, and Genealogy

Editor’s Note: This article by James Tanner was published previously on the Genealogy’s Star blog site and is used with the author’s permission. The United States is a nation of immigrants. About 1.6% of the population are Native Americans. If we persist in doing genealogical research we will all find ourselves trying to read difficult to decipher handwriting and nearly...

Country Research/Records/Research
June 21, 2020

Where was the event? Where are the records?

Editor’s Note: This article by James Tanner appeared previously in the Genealogy’s Star blog site and is used with the author’s permission. The questions in the title of this post are two separate but closely related issues. To start, I will repeat a general guideline for all genealogical researchers: The place of an event in an ancestor’s or relative’s life...

Country Research/Records/Research/U.S. Research
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