Recently, I've been doing some work in Lost Cousins, a site and idea that is unique. I get their newsletter and prompted by the "Free on Easter" section, started buffing up my listed relatives. It is unusual in that it promises  100% accurate automatic matching between researchers who share the same ancestors - and it does without anyone else seeing your data! -  https://www.lostcousins.com/pages/info/how_to.mhtml It is free to create a profile, and if you have ancestry in England, Scotland, Wales, Canada,  Australia, Ireland or New Zealand  this site can help you strike gold (cousins). As the home page explains,  ... the best people to help you knock down your 'brick walls' are your cousins - indeed, one of your cousins may already have solved the problem that you're finding so challenging. The more relatives from the census you can enter on your My Ancestors page, the more cousins you'll find. How to find more lost cousins In the past rese...

by Winona I. Hahn Laird The year was 1944 and our country was in the middle of World War II.  I was eight years old and lived in Denver, Colorado with my mother, father, sister and two brothers.  I remember the day my father went in to sign up for the Army.  My mother cried all day until he got home and she found out he was 4F.  They wouldn’t take him into the service because he had a heart murmur.  In those days a heart murmur was very serious.  They really wanted him in the Army because he was a doctor. Since my father couldn’t serve his country in the Army, he bought a Doctor’s practice in Casper, Wyoming.  Many things had to be taken care of in preparation for the move.  To purchase gas there were gas stamps, so they had to save up enough gas stamps to make the trip.  The move could only take one day while pulling a trailer behind the car with all of our belongings.  Many household items had to be sold; and yes, my desk had...

by Katie Hanzeli I’m sure you’ve heard more than you want of pandemic news.  That said, see my previous blog .  Did anyone note the timing of my missing marriage record?  Actually, I may not have given it, a huge oversight on my part!  Miscellaneous records pinpoint the date to somewhere between September 1918 and August 1919. What happened during that time?  You guessed it - the Spanish ‘Flu Pandemic, which was caused by the H1N1 influenza virus, which also caused problems in 2009.  They called it  the “grippe” in 1918 and the “Swine ‘Flu” in 2009.  We are encouraged to not just gather dates and hard facts about events in our ancestors’ lives.  We should be understanding the times and places in which they lived.  For me and my marriage record, that means understanding the impact of the Spanish ‘Flu Pandemic on the citizens of Boston, which is where it appears the marriage took place. Here are some of the basic...

Some very cool new features of genealogy websites and mobile apps were introduced at RootsTech.  FamilySearch Isabella Rogers, ready to add to tree FamilySearch Unfinished Attachments  is available both on the FamilySearch Family Tree and on the FamilySearch mobile app. Read more about it at  https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/familysearch-unfinished-attachments/ . Try it out and maybe this will happen for you: I made a great discovery when I found a census record in an unfinished attachment for my great-grandmother. Once I opened the record, I saw her sister’s name on the census and added her to the family tree. No one in the family had known she existed. Now she is on the family tree and with the right family. Map My Ancestors   Map My Ancestors for the mobile app:  https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/whats-map-ancestors/ This is pure joy and only available for your phone or tablet. It is thrilling to see all the work you and...