[1] Exhaustive Research   When researching a difficult ancestor do you ever wonder “have I checked EVERY source that might contain information about this person”? “What could I be missing?” I have good news for you. There is a checklist for that! There are many. If one does not suit your style of research, try another one. A quick Google search brought up 1,750,000,000 results. That is a bit much to deal with. Good Sources for Checklists The Mid-Continent Public Library has a simple one-page list that I have used. [ 2 ] The National Institute for Genealogy offers a similar two-page checklist in a slightly different format. [3] Family Tree Magazine also has a one-page checklist that is quite comprehensive, including wolf-scalp bounties. [4] It does not include a space for the ancestor’s name, and is a PDF so you would have to scan and save it to the ancestor’s file. Roots of Kinship offers a complex Excel-based checklist that is incredibly comprehensive, and useful if you want ...

The Andersons of Langbro Pursued the American Dream: “Go West, young man!” Axel Ludwig Anderson and Anna Nilsdotter; photo courtesy Jeanne Rollberg by Jeanne Rollberg "A.L. ANDERSON, one of the prosperous husbandmen of Klickitat County, belongs to that great body of foreign-born population without whom the industrial and natural resources of the United States would be in their infancy. He is a native of the kingdom of Sweden, born November 10, 1845.” Thus a State of Washington historian described Axel Ludwig Anderson in a book published in 1893 in Chicago. Two of Axel’s Anderson’s brothers likewise left Sweden in the 1860s and 1870s after seven siblings and their parents, Pehr and Christina Ericsson Andersson, had died. Hilder Yngve Anderson, born July 17, 1848, and Oscar Reinhold Anderson, born April 1, 1850, struck out for America at a time when the United States was advertising opportunities in railroading and farming to Scandinavians seeking adventure and prosperity. From the ...

Repeated from January, 2021 with April update Public Hearing: Washington State Attorney General's Office January 19, 2021, I attended a public hearing sponsored by the Office of Washington State Attorney General, Bob Ferguson, requesting public testimony regarding the proposal by the Public Buildings Reform Board to close the National Archives and Records Administration facility in Seattle, move the records to either California or Missouri, and sell the building. The hearing was held virtually via Zoom. There was a limit of 200 people and the Attorney General’s Office were stunned by the number of people who attempted to join the call. If we were not testifying, we were asked to watch the call on TV W, as they could not accommodate all who wanted to join. Representatives of the Seattle Genealogical Society, the Orcas Island Society, and Sue Sheldon representing the Mason County Society had already testified, and I did not feel I had anything significant to add, so I moved over to T...

  Peter Calver of LostCousins has a new edition of his DNA Masterclass . If you don't use LostCousins, you are missing out! And you don't even need DNA results for that. If you have UK or Canadian ancestry, you really do need to add as many ancestors and cousins to LostCousins as possible, if you want to connect with British cousins. Distant Cousins are Gold In this Masterclass, Mr. Calver points out how important distant cousins will be to you. He published a chart I've not seen before: Based on Table 2 from: Henn BM, Hon L, Macpherson JM, Eriksson N, Saxonov S, Pe'er I, et al. (2012) Cryptic Distant Relatives Are Common in Both Isolated and Cosmopolitan Genetic Samples. PLoS ONE 7(4): e34267. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0034267 Revised using Ancestry DNA estimates for the chances of detecting cousins and the expected number of 1st to 6th cousins for those of British ancestry; the numbers for 7th to 10th cousins are my own guesstimates Calver leaves out steps that I do on...