Category: Research

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...

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...

About Accuracy in Genealogical Research

Note: This article was published previously in the Genealogy’s Star blog site.   The fundamental issue with historical research (including genealogical research) is accuracy. How do you establish trust in the conclusions of a historical (i.e. genealogical) researcher? For the purposes of this post and from this point on, I will focus on genealogical research as a subset of historical...

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...

The Return of “What is a Source?”

Note: This article was published previously on the Genealogy’s Star blog site.   I looked back on the list of my blog titles and found that the last time I wrote about what is a source was in 2015. I wrote a very long blog post that few probably understood or read completely through. If you want to try, here...

New QRB Video: Starting Your Genealogy Research in Scotland

We have just published a new QRB (Quick Research Basics) video by James Tanner: Starting Your Genealogy Research in Scotland. The video gives an overview of the history of Scotland and where to find the resources you need for Scottish research. The video is available on our YouTube Channel, in the Quick Research Basics playlist, as well as in Goal...

The WikiTree Challenge Week: A Great Opportunity and Experience

Note: This article was published previously in the Genealogy’s Star blog site.   Somehow, I was chosen to be the focus of a WikiTree Challenge. This is when a team of WikiTree volunteers focus on the tree of a “special guest star.” Quoting from the Help page for the WikiTree Challenge: In 2021 we have focused on “genealogy stars” such as bestselling...

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from The Family History Guide Association

In this holiday season each year, we often focus on what gifts we would like to get for those we love. Something we may not think about is the gifts that family history gives back to us. Here are a few of them to be grateful for, and you may think of additional ones as you read this list: A...

Sneak Peek: Our RootsTech 2022 Video List

As we noted in an earlier blog article, RootsTech 2022 is coming fast, and we have been busy preparing for it. An important part of the preparation is creating videos for The Family History Guide’s Bronze Level sponsorship. We will be providing approximately 24 videos in a number of categories. While we can’t share the actual videos yet, we thought...