Diamond_Mine_Disaster_Historical_Marker_Grundy I, courtesy WiikMediaCommons   Finding the Stories: Unusual Sources  Many, if not most, of us are interested in going beyond "genealogy" to "family history." More than just the names, dates, and places, we want to know the stories our ancestors could have told us. They may not be around anymore but there are lots of other sources for these stories. Sometimes you find what you're looking for where you least expect it! I knew that my paternal grandfather's family migrated from Belgium to Grundy County, Illinois, in the  1 880s to mine coal. Few people realize it, but the northern Illinois coalfields were some of the best coal in the country, strongly preferred by the railroads because it was much cleaner than Pennsylvania anthracite. However, the fields were comparatively small and pretty much were only able to supply Chicago and the railroads operating there. The city and village names in Grundy County reveal the...

  From Dave Liesse — This one doesn't involve finding a relative, but it does illustrate the "small world" idea quite well! I started working for a new (to me) company in Chicago in the spring of 1994.  My manager was about my age, and his name was Jerry. After the July 4th weekend we were talking about how we'd spent our time.  He told me that he visited his father, just across the state line in Indiana.  The conversation went something like this: D: "Oh, really?  Where in Indiana?" J:  "Oh, a small town you've probably never heard of." D:  "Try me!" J:  "Whiting." D:  "Oh, yeah?  Where in Whiting?" J:  "Well, not really in Whiting.  He's in Hammond, but everybody says Whiting." D:  "Okay, he's in Robertsdale. Go on." (Note: Robertsdale is a part of Hammond, but physically separated from the rest of the city by a couple of oil refineries.  It's served by the Whiting post office, so ...

By Dave Liesse Family Tree Maker is, and always has been, a powerful genealogy database tool.  In fact, when I first adopted it decades ago it was because as a database professional myself I could recognize the excellence of the underlying database design.  At the time it may not have been the most intuitive program for non-technical users, but I definitely was not in that category! Over the years the program has changed owners several times and has been upgraded regularly.  Now it resembles the many office suites (Microsoft Office, LibreOffice, Open Office, etc.) in one key respect: the number of features that go unused is constantly climbing!  The purpose of this post is to let you know about some of those features that you might have a good use for, if you only knew about them. Let's start with the task list.  If you're like I was you've seen the "Tasks" bar on the Plan page or perhaps on the Person tab on the People page. These are quite powe...