WTA volunteers building trail. Used with permission. While researching, all of us find people in records,  known and unknown, and would like to easily add them to our tree where we can find and add more records, properly place them in their family, and judge whether or not the family is properly placed.  This post will illustrate some ways to do that, using examples from my Ancestry.com online tree. Similar techniques can be used on other platforms.  Sometimes when you find a new person, it's quite easy to add each of the family members from a census record, even before the 1880, where relationships are not noted. When you experience that ease,  thank whoever blazed that path for you. In this post, I'll demonstrate how to mark the path yourself so that future  family researchers can more accurately add all the family members in a record. What Ancestry labels "Record" is actually a linked household index. An example is below. First, add your mystery person to yo...

AI generated “We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing - an actor, a writer - I am a person who does things - I write, I act," said Stephen Fry. We humans are active. We do things, changing the world and our future. We move around our world with action verbs.  So why do we describe ourselves and our ancestors as nouns, which are static? When people are asked to describe themselves, they often use roles: mother, father, or profession. While part of the picture, it does not get to the heart of the person. I heard a story on the radio today from a mother describing her son who has died, and it was all about what he DID. He kissed the back of her neck as he left with a friend; she never saw him alive again. Precious and painful.  My favorite obituaries describe actions . I treasure them, because they are a window into the human who lives in the records. Dates, places, names are great, but read this  bit of Peter Cain's: " To this union were born 7 children, all of wh...

Used with permission from Steven Young Caudill, photographer Will Rogers is reported to have said , " If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging ." Recently I found myself in a hole of my own making, and took that advice. My first step was a new custom Tree Tag for my Ancestry.com tree: SameNameConfusion to make the profiles easy to find. Previously I wrote about pruning , part of which has been using Ancestry.com's ProTools to find possible duplicate profiles. I've merged hundreds of such profiles without problems. This case seemed simple and obvious on the surface because I saw what I expected to see, rather than what was actually there.  I saw Jane and Eliza J and thought they were the same woman I saw Thomas J Booth and Jefferson Booth, and thought that they were the same man Because both families were in the 1900 census, I did not stop to notice that one family was in Missouri and the other in Iowa  The Jane with no surname had little information, so I merged...

Reliable research begins with the  Genealogical Proof Standard   What's ahead for family history and genealogy work next year? And how best to prepare? One of my big goals has been finished, which is recent backup of online trees onto my own computer. Most of my work has been over the past years has been in Ancestry.com online trees. Now I want to learn how to back that clean tree up into the cloud, as well as onto some portable hard drives.  Also, I combined the two backed-up trees. Next, I need to find and merge any remaining duplicate profiles. While doing that work, I will try to apply "spit and polish" to each profile touched. Spit? Polish?  Merriam-Webster says it is in part: " attention to cleanliness, orderliness, smartness of appearance ."  Why bother with such nit-picking? I think that by making online profiles not only well-researched and attractive, we can draw others to the stories told on those profiles. This is why I've always worked in publ...

Valorie Zimmerman fan chart from Ancestry.com Sometimes we want to take a break from researching, or our budget tells us  that we need to do so.  How will you handle this? We know that "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" but you are reading this post, so you still want to learn more. What to do? Will  exploring a new (free) website  be enough? Everything—every search, every record, every download—on FamilySearch is free and available every day, all year long * . The same is true at the Library of Congress , the National Archives , Archive.org , all the US state archives, and state digital newspaper collections, your own public library system, and often neighboring systems as well! King County Washington residents have access not only to KCLS , but also Pierce County , Snohomish County , and Seattle Public Libraries as well. Don't overlook local college and university libraries, county and city archives and many large and some smaller museums. Sometimes gett...

2025 Calendar Courtesy OpenClipart Whatcha Gonna Do This Year?  Some make New Year's resolutions; I usually try to set some goals, and look back and measure progress made during the year. Our former president and director of our Education team Barbara Mattoon has set an even higher bar, publicly announcing her goals in our SKCGS blog   2020--What's in Your New Year?  and   2024 Genealogy Resolutions . Lofty goals, and worthy of her dedication, skill and determination.  Inspiring. Back in 2021, I wrote "As I begin this new year, I was determined to not make any resolutions, yet I can't stop myself.  "The book Mastering Genealogical Proof by Thomas W. Jones was a Christmas gift, and I immediately dived into reading it. I even started blogging about it on my personal blog, https://genweblog.blogspot.com/2020/12/end-of-2020-time-for-something-new.html . That's great, but unless I put the principles to work in my own research, what good does the reading and le...

Connecting people. Image courtesy of Dreamstime Doing Genealogy When we first start "doing genealogy" we're finding records, noting what we find, and trying to make sense of it all. As time goes on, we may turn into hobbyists, and begin using forms, consulting books, online repositories, and perhaps, building a tree on our computers, online, or both.  Eventually, it grows so much we don't know what we have, or where! This is where all those "genealogy do-over" or "filing Fridays" projects start. Both of those might be useful in your situation, but here is the ruling principle that can bring quality into your work and peace into your heart: genealogy projects using the Genealogical Proof Standard , the GPS . This principle is what professional genealogists use, but it is not for pros only. Fortunately, it's not a secret; it is the key to effective and efficient work for researchers all around the world.  Genealogical Proof Standard GPS Shapes a...

New Mexico Wildfire- -Silver City Sun-News Devon Noel Lee is back! The Family History Fanatics team had to flee their home to escape the terrible forest fires in New Mexico, and have recently been able to resume their informative, useful videos. Devon's first loves in genealogy are first, research, and then writing about family.  Write a Timeline Recently I watched one of her short writing videos called " Write a Family History Story in Chronological Order | FIRST DRAFT ONLY " which seems so logical! Notice the "first draft only" part of the title. Writing out a timeline can sort your thoughts and yield insights about what happened in the family, such as births happening during travel, deaths of family members close together, when and where the land purchases took place, all of which might otherwise not be noticed. You may notice holes in your research as you write, which will pause the writing while you chase down those records and complete finding context and...