10
votes
Accepted
Approaching relatives with dementia about family history?
I've had good experiences in the past few years talking to relatives with various types of dementia including Alzheimer's at the nursing home where my father resided.
Many of these people do little ...
- 16.6k
9
votes
Accepted
What can analyze a tree and suggest what your next research goal(s) should be?
In addition to GenSmarts, there are other programs that will help you track your research progress.
GenDetective by Rumblesoft, Inc., like GenSmarts, reads files from genealogy software (see ...
- 24.9k
8
votes
Accepted
How does one search a very specific source on Ancestry.com?
Go to the Card Catalog and search by collection title or keyword, to locate a specific record set.
Clicking on the title UK, American Loyalist Claims, 1776-1835 will bring you to a dedicated search ...
- 18.7k
8
votes
Evaluating birth year when different on SSDI and gravestone?
My first question in response to this would be why you are settling for only two sources that give direct evidence about when your research subject was born, and trying to decide which of them is more ...
- 24.9k
8
votes
Is it ethical to perform research on living people's ancestry without their knowledge?
I would say definitely yes, because sometimes this is the only way of establishing how you're related to a DNA match if they have no information on their family tree. Also, the UK birth, marriage and ...
- 1,615
8
votes
Accepted
Is it ethical to perform research on living people's ancestry without their knowledge?
Not only would I say that it is ethical, I would say that it is an essential part of your research. In general, without that research then you cannot know whether the person is living or deceased. In ...
- 5,897
7
votes
Methods to organize medical genealogy information?
You are correct. Most genealogy programs are not designed specifically for medical data.
However there are at least a few programs that you can try that specifically say they are designed for health ...
- 16.6k
7
votes
What can analyze a tree and suggest what your next research goal(s) should be?
There really are not too many programs of the type that will suggest what to research.
But one possibility is Find-A-Record, which was designed to be a research assistant that works specifically ...
- 16.6k
7
votes
Accepted
Managing MyHeritage messages
I'm sure you know about the little mail icon on the top bar. If you click on that, it will bring up your inbox, which you can switch to your sent messages.
You are correct that there is no search ...
- 16.6k
6
votes
History of German small town of Angloh?
Technique
Generally when you cannot find information on very small or insignificant placenames, you research nearby larger places (because events may apply to a larger area) or the next placename in ...
- 7,926
6
votes
How do you record fuzzy facts?
If you went around to researchers and asked them this question, I suspect you'd get a different answer for each one. Here are some of your options for recording genealogical information:
paper ...
- 24.9k
6
votes
Seeking online resources to do collateral research on Internet?
If you are interested in studying the members of an ancestor's community, then you should use the resources of two societies:
The Society for One-Place-Studies. They have a blog, a Facebook group and ...
- 16.6k
6
votes
Accepted
Best practices for producing document abstracts or summaries?
Here's the link to a pdf article "Transcribing & Abstracting," by Linda Woodward Geiger that goes over abstracting that may be useful to you. In it, her example is in third person/past tense.
...
- 126
6
votes
How does one search a very specific source on Ancestry.com?
Part of the problem with using Ancestry or the other big data vendors is that they group different sets of records under "umbrella" titles that don't correspond to the titles used by the repositories ...
- 24.9k
6
votes
Resources for researching family from Greene County, Tennessee?
Try to look on this problem as an opportunity for learning something new instead of a roadblock to overcome. You can't find your person in the 1840 Census because it doesn't list him by name. What ...
- 24.9k
6
votes
Does the available evidence support these assumptions?
I can't flaw your assumptions. All I would add:
Surname
To surname assumptions I would add that you also have evidence from her children's birth registrations. Even without seeing the certificates ...
- 18.7k
6
votes
Accepted
Is my source the document or where I obtained it?
My recommendation for source material is to record the source document as a source in your source list, and link that to the person/place/website where you got it as a repository in your list of ...
- 16.6k
5
votes
Accepted
Finding residence information for Toronto in the 1840s?
Toronto Public Library has some scanned publications available about the history of Toronto. Local History & Genealogy
Toronto had 5 ‘wards’ in 1843 according to Wikipedia and the outlying areas (...
- 66
5
votes
Finding residence information for Toronto in the 1840s?
Searching for and investigating any Canadian hints in the Hindley family's known FAN club might be my next step as it could add more people and points for research.
The Toronto Branch of the Ontario ...
- 131
5
votes
Accepted
Making Research Plans for studying the Genetic Genealogy of an Adoptee?
You've made a good start by testing at all three companies and uploading your results to GEDMatch -- as Judy G. Russell says in her recent post DNA testing for adoptees, "fish in all the ponds". The ...
- 24.9k
5
votes
Organizing geographical reference material for English parishes?
As I am sure you are aware, the complexity of the various administrative divisions in use in England in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries makes keeping track of all these geographies very ...
- 18.7k
5
votes
Is there a centralized Historical Society index / database for the United States?
The closest thing I know of that meets your criteria is WorldCat's beta project ArchiveGrid.
It has a feature FIND ARCHIVES NEAR YOU which allows you to search for a location or zip code, or pick out ...
- 24.9k
5
votes
How do I visibly make people aware that a connection is only tenuous and further research is needed?
Take a look at these Downloadable Image Icons for On-Line Family Trees provided on the blog Genealogy Junkie. Sue Griffith created these to mark which lines were verified by DNA research and which ...
- 24.9k
5
votes
How to encourage higher standards of genealogical research on a message board?
I appreciate your question. Recently I’ve begun looking into the types of questions being asked in genealogy message board type situations and the quality of answers.
In today’s world many people ...
5
votes
How do I determine when to search for non-conformist birth/baptism records?
In my experience, there is no prescribed way to determine whether a search for non-conformist records will be fruitful.
You can look at given names in the family. For example, certain biblical names ...
- 18.7k
5
votes
Using shared cM to determine likelihood of misattributed paternity?
If there are siblings of John Smith with descendants, they could possibly be compared to E. Testing for DNA matches between E and relatives of John Smith may not be conclusive - a negative result ...
- 226
5
votes
Using shared cM to determine likelihood of misattributed paternity?
In addition to trying to test descendants of John Smith's siblings, I would suggest trying to test descendants of Harriett and Eliza's other siblings.
A really good set of articles on using DNA to ...
- 981
5
votes
Using shared cM to determine likelihood of misattributed paternity?
Using the advice contained in the answers of @Erin and @Leah, I have made some good progress on this.
I have identified a number of other DNA matches who I believe are related via the Smiths:
For ...
- 18.7k
5
votes
Accepted
Determining if Medal Card is for relative William James Truckle or another man of same name
Some of the specific techniques that can be used are to be found on the Long, Long Trail's "How To Research a Soldier".
There are several points that might be raised:
How many William James ...
- 11.5k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible