Eight is Great! The Family History Guide Turns 8

It seems the time has gone by so quickly since those days in late 2014, when The Family History Guide started as a design on paper … and now it has website visitors from over 150 countries. July 25, 2015 was the day the website officially launched, and so we are turning 8 years old this week. Over the years,...

Researching the Pioneers

July 24 is the day the Mormon pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake valley in the United States. Genealogist James Tanner recently recorded a video for the BYU Family History Library, titled Crossing the Plains: Researching American Pioneers. This video covers the Oregon Trail, Mexican War, Mormon Trail, California Gold Rush, and much more. A link to the video is...

Update: More Practice Exercises Are Here

We are continuing to add Practice Exercises for country pages in The Family History Guide. As explained in our earlier blog post, the Practice Exercises are indicated by a colored dot: green for beginning level, blue for intermediate, and brown for advanced. Each exercise has open/close links that display a research statement, hints, and answers. At the time of this...

FamilySearch Places in The Family History Guide

We have recently added over 300 links in The Family History Guide to FamilySearch Places, which is a wonderful tool that helps you learn about and locate place names on a map, all over the world. These link additions include over 60 countries, all 50 U.S. states, 40 England counties, and 10 Canada provinces. A number of the pages have...

The History of Artificial Intelligence and What Will Happen to Genealogical Research as a Consequence: Part One

Note: This article was published previously on the Genealogy’s Star blog site.   Image Created by Microsoft’s Image Creator Somewhere between appearing in Isaac Asimov’s book, I, Robot, in 1950 and the latest StarWars movie or series, artificial intelligence became a threat to civilization as we know it for newscasters and pundits around the world. In a class at a...

Tracing Your Ancestors in Colonial America

As we celebrate Independence Day in the United States in the next few days, let’s remember our ancestors who lived in British Colonial America (what the United States used to be). There are some helpful resources in The Family History Guide to get you started or help you further your research, as you discover your ancestors’ lives. Let’s take a...

Try a New Source – NUMIDENT

Note: This article was published previously on the Granite FamilySearch Center blog site. One of the new sources added to FamilySearch this year is NUMIDENT which stands for “Numerical Identification Files.” The U.S. Social Security Administration created NUMIDENT files to record the earnings of US workers and to determine what benefits each person was authorized to have. The index only contains...

New Videos: Genealogy Live and Unrehearsed Series

Here are the latest videos from the “Live and Unrehearsed” series. These video will give you insight into how to do research online. They are released on the Goldie May YouTube Channel. Below are the links to Episodes 34 and 35. Episode 34 discusses the Leeds method for organizing DNA match information, while Episode 35 explores ways to find English...