Tips & Tricks

Ancestry's ThruLines tool can be useful in helping to find clues about more distant ancestors, but caution is imperative.

Dear Readers, I apologize deeply for my lack of communication over the past weeks. But I was unwittingly sucked deep down into one of the biggest genealogy rabbit hole ever to exist.

It's important to know the formation of counties in states where your ancestors lived when doing genealogy research.

One question I hear often from clients and others—friends or others who reach out to me or attend my presentations—is whether Ancestry.com is worth the money.

If only every headstone in cemeteries had this kind of information! This is a stone in the St. Patrick Cemetery in Madison, Ind., where parishoners from St. Magdelina's Catholic Church in Shelby Township, Ripley Co., Ind., were re-interred.

Today I will show you how to determine if a new match falls on your maternal or paternal sides. Generally, unless you are an adoptee or have

Company offers colorizing of black-and-white photos!

I’ve been meaning to dive into Amy Johnson Crow’s “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks” for what seems like 52 years. Finally, even though we are already a few weeks into 2020, here is my first post under the given topic for this week: “Same Name.”

Often when people start their family history research, they concentrate on direct lineage: paternal, of their father's father and back...

A step-by-step look at how I helped a second cousin find her paternal biological family.

How to use Shaky Leaf Hints at Ancestry as clues for your research subject.

So, let's get down to it. How does this DNA matching work? First, a centiMorgan is a unit of measurement used to determine the distance from scientifically indentified positions, or markers, on each of our 23 chromosomes. It is not a physical measurement, but a tool to show closely we are related to the matches we receive in our DNA test results. It is used by all the testing companies. DNA Inheritance Patterns Each of us receives exactly 50 percent of our DNA from each par

The popularity of DNA testing has surged in the past few years, and companies such as AncestryDNA, 23andMe and Family Tree DNA are reaping the benefits. In 2017, Ancestry alone went from a database of just over 3 million testers in January to almost 7 million in its database by December, according to analyst estimates. With an aggressive marketing campaign and efforts to make their test more genealogy friendly, 23andMe comes in at a not-so-close second, with about 3 million t

Like the old adage says, "Buyer beware." Even if you aren't actually spending money to obtain family history information, it's still prudent to pay close attention to what you find. Someone related to me somehow has identified this photo of a woman standing next to a man who is seated. Yes, they are probably husband and wife. But are they the right husband and wife? The unknown cousin has posted this photo on Find A Grave and has identified them as John Frederick "Fritz" Reed

A friend of mine, Karen, had me come over to her house to go through a bunch of great Madison photographs that they had found years ago, cleaning out her father-in-law’s house when they were preparing to sell it. The photos belonged the previous family who lived there. Fortunately, some of the photos had names and addresses written on the back, so there were enough clues to get me started. From those clues, the woman who originally owned the photos was Ida Kremer Grace, wife

Today I was asked a question from someone who is trying to prove a relationship within his family: "How can DNA tell me I'm related to someone if that person is dead and was never tested?" That's really a great question, and here is a relatively short answer: We inherit all of our DNA from our parents. First, there is autosomal DNA (atDNA), which makes up our 46 chromosomes. This is what AncestryDNA and 23andMe test specifically; the third largest company, FamilyTreeDNA, te

So, perusing eBay and looking for items that might be interesting from my home county, I typed "Van Wert" into the search engine and...

Ok, yeah. That's a geeky title, but maybe it got your attention. Photographic History Today's blog post has to do with photographs and photographers. For starters, the photographic history book, Images of America: Trimble County is flying off the shelves. I've sold two of three 40-book boxes in less than a week, and hope to sell more Thursday night at the book signing. Trimble County Public Library, 6:;30-7:30 p.m., Bedford, Ky. Please come and visit! I'm going to chat abou

In my last post, I discussed the latest addition to my photography collection: Old glass negatives from 1900. From the information written on the paper sleeves these all came in, I have been able to piece together who most of the people are in these photographs – one family, in particular, in fact. Introducing Rhea Melissa Barker. Born in 1897, she is about 3 years old and she is sitting, apparently, in the patient chair in her father's doctor office in Troy, Bradford C