Electric Fan Vectors by Vecteezy When it's hot, we get out the fans to cool off.  MaryLynn Recently, a submitter on Facebook declared she was going to stop researching individual people and start researching families. She discovered that she had more success by looking for the family first.  Most researchers probably reach this conclusion as a necessary research method because it is the way to identify ancestors, especially when common names are involved. Finding Patterns Researching ancestors' siblings can help explain use of given names that do not follow a certain pattern. In my Stowe family, there are two men with the name George Marshall Stowe; one was my grandfather and the other was his uncle. Neither "George" nor "Marshall" had ever been used as given names and Marshall was also not a surname in the family. I had always wondered about the source of the names. One day I decided to look at my 2nd- great-grandmother's siblings and discovered that on...

Recently a short YouTube Family History Fanatics video about Puzzilla popped up which seemed interesting, so I searched a bit and found  Use Puzzilla.org to Find Genealogy Research Opportunities on FamilySearch.org  and the website Puzzilla.org itself. What I like about it is that it can be used for analysis and it is beautiful . It's sometimes difficult to show our research in a way that interests family members. Puzzilla is attractive and interactive as well as useful.  There is a paid version which is available for use at some Family History Centers. Next Research Workshop, I plan to check it out and see how much more there is! I played with both the ancestor and descendants function. First, the ancestors of my grandson Oscar: Grandson Oscar's ancestors: some work to do! Son of our immigrant from the Alsace, Casper Baysinger's descendants: Beautiful, don't you think? Gorgeous! but it's not so pretty when there are few descendants, or the re...