Category: U.S. Research

How to Analyze Genealogical Sources: Part Five

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by James Tanner in the Genealogy’s Star blog site and is used with the author’s permission. Analyzing genealogical records and documents boils down to making decisions about the accuracy of the records and documents. One of the most common categorizations of documents makes a distinction between an original document and a copy. This...

Searching for Clues: When Census and Vital Records Are Not Enough

Growing up as a kid, I loved watching movies about finding lost treasure. The hero usually hears of a legend, finds an ancient artifact or treasure map, and has to follow its clues while fighting off the greedy villain. After a long and difficult struggle, the hero finds the treasure and everything works out in the end! Family history can...

Source Citations: Where Did That Information Come From?

Editor’s note: This article was written by Zachary Matthews, BYU Intern for the Family History Guide Association. You are at your computer, getting ready to do some genealogical research on your favorite website. You decided to go in a different direction today and look at your 5th great–grandmother’s uncle and his family. However, when you clicked on his profile, you...

Update: Ancestry Academy Videos

Ancestry Academy has published training videos on a wide variety of genealogy topics. many of which are linked from The Family History Guide. You may not be aware that recently Ancestry Academy has made some changes in their video catalog. Here’s a summary: The URL formats for most of the articles have changed. The new URLs are included in The...

A New Partnership: The Family History Guide and Goldie May

Last week we featured an article written by James Tanner about the new Goldie May research assistant. It’s a powerful and user-friendly Chrome extension that helps you track your research progress on FamilySearch. This week we are excited to announce that Goldie May has been selected as an Authorized Training Partner for The Family History Guide Association. What This Means...

Goldie May, Your Research Assistant for FamilySearch

Note: This article by James Tanner appeared in the Genealogy’s Star blog site and is used with the author’s permission.   https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/goldie-may/dhmlghokhgphidijmacfnmegmkkhpdik Goldie May is a free, new, innovative Chrome extension that guides users through basic genealogical research. You may or may not be acquainted with Chrome extensions but they are extremely useful and I have some I use every day as I...

How Complete Were the US Federal Censuses?

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by James Tanner in the Genealogy’s Star blog and is used with the author’s permission. https://www.census.gov/history/pdf/wright-hunt.pdf Gaining a historical perspective is difficult. Very few genealogists have an extensive background in history and particularly the history of the places where their ancestors lived and died. For example, let’s suppose that in the year 2020...

Research Basics: Part One

Editor’s Note: This article by James Tanner was originally published in the Rejoice and Be Exceeding Glad blog site and is used with the author’s permission. Research Basics: Part One It is time to get back to research basics. I suspect that the only formal training, if any, that most people have regarding research is some sort of “research project”...

What’s New: Countries Menu and Pages

It has been a busy week for Country pages in The Family History Guide! We hope you enjoy the updates and share them with your friends. Here’s a summary of what’s new and improved … Countries Menu   The notable change here is the addition of sub-menus. When you click any of the Regions—North America, British Isles, Scandinavia, Central Europe, Western...

Researching in U.S. Counties

Doing family history research in the United States? You’ll enjoy the resources in the Family History Guide; there are separate research pages for each of the 50 states, plus Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico. And when it comes to doing county research, we’ve got you covered there as well. Under the main picture on each state page, there is a...