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

North Idaho miners c. 1895 ML Strickland files Wyatt Earp & Dodge City Peace Commission 1883 Online image As you are getting ready to write some of your family history, (and you are getting ready to do that, aren't you?), you are probably looking through old photos for inspiration.   Images add interest to the narrative of your story  Images can confirm dates, such as those on gravestones Family photos help confirm relationships Photos can establish time and place for elusive ancestors But, sometimes you need some help identifying people, places and/or times. This is when a reverse image search may be just the tool you need. What is a reverse image search?   A reverse image search is an online content-based image retrieval technique (CBIR) that uses algorithms to match a sample image with one(s) online. Matching an online image may help you identify people by dating something else in the photo such as a car or building.   Reverse image searching has been around for a few years

Finding Helpful Groups We humans naturally put people and things into groups. We group people into generations, such as "The Greatest Generation (those who won WWII)," Baby Boomers, Gen X, Y & Z. In some ways these groupings are useful, such as to companies who want to sell things to each group. But how can we find groups that are helpful for us?  An important factor about groups is their availability and topic. A group that meets in the morning may not be available to people who are employed from 9 to 5, Monday through Friday. Topics that are too narrow in scope will not attract very many people. Some groups cease meeting in the summer or around holiday time. If you are in such a group, perhaps you should take the opportunity to look for other groups. Check out ConferenceKeeper.org , for instance. Most of the readers of this blog are interested in genealogy and family history. And some pay dues to one or more genealogy societies, presumably because these groups offer adv

Image by orchidart on Freepik From 1988 to 2000, I was the Administrative Assistant at the Southeast Seattle Senior Center. In the early years, sometime around 1990, the seniors were offered a beginning genealogy class, taught by Sarah Little.  Sarah came once a month to teach the class and I would often help her make handout copies on our copy machine. As an employee, I was busy in my office and could not take the class; I wasn't very interested in taking a class anyway because my mother's cousin had done our family history back in 1960. He had traced us back to an ancestor born about 1800 in Vermont; it was all done, no need to do anything more. Ha! In early 2001 my cousins and I decided we should update that 1960, seven-page history and I offered to type it up once we added our spouses, children and grandchildren. In the meantime online, I found a 1634 Boston immigrant Stowe family with a descendent born in 1799 New Hampshire, same name as my 1800 Vermont ancestor. I was hoo

Backup icon by ByLUTFI GANI AL ACHMAD You can find articles everywhere that computer users might read, urging us all to back up our trees, our files, our DNA matches, etc.  One of our members recently brought this up in our Genealogy Chat after discussing the future of the genealogy DNA industry, which is slowing, thus making  less money for  the companies offering these services.   Back Up Your Tree If they did not back them up, Ancestry.com Y and mtDNA testers lost access to their test results and matches  as of September 30, 2014 . So there are examples of this happening before.  All of the genealogy tree-building sites offer a way to back up your bare-bones tree via a GEDCOM, which is a simple text file. If you also want to download your images and other records, you will need instead to"sync" your files using a desktop genealogy application which uploads to and downloads from the online trees. Your DNA Guide has an article comparing what is offered to sync with Ancestry,

Greetings family history researchers, near and far, especially Members of the South King County Genealogical Society. Thank you for reelecting both Michele Mattoon as your Treasurer and me as your President. This past two years have been a challenge, but together with the Membership we have accomplished a lot.  New SKCGS.org One thing everyone has noticed is the new website , which is much less costly than our older site, and much easier to keep up-to-date. In addition, by building Zoom registration into our public calendar there, we've improved the security of our Zoom meetings. Each team now updates their part of the new site as needed. Thank you Tina! Tina has also streamlined much of the back end of SKCGS, making it easier to bring in new volunteers, and to share handouts and video to both Members and visitors alike.  To stay up-to-date, check https://www.skcgs.org/home/announcements .  Planning Our Five-Year Planning committee has finished its work, which involved conducting a

Courtesy of Brett Jordan, via Flikr WiredAlexandria, CC BY-SA 4.0 Have you ever heard that "if you really want to learn something, teach it to someone else"? I have, and have found it true.  Mothering taught me that, for sure!  I was lucky enough to attend the University of Washington for a year, and while there the most valuable concept I adopted was joining some study groups. This has lots of advantages, the biggest being that all participants want to be there, are pushing themselves to learn difficult concepts, ideas or skills, and are willing to both study and help others.  I've found our special interest groups and study groups inspirational for the same reason. People attend because they want to learn more about how to use DNA in their family history research, or how to use new website features or applications, how to write useful citations, how to research like the professionals do, and more! But most valuable of all, I see participants stepping up to demonstrate b