American history was made with our immigrant and ethnic ancestors. Everyone has immigrant ancestors. It doesn't matter if your ancestor came to America in the 1900s, the 1600s, or were here to meet the rest of the settlers, all American ancestry leads somewhere else.
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Our ancestors' lives were influenced by society, events, and external forces. Everything from the lands where a family lived to the social causes they endured could affect how our ancestors made decisions about where to settle down, where to start a family, and where to work. These values and motivators go far beyond traditional genealogy records, and can help you break down your brick walls!
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As you're tracing your family history, you'll at least occasionally find that you need the help of a professional genealogist to make the progress you want. This can be due to time constraints in your own life, a need for verification of your work, dealing with a foreign language, or searching for an ancestor who left little written history behind. Whatever the reason my be, when it's time to hire a professional genealogist, it's important that you find one who is trustworthy and whose work will last for generations to come.
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Sometimes the KEY to solving a genealogy mystery is going BACK to the BASICS!
When you run up against a genealogy BRICK WALL - try these nine (9) old-school ways to break that wall DOWN. You'll find that not only can old dogs learn new tricks... but dogs both young and old will benefit from practicing these time-tested strategies!
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As a Genealogist... you've probably already discovered that the term "Brick Wall" is discussed almost regularly! We love to chat about the brick walls that are blocking our search into families' pasts. Usually, these brick walls are only detours that we can find our way around by stepping back and taking a fresh look at our research.... seeking out different record types... or doing some cluster research to find a clue buried in the overload of information.
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We all love and live for the thrill of the HUNT... the challenge of a mysterious kinship or hidden story. We hone our research skills, learn about records and think over the evidence we uncover. But, there's another part of the detective work that we often overlook... writing reports about our research.
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When you start looking into family research, nine times out of ten the trail will lead you to start questioning how immigrant ancestors got to America.
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Sitting down to start your genealogy research... it is common practice for many professional genealogists to begin by looking at DEATH RECORDS, first. Death certificates and records give us the most recent evidence of our ancestor's lives.
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When working with genealogy in the United States, every family tree you encounter will have an immigrant ancestor. The only question is when that migration took place.
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As recently as the 20th century in the United States and elsewhere, the death of a father meant that his children were orphans, no matter if the mother survived him or not.
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From relocations to relationships, deeds have the dirt on your family. Discover how to use property records to solve 10 genealogy roadblocks!
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How often do we stop to think about who is behind the camera on those old, vintage photos we have collected from our ancestors?
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Billions of ancestors in family trees online have had Genealogists give them names. But, what now? What do you do with all this new information once it's been uncovered? If you don't take the right steps you could be chasing the wrong ancestors, or miss clues all together... leading to a giant brick-wall.
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5 Clues You May Have Native American Ancestry
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Kel Amstutz, Professional Genealogist, native to Toledo, Ohio, who loves figuring out how everyone in a family tree fits together in the jig-saw puzzle of life.
She began her genealogy journey at a young age, always questioning where her family came from because she always felt like she looked a little different from those around her.
The rabbit hole started by researching her Grandfather's family tree and took her down a path of wanting to learn more about all line of her family and eventually trickling down to her husband's family - finding a delightful mixture of eastern and western European ancestry.
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Finding out your family lineage is a matter of the heart, but what you uncover can redefine history, for you, your family, and how you look at things going forward.
When we learn about our ancestors, we essentially are learning about ourselves through their paths. We go back to the times before because it’s wildly unfamiliar and return, again and again because it becomes a passion to see what we can uncover.
Genealogy can give us a look back into that restless town where our ancestors once settled, baking foods we might still be familiar with, rearing children with little to nothing, commuting to the store or the glass factory by means that are almost extinct today.
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