All Blog Posts (3,110)

While working to preserve my own family history, I realized how rare records were kept of our loved ones burials.  How markers became faded, obituaries lost, the footprint we leave on this world vanished.  My great great Grandfathers records were completely missing, and hours on the phone with the Catholic Church finally resulted in answers. There was no exact location outside of an old photograph my grandma kept of her, with her father, and brother standing by his copper marker. This…

Matthew Taylor and his wife Janet Wilson came from Northern Ireland in 1721 and settled in Nutfield, now Derry, New Hampshire.   Matthew was one of the original proprietors of the settlement.  He was born in 1690 and he died 26 January 1770 near Beaver Lake.  They had ten children and many descendants who lived in New Hampshire and Nova Scotia.  Matthew and his sons, Adam and Samuel Taylor, are buried in Forest Hill Cemetery in Derry.

The descendants are planning a reunion for August…

I received an interesting enquiry today (through my website) regarding a connection between John Lyon of Ryslippe and the Douglas family.  I immediately recognised John Lyon (1510-1592) as the founder of Harrow School, but was not aware of his connection, through the Lyons of Glamis Castle to the Douglas family.

For those not clued up with British geography, Ruislip, to give it the modern spelling, is but a short ride on the…

1686 BROOKLYN DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH MEMBERSHIP LIST

It was difficult to prevail upon any settled clergyman to leave his charge in Holland and brave the trials of a newly settled country of Nieuw Amsterdam, yet two newly ordained ministers--Hermanus Blom and Henricus Selyns--did just that.

Blom, a…

TO SOAR WITH THE TIGERS

NOW AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE

The Life and Diary of Robert Brouk

January 10, 2011 – Chicago, IL. Jennifer Holik-Urban announces the release of To Soar with the Tigers, The Life and Diary of Robert Brouk.

To Soar with the Tigers is the story of Flying Tiger Robert Brouk,…

After scanning London baptism records multiple times for my Smith ancestors I was confused why I found every baptism record for my ancestors siblings but not for the record for my ancestor Mary Ann Smith? 

Well today I found it!  Her record had a hyphen in it (Mary-Ann Smith). This and several other hyphenated records did not show up with all the others. So, if you are searching Parish records, remember names are often mispelled or perhaps your missing record has a hyphen…

Boston July 24. 1867



Dear Aunt,



I received your letter dated May 22/67 and

It was gladly received day before yesterday.

We are having pretty warm weather here now

although it Is not quite as warm today as it usually

is. Sara has been married just one year ago last

Thursday, her husband’s name is William Pierce.

Grandma was very much opposed to the…

I have been research the following Cross family.  Can find no tract of Isaac or Ethans's parents.

 …

We received an email from a reader suggesting we write an article comparing the cost and time it takes to create your own keepsake video as opposed to hiring us to create a Legacy video for you. We thought this was a great idea.

When you walk into your local computer store, you are met with aisles of the newest technological toys. They are enticing…

 Quick up date, we have started sharing some information now in the FB group and one of our family members has a few documents that I did not have that she scanned and posted there. Now I can take those and blow them up and print them out for hard copies. Since they are marriage, death and birth records this is kind of major scoring. So taking the FB challenge to another level paid off for our research in this since. Sharing the information though digital images might not be as fun for some…

I have been watching “In Treatment“, an HBO drama about a psychotherapist, Paul Weston (with award winning performance by Gabriel Byrne). Each episode is a session with one of his patients, including one session with his own therapist, Gina, at the end of the week. The session with Gina covers some of the things that are going on with his patients…

I have been gathering and planning out a scrapbook project to go long with my genealogy / history project. Scrapbook projects do take time and if you do not catch some really great sales they can be costly. The up side is that family members that might not want to look at data and plain charts might really like to see your handy work. There are also some really cool things that I have found to aid in the creative side of this project. Here are some really great examples of things you can…

As far as finding data on family and history I tend to be pretty good at that and have been able to score some really great finding on our family. Sadly I have become a data collector however and now its time to start putting all that "Stuff" into a program to organize it and make since out of all this information. WOW! what a task this is going to be with the information, documents, pictures etc that I have collected in a very short year or so. Being a data collector is only one step to…

For those of your who still doubt the importance of updating your game plan to using more current on line and program resources I would like to give you some examples of how using some of these modern day wonders have expanding not only my research but has expanded my family also.

One of the greatest things to come out of my research is finding a whole group of family members who our family had never had contact with on FACE BOOK of all places. As a result my family now has at least…

I do not spend as much time as I would like to at the Mesa Regional Family History Center, but I regularly teach classes and help patrons. We have a lot of computers for patron use and a man and a woman came into the center and were sitting down to use a computer. I happened to be the closest missionary/volunteer and so I got the brunt of their extreme displeasure. It seems that the Center has spent considerable time re-designing their start-up screen to make it easier for patrons to find…

My 3x great Grandfather Peter Hoogerzeil was born on 28 October 1803 in Dordrecht, Netherlands. He had stowed away on a Rotterdam ship to America. It was supposedly full of hemp bound for the ropewalk in Salem, Massachusetts. According to family lore, he married the Captain’s daughter. This story always bothered me because of two…

The character of my great-grandmother, Maria Rawcliffe had always appealed to me. Her name was an evocative mixture of down-to-earth Lancashire grit with echoes of a more flamboyant Latin nature. She looked a formidable lady from the one photograph (left) I had initially of her. To give additional colour there was a, no doubt, apocryphal story that “granny’s dark looks” came from Spanish descent, after an Armada ship…