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...

BOOK REVIEW Millard, Candice.  Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President.    New York:  Anchor Books, A Division of Random House, Inc. 2012. Elizabeth Shown Mills reminds us that as genealogists we must understand the patterns of the time in which events took place. [1]   Patterns of History If you are studying ancestors in the period immediately following the Civil War, this non-fiction account of a little known event in American History may increase your understanding of the societal norms of the time.   Death of General James A. Garfield. Lithograph by Currier & Ives. From the Library of Congress President James A. Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau on July 2, 1881.   Ignoring Evidence This is a story of how one man’s stubborn refusal to let scientific medical evidence change a firmly held belief may have changed the outcome of the assassination attempt.   Rebound from Tragedy The...