We Heart Genealogy

04/21/2025

Have you tried religious records?
It's really hard to give a quick tip about religious records because they are so varied. But that may also be why you haven't tried them.

If you haven't tried religious records (at all or for a particular branch), give it some thought. Do you know what religion the family of interest is? Could you guess based on where and when they live? The quickest tip I can give you to figure this first step out is see who married the couples in the family (you may need to go beyond the couples you descend from and look at siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins--this may need to stick to a limited time-period as religion might change due to historical events or personal events like immigration). A religious officiant may obviously belong to a religion/denomination but it is often easier to research them to figure their religion out.
Tip #1: Identify the possible religion/denomination (or make an excellent educated guess).
Once you have an idea what religion/denomination you are interested in, you should be able to find some type of genealogy guide to help you learn more about researching those specific records. Don't overlook older, traditionally published guides as the records won't have changed with online research, just how you access them. You may still be able to buy these (especially from a book vendor like genealogical.com), find them at your library, or find a digitized copy.
Tip #2: Learn about researching that religion.
Bonus Tip: Learning how to find and use religious records, or any type of record, requires some organization if you're an Occasional Genealogist. Consider creating an education plan. This is one of the things you can organize with the Digital Dashboard. If you use the education plan tab in the Dashboard, make a copy for each topic you create a plan for. Remember, once you start researching, you'll organize your research with a log or other tracking method.

The Occasional Genealogist

Announcing the New 4th Edition of… EVIDENCE EXPLAINED Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace By: Elizabeth Shown Mills – EVIDENCE EXPLAINED – Now Available as an eBook If you bought the print book from us, look for a special offer in your email! New and Featured Books included in ...

02/08/2025

Looking for a maiden name? Check this out.

1. Marriage records
The first place to look is the marriage license. This should list the groom's surname and the bride's maiden name. If the maiden name is not listed, you can look at the witness's name (could be a family member) or search for her children's marriage licenses to see if it is listed there. One word of caution: if the women is a widow or remarried the name won't be her maiden name so cross-check with other sources.

2. Birth records
You can look for the mother's birth record, or you could search for her children's birth records. This may give you the maiden name. Try cross checking with the census records to find children's birth years.

3. Death records and obituaries
If you can't find birth records, try looking for her death record. It may list her parent's names which may lead to your answer about her maiden name. An obituary may also list her maiden name and/or names of her parents. Death records and obituaries of her children may also list their mother's maiden name.

4. Wedding announcement
Check the newspapers. There could be the announcement giving the names of the bride and groom. It will be helpful to have an approximate date of marriage so you know to look a few weeks before.

5. Census records
It was common for people to live with their children as they grew older so look at census records to see if a new person is living with a family. This could give you a name to further research.

6. Military pension records
Sometimes a wife's maiden name can be recorded in the pension files.

7. Land records
Look at deeds and transfer of land documents. It could provide her name or children's name. Also check the witnesses to these transactions since they could be family members.

8. Probate and will records
If you have the names of parents, search for their will to see if the female maiden name was listed.

9. Look at children or grandchildren's names
Families sometimes honored their loved ones by naming children after them, so look at first and middle names of posterity to look for clues.

Ldsgenealogy

11/14/2024

Find my past is having a sale. Check it out to find your family.

No story left behind

Discover the incredible moments that have shaped your family’s history with 30% off our most popular subscriptions.

Start discovering the incredible moments that have shaped your family’s history with:
30% off your first 3 months of our Family Tree subscription.

Want to dig for more detail? Enjoy:
30% off a 3-month or 12-month Everything subscription.

Hurry, both offers end 21 November.

11/06/2024

Ldsgenealogy.com article must read

10 Free Useful Websites for U.S. Genealogy Research

10

There are many free and useful genealogy websites available for U.S. researchers. We are listing here a few of our favorites that are broadly applicable to many people. This is by no means a comprehensive list; there are many smaller sites out there as well.

LDSGenealogy.com

We are listing our own site first because we have organized many of the free and paid resources individually by state, county, and city in our U.S. records directory . Using our directory can help you locate specific resources for a particular place more easily and it's freely available to everyone. There are also free genealogy learning articles available.

