It's a blustery Autumn day as you wait with your friends for the morning school bus. You've tried to give extra care to your appearance today and your hair is just not at its best. Maybe you should have gotten a haircut last week--or maybe you shouldn't have gotten a haircut last week. On top of that, acne has erupted on your face and your favorite shirt didn't make it through the wash this week.  Of course. . . It's School Picture Day! Funny that decades later I remember that Freshman year picture day so well.  My only consolation was that most of us had similar experiences and a couple of months after the yearbook came out, no one remembered what you looked like the previous year anyway.   Wouldn't you love to find your parents or grandparents in a record of their school years? Who knew that school yearbooks would become another valuable resource for genealogical research? Use yearbooks:  to prove family relationships  to establish time and location ...

Study Group, courtesy of OpenClipart   Desperation drove me to my first study group at university. A fellow student invited me, and the group swapped ideas about how to remember the masses of information we were given in an early-morning class. It really helped all of us, I think, and I was grateful.  South King County Genealogical Society incorporated as "educational in character and devoted exclusively to furthering genealogical research and interest in family and local history." We offer lots of choices, and discuss other educational opportunities here in the blog. See Barbara Mattoon's series on "Your Genealogy Education Plan, Parts One and Two , "  along with many other discussions of podcasts, seminars, videos, books, conferences.  Copyright 2016 Blaine T. Bettinger Debbie Parker Wayne When some of us found Blaine Bettinger and Debbie Parker Wayne's book Genetic Genealogy in Practice and began discussing it in our Genetic Genealogy/DNA group , the i...

City Vectors by Vecteezy How are city directories useful to us researchers? Aren't they just boring lines with a few names and sometimes, addresses?  They can be so much more, but even just the name and address, and sometimes job description and place of employment is by *year* and so if you have two people of the same name, you can follow them annually, and usually sort them out once you cross-check that data with census and other records. And don't forget to search for maps of the time so you can correlate the addresses to the house or apartment, and perhaps note the place of employment as well. Sanborn maps are particularly wonderful for this since it shows the layout of the house on the lot, and indicates how large it was, and how it was constructed.  However, noting just the bare minimum information misses the real value of city directories. After you gather all the information and write your citation, scan up and down the page, whether it is organized by address or alpha...

We are thrilled to announce that the King County Library System is collaborating with the South King County Genealogical Society to present professional genealogist Winona Laird for a series of programs to help you along on your genealogical journey.  The series begins this Wednesday evening at 7 Pacific. Register on the KCLS website ; space is limited. You will be emailed a link no later than 24 hours before the program start time. If you do not see an email, check your Junk or Spam folder. July 12:  Starting your Genealogy Journey August 16: Vital Records, Birth, Marriage, Death and Adoption September 13: Searching the U.S. Population Census Records October 18: Supplemental Census Records November 15: Using Timelines in your Genealogy December 20: Research Techniques   Register in advance; space is limited

4th Of July Fireworks Vectors by Vecteezy It's celebration time--time for picnics and water sports, hotdogs and watermelon. And after a day of fun and food we top it off with firework shows for a spectacular finish. Through it all one important factor that we celebrate is our American Spirit. One article that inspired this blog is called  The American Spirit: What Does It Mean? It is full of inspiring quotes and examples of the American Spirit.  Canada Day was Saturday, July 1, and the US will celebrate Independence Day July 4. Our countries are great friends now, but at one point, the US invaded Canada! Some of my distant relatives were part of the militia protecting their homes in Upper Canada, as Ontario was known in 1812. Canada is part of the American continent, and is part of the American Spirit we want to discuss today. - Valorie Our history is full of examples of former enemies uniting in friendship and amity, by focusing on shared values. When we declared independenc...

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 bee...