150YearsofCare.org website header Since most of what I view on Youtube are genealogy subjects, and I subscribe to some genealogy channels, much of what is shown at login is genealogy. RLP 378: Interview with Gavin Beinart-Smollan * showed up, and I wanted to listen because my most recent genealogy project is all Jewish immigrants and their descendants, who mostly came to New York City from areas then called "Russia." Wikipedia says, " The Pale of Settlement included all of modern-day Belarus and Moldova, much of Lithuania, Ukraine and east-central Poland, and relatively small parts of Latvia and what is now the western Russian Federation."  Part of what makes this population challenging to research is the difficulty in locating records, and the confusing, even overwhelming DNA data. This is a result of the laws and customs governing life in the Pale of Settlement, described by Wikipedia: "The Pale of Settlement was a western region of the Russian Empire... th...

Citation Needed:March for Science in Washington, DC by Adam Fagen on Flickr Citations! So necessary to our work, and so dreaded. We all know we will thank ourselves later if we write them, but somehow..... don't.  Why do we need them? Of course we want to keep track of what and where we found the source of the information we're using in our research and writing. That is our duty to ourselves.  However, to me, the most important aspect of writing citations is analysis . Analysis What is this record? Who created it, when and where, and who collected and kept it safe? Who was the informant? Did that person have any reason to give less than accurate information?  What am I looking at? Is it a digital copy, digital microfilm, in color, or black and white? Or a paper record from the household or an repository? Is there more to the record? Many cards, for instance, have information on both front and back. Probate files can be many--even hundreds--of pages long. Was that probate ...

Courtesy of Pixabay Let your family story sparkle! Tell the Story Why do we do all this family history research? My answer is, to tell the story. If we do good research, the family legends are supported by records we find, and we make the story interesting with maps, newspaper articles, photos and other artifacts, and whatever else we can find. While telling the story, we cite our sources in a way that helps other researchers retrace our steps, whether to a book, records in archives, or online site. DNA Evidence But what if there are no legends? And few records, or we're looking for an unknown ancestor? These challenges can often be overcome with the use of DNA testing and matching. It can be challenging to use this data in a way that is interesting and in a way that allows others to follow our footsteps.  Fortunately, there are some companies working hard to make DNA testing painless, and using the data much easier than it was years ago. There are also wonderful tools helping us i...