FamilySearch

FamilySearch is a treasure trove of genealogical records for places all around the world. FamilySearch is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and offers their websites and libraries to anyone worldwide who is interested.

Many people go to FamilySearch and search the historical records for their ancestor's name. However, it's easy to overlook the many unindexed records on FamilySearch that are available through the Catalog, Images, and Books sections of the site. The Research Wiki can be helpful as well in identifying what records are available for a particular place and time period. Also, the Family Tree section of the site has an open source Unified Family Tree that all can use and contribute to that may have information about your ancestors.

For more information on how to use the FamilySearch catalog, see our article "The FamilySearch Catalog: the Amazing Free Resource You Might Be Missing".

Find a Grave

Find a Grave has millions of gravestone images and burial records that are freely searchable. People also can post other information about individuals on the site and link families together. It is important to remember that apart from the gravestone images, the information on Find a Grave is compiled and user submitted, so it can sometimes contain errors.

Archive.org

Though not strictly a genealogy site, Archive.org has many useful resources that can help you with your genealogy. It has millions of digitized historical books, county and town histories, city directories, old yearbooks, and many other types of books that are searchable through OCR technology.

You can search for your ancestor's name within the digitized books. It can also be helpful to search for a specific place where your ancestor lived to locate old histories and other records about the area where your ancestor lived. Understanding the historical background of the places where your ancestor lived may help you to identify your family more accurately and to understand their lives and stories more fully.

Chronicling America

Chronicling America is a project from the government to digitize local historical newspapers and make them freely available online. They have many newspapers from almost every U.S. state that are searchable on the site. Searching the newspapers on the site does take some practice and refining the results is not always simple to do.

In some cases, the same newspapers are on other websites where it's easier to search and filter the results. If you find a title you're interested in, it can be worth Googling the title to see if that particular newspaper is available elsewhere where it may be easier to search.

Fulton History

The Fulton History site (also called Old Fulton New York Postcards) has millions of pages of free digitized historical newspapers. There are many newspapers particularly for New York, but there are many other titles as well for many cities in the United States.

Fulton Search is a website that searches the Fulton History site; their search is easier to use and may give better results than using the Fulton History site itself.

It is important to keep in mind that the OCR technology on this site does not work as well as some of the other newspaper sites out there so it will take some practice and patience to search the newspapers. In some cases you may have better success by browsing the images of the newspaper you're interested in.

Atlas of Historical County Boundaries

A project of the Newberry Library of Chicago, the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries is highly useful in determining in which counties your ancestor lived over time. Sometimes boundaries of counties changed and you may be looking for your ancestor in the wrong county without realizing it. You can go to a specific state, find a place on the map, and select the various years, and you can see how the state and county boundaries changed over time. This can help you to know where to search for the records of your ancestor.

WorldCat

WorldCat is a combined library catalog that allows you to search from one place all of the library catalogs of hundreds of libraries around the world. While WorldCat is not specifically a genealogy site, it can be useful for identifying genealogy books or other resources that are found in various libraries around the world.

The best way to search for genealogical records on WorldCat is to search a specific town/city or county as well as a state name. If needed you can refine your search further by including terms such as "genealogy" or "history" or "cemetery" in your search. Once you identify a book or other resource that you're interested in, you can either go to the library for the item or contact that library for help. Sometimes you can get an item through interlibrary loan or ask the local librarian to look for something in the book on your behalf.

ArchiveGrid

ArchiveGrid works in conjunction with WorldCat to have a library catalog of various resources in many different repositories. However, while WorldCat focused on printed books, ArchiveGrid focuses on primary sources materials such as historical documents, manuscripts, personal papers, family histories, etc.

Like with WorldCat you are not generally going to search for you ancestor's name unless they were prominent and have records in the catalog about them. However, you can search for a particular place and/or other keyword and find various documents that are out there in archives, libraries, museums, and historical societies. Sometimes the resources are digitized online though usually they are not. If they are not digitized, then you can go the archive or library where they are located or ask them to search on your behalf.

