It is well known that census records hold many clues for your ancestors. Many of those clues are easy to pick out. It may be worth taking another look to see if you missed something important. Each time a census came out, the government changed the questions a little. So it depends on when your ancestor was alive and which census you have located them in. Remember that the census is only as good as the person giving the answers. It depended on who answered the door and what they knew about each family member in the house. Ownership of Home and Farm: Did your ancestor list that they owned...


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Competition for Find a Grave? Unlikely. However, there is an interesting new app out there for your smart phone that raises some serious questions. BillionGraves.com is now offering an application for your smart phone that allows you to take pictures of head stones and upload them directly onto the site. Let's start with the pluses. First of all the main difference between this and find a grave, is the fact that when you take a picture, you are geo tagging at the same time. In other words, the GPS in your phone is using that location to mark exactly where the grave is. Therefore you cannot upload...


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On April 2, 2012 the National Archives will be releasing digital images of the 1940 census. Volunteers at familysearch.org will begin immediately indexing the census in order to allow users to find their ancestors. It's easy to become a volunteer and start indexing those records yourself. Check out the following link and see what it takes to become an indexer... http://the1940census.com/?cid=fsHomeT1940Text What you need to begin is an account with family search, and the software to be able to index which can be downloaded from their site. You can practice and get ready for the big event...


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Have you ever found a record for your ancestor and wondered if there was more to the story? Most of the time the answer is yes. Ancestry.com is a great resource for records. For some of those records, what you see is only the tip of the iceberg. The best example of this are the naturalization index records. You may have seen one for your ancestor. This small card with general information will list the name of the ancestor, a location for the naturalization, some dates and some important numbers. Many people believe this is the only information available for that naturalization. The truth is, this...


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If you haven't heard, Familysearch.org has been changing their system of how we order microfilm in to perform research. The changes are significant and overall, a huge improvement. Before now, you had to visit your local Family History Center or participating library to order microfilm. Now you can do it yourself from your home. Ordering microfilm is often times essential in researching your family. Even with the billions of records we have available online, there are many more than that still not digitized and available yet. Ordering and perusing these records at our leisure is a great way of digging...


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Chances are at some point you have seen where a member of ancestry.com has made a correction to a transcription of a record. That correction has allowed you to locate that record that otherwise you may have never seen. This is a simple task that you can do in a matter of seconds. If you see an obvious error in a transcription, you can suggest what the correct entry should be. Not only are you helping others, but your kindness may come back to you. By making that correction, you are posting your ancestry.com screen name. Someone who is researching that same ancestor may reach out to you with...


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For anyone researching their Canadian ancestry, there are many resources available online at no charge. Ancestry.com requires a subscription to view most of their records. There are other websites that have searchable databases free of charge. The Library and archives of Canada has digitized over 17 million records. Those records include birth, marriage, death, Immigration, census, land, military records, and much more. The link to the search engine is http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/lac-bac/search/anc. The areas that are included in this database are Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova...


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Most people want to know exactly where their ancestors were from. Passenger lists and even naturalization records sometimes don't answer these questions completely. If your ancestor took trips back to the homeland later in life, there may be another way to find out. Depending on the time period, your ancestor may have had to fill out a passport application. Ancestry.com has now released  thousands of these applications online. Passports have only been required by law around war time. The applications available on ancestry are from many different States. For a list of those States and a full...


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Most of us have used Cyndi's list at one time or another. It would be difficult not to hear of the website when doing this sort of work. This year the website turned 15 and performed some major upgrades. There are over 300,000 links now on the site including yours truly. Cyndi Ingle Howells started the website and has maintained it since 1996. This huge website must be run on a commercial server which costs her around $300 a month. Some of that cost is taken care of from advertisers and donations but not all of it. If you have benefited from the resource, consider donating what you can to keep...


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There are three major divisions in time when we think about passenger lists. Before 1820, there was no law that a ship's captain had to keep any type of passenger list. Many of the ones that were filled out were lost or destroyed. This explains many of the trips your ancestors took that cannot be located. The great migration between 1820 and 1890 comprises a lot of the passenger lists that are out there. During this time period, the laws were very lenient regarding what had to be recorded. Often times you will see only a name, approximate age of a passenger, and where they came from. By 1890,...


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