MaryLynn recently wrote about piecing together snippets of information ; I came across some more recent history recently. By chance Ancestry.com landed me on the profile of my uncle Hollis McBee, and I noticed a couple of new newspaper article hints, which can be a rich source of information.  Calgary Herald, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Thursday 8 November 1945, page 8, column 3, news article "Trucks Damaged, Drivers Unhurt"  mentioning Hollis McBee; Newspapers.com : accessed 11December 2025.      At first  glance, the story reveals few facts, besides that Hollis was unhurt.  But it shows me what he was doing in 1945; which  was driving truck in Cochrane, Alberta, Canada, and that he had been in an accident.  The second article places him and his first family in Great Falls, Montana, 375 miles south:   Great Falls Tribune, Great Falls, Montana, Friday 31 October 1958, page 11, columns 4-5, "Nine Marriages Dissolved"  incl...

James Wheeler: Free to use. Pitt Meadows, BC.  CanadaCrop Field Under Rainbow and Cloudy Skies at Daytime   Modern Blessing: Public Health   I am so thankful to live now, not 100 years ago. There are tiny figures next to the wife's name in the 1900 and 1910 US census, noting the number of children born and children living.  I feel relief when the numbers are the same; sadness when they are not.  Worse, we often never know the names of those who have died.  This past week I transcribed a long flowery obituary written by a grandchild of Kezia McGowan Husted, and this part touched me:  "Kizia McGowan was born in Wayne county, Ohio, February 18th 1830. Came to Illinois in 1845 and married Lyman Husted, 1847. To this union were born ten children of which four are living , namely: Mrs. Carrie Dudley, Mrs. Mary Cochran, William and James Husted. Six children preceded Grandma to heaven, when they were quite young... her angel children, whose names were: Ve...

Creator: Gregg Evans  Copyright: © 2025 GCE Inc. Gregg Evans in the above comic illustrates a common dilemma, so I want to ask:  What excites you? What fills you with satisfaction?   There is a reason that every genealogy and family history expert advises starting projects with a research question, and demonstrates crafting the query into a research plan to save time and money, and success. Success inspires us work through hard problems.   I want to ask another question though, about how you enjoy learning . Whether researching your family, or learning about how to do better research, we all have different learning styles. Do you learn best all by yourself in a quiet place, or with others such as a research group, class, seminar or college class? Is in-person best for you, or recorded sessions you can view at your leisure? Do you prefer reading, listening, or watching videos? Since covid-19 propelled both online meeting and education, we have an abundance o...

  summer_in_seattle_baseball_safeco_baseball_stadium_seattle Courtesy of pxhere.com CCO:Public domain YES, Genealogy and BASEBALL!  🪾⚾ What?  how can genealogy and baseball be alike? SO many ways. First, baseball, like genealogy, is a team sport . While there are ways in baseball to practice specific skills like running, batting, throwing and catching by using machines. But playing baseball requires at least three people: a pitcher, a batter, and an outfielder. Many of us as kids played this way; we called it "work up" where there were no teams, just a bunch of kids playing baseball or softball (larger, softer ball).  Genealogy is a team sport . How much fun would it be to record only our own life? Some writers, videographers, podcasters, etc. do this, but I think you would agree that that is not genealogy. Genealogy is the study of our family and their ancestors, and we need a team to do that. We need, first, records of the lives who came before us. Think of all t...

©Bizarro Piraro The comic above is funny, but history and our ancestor's stories are not always funny, pleasant, uplifting and inspiring. Life and thus history is full of tragedy and comedy, beauty and horror, and some parts are difficult to face. Survival is not guaranteed, because we are human. My family has endured crime and tragedy; my mother's father was convicted of child rape, and spent time in prison. My dad's only sibling, his little brother, drowned when only 13, and my Grampa Cowan, Donald's daddy, found his body. Terrible tragedy in the lives of both my parents, yet they went on to build a house and a life together. They raised my sister and I in that house, and my mother lived the rest of her life there. I think the security of living in a house they owned was a comfort to her, in contrast to the chaos in which she had been raised.  The reason I've been thinking about telling the whole truth of our families is that there is another a way of thinking abo...

It has been calculated from the 2000 U.S. Census that there are over 4.5 million people of Norwegian descent living in the United States . [i] Therefore, many genealogists do not have to go back very many generations before they encounter a Norwegian immigrant ancestor, since the largest numbers of Norwegian immigrants have come to the United States since the Civil War. Fortunately, Liv Birgit Christensen and Margaret Strand have compiled a guide to help us. The book follows families from a farm that may have been established around 500 AD. Written records are available from about 1615. Using these individuals to illustrate research examples provides continuity and increases understanding of the research technique the author is illustrating. For those who are just beginning Norwegian research, an overview of the history and geography of the country provides a foundation for understanding the types of records available and their ...

Key in a door; public domain. Courtesy of Picryl. In genealogy and family history, context is "the examination of individual lives within the framework of a broader history" [1]. Context is Key Context is key because  context unlocks meaning in the records we uncover , and leads us to more (and better) records and collections. For instance, finding a land description and platting it is step one, then when the plat is on a map along with the neighbors, we can see who the ancestor knew, worked alongside, attended church with, and who the singles might have married. Learning the geology of the area leads to understanding what crops were grown, and so how the land shaped the daily lives of those living and working on it. Life on the Great Plains is very different from the hollers of Kentucky or the coastal plains of the East. People often migrated in groups, and in general chose to move to an area where their skills and knowledge would be useful.  Context for land acquisitio...

The Family History AI Show The Family History AI Show recently discussed " the year's top AI breakthroughs for genealogists, " analyzing what we genealogists can do now at year's end which we could not on January one. Steve and Mark presented their list:  #5. Chatbots Learn How to Reason (OpenAI’s o1-preview)   Because it is still in "preview," this does not have widespread use yet, but both hosts agreed that it will be great for multi-step big projects.  #4. Content Creation Within Chatbots (Artifacts, Canvas)  Work entirely inside the chatbot, not hopping over to Word, Excel, Photoshop, or other tools for parts of your project. Changes, additions and corrections can happen real-time, not over in another tab, enabling a sense of flow and ease. #3. Collaborative Research Spaces (NotebookLM, Claude Projects, Perplexity Spaces) Chat with and query your own written work, documents for use in your ongoing project, research plans, and collaborate with workmates ...

AI generated by Pixlr 30 November 2024 The Tingle Don't you love that moment in your research when you realize, that YES, you were right when you went out on a limb, and found something not in other public trees? And then, when you find that some of the supporting research work ahead has already been done? O f course you soon also realize that that means you are probably related to this family in multiple ways, which is why some of the work has been completed. Filling In The Map Or is that just me who forgets research from a year or more ago? This is the mixed blessing of pedigree collapse [intermarriage in small communities], FAN research [ f amily, friends, a ssociates, n eighbors], and tracking down DNA matches [people with whom you share significant sized DNA segments]! I dare you to add intriguing DNA matches to your tree, and figure out how you connect. There are so many rewards to taking the chance. One of them is revisiting old research. Tool Kit With this Burnett line, I ...