Local public libraries

Don't overlook the local public library for the place where your ancestor lived. Often people donate historical books and records, old documents, yearbooks, city directories, family papers, old newspapers, etc., to the local library in the area. If you search for the public library website, it will usually give some details about what historical materials and genealogical resources they have available. More and more libraries are digitizing their resources and putting them online for the public as well.

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1.3 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

Extensive genealogy records directory with more than 1.3 million items and helpful learning genealogy resources

10/25/2024

Your story. I have some pictures of my grandfathers band and band members. I don’t know anything about his band but as I look closely at the pictures, I can see the joy in my grandmothers and grandfathers faces as they play. I see the fun they had in the yard practicing, relaxing and joking together. The pictures start to come alive for me and a story develops. Look at your grouping of photos and let me know what they say to you..,,,

10/18/2024

I heard a great podcast today about organizing your family records. I know, not the most exciting topic but when you can’t find something or everything for the family is in five plus places in your home or computer, then you have to do something.

She let us know about some easy things to do first and I will combine it with how I do things. Right now I have some families in binders, folders, computer files and bins. I bought the milk crates on sale for $4 just recently. I bought all black and put a family last name on the bin.
*Just throw in the paper, pictures you have of anyone in your tree with that last name.
*When I first started, I had nothing so everything went into a binder with one last name or folder. Now I have so much that I pop things into the milk crate.
*I have been putting new records on the computer and in ancestry or you can use the free program family search.
Once you have completed that then everything is located in two files, milk crate and computer. Already we have an easier time finding what we need.

Of course, you might think of a way that is better for you and how you work but if you don’t have a method, this works

Start paperless today.
*Start scanning in records today. Set a timer for 15 minutes. See what you can get done in 15. Don’t promise yourself a weekend to do it all, as we know that is a procrastination method. Slow and sure wins the race the rabbit says.

File naming in the computer.
I name the first file [personal genealogy] because I do work for many families. One you click that link you will see all the last names in my tree, like Smith, White and so on. Click on the last name and you see a list of their full names with their birthdate. Everything that has do do with them are under their own name. If I have a reference with many people with the last name like a census then I will name the file census and of course it’s for everyone with that last name. If I have a picture of multiple peoplein it, I will make a folder family pictures and then the individual file will be called, Allen family photo and add an approximate date.

Don’t forget to back up your records.

Let me know if you have any questions. How do you organize your family history?

08/18/2024

Finding Your Immigrant Ancestor - Where to Start
As you research back on your family lines and you suspect that you have reached the immigrant, you need to make sure the information you have on the immigrant and his descendants while they are found in the United States (America) is as complete and correct as possible. It is particularly important to have accurate locations where events occurred.
https://ldsgenealogy.com/Finding-Your-Immigrant-Ancestor-Where-to-Start.htm

06/27/2024

Frank 'Rocky' Fiegel, born in Poland on January 27, 1868. He emigrated with his family to America where in 1887 he joined the Navy.
When Popeye's creator met him, he was a retired sailor contracted by Wiebusch’s tavern in the city of Chester, Illinois, to clean and maintain order. He had a reputation to be always involved in fighting, so he had a deformed eye (“Pop-eye”). He had demonstrated his strength in so many fights that he became a local legend. He always smoked his pipe, so he spoke only with one side of his mouth.
When he was with children he held the pipe with the corner of his mouth and told them the antics of his youth, often boasting of his physical strength and loudly claiming that spinach is the food that makes him invincible.
Popeye's character creator Elzie Crisler Segar was born in Chester and was one of the children who had the privilege of hearing 'live' the stories of the former sailor.

06/26/2024

Ancestry dna kits shipped to you $75. A savings of $25 each and free shipping in continental USA. Find more pictures, find more information about who you are and your family. I will also give you 1 hour of free services to look over the information and explain it to you. Yesteryearsue@aol.com

06/09/2024

Check out this week's free genealogy lookups, a service I've been providing since 1995. For nearly 30 years, Ancestral Findings has helped people uncover their family's history.

06/08/2024

How many of you have a book about your ancestors? If not it’s time to get one. Let me know if you’re interested as we have many options. Yesteryearsue@aol.com

05/17/2024

Send me your email address and I’ll send you a simple guide to starting your family history using free resources. . All resources are free that are in the guide.

Yesteryearsue@aol.com