Sunday, May 20th, 2012
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6:14 pm - DNA Test
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author_by_night
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So I've decided that I want to do a genealogical DNA test. But I have a few questions.
1. Which services would you recommend? Ancestry.com has changed theirs so it's not readily available. And anyway, I'm not sure that's the best way to go. I've found something called DNA Spectrum, but I'm not sure how reliable/comprehensive they are.
2. Whose DNA do I use? I could do mine, but I feel like that would be a mess because would I know which side was what? So it seems better to go with the two sides, but I think both sides it has to be male, and there's no way I'm getting my uncle to do a cheek swab. Let's leave it at that. ;) (He's a good guy, he'd just find the whole thing pointless.)
Thanks for anything you can tell me!
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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Sunday, May 6th, 2012
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8:17 pm - 1861 Census of Ontario
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rainbow
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Has anyone access to the 1861 census of Ontario who would be willing to copy a page for me?
I'm looking for the James and Catherine Craig family of Glenelg Township, Grey County, Ontario; I'm trying to get an idea of what part of the township their farm was in and want to see if I recognise any other families on the same page.
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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Wednesday, February 29th, 2012
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8:15 pm - Blank form for 1911 census?
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Sunday, February 19th, 2012
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4:58 pm - Is a Letter Worth it?
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Monday, January 23rd, 2012
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12:46 am
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schexyschteve
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Hello! I'm new here, and a little confused about some aspects of genealogy. I started researching my family tree within the last month. I started by going off of what I knew already, and Facebook/general Googling helped (obituaries and such). This weekend, I talked to my parents to help me fill in as much as they knew (with help from death certs and papers saved throughout the years).
( A few questions from a newbie )
Sorry if these questions are confusing!
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(7 comments | comment on this)
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Sunday, January 22nd, 2012
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6:00 pm - Oakland Daily Evening Tribune, 1875
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rainbow
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Does anyone have access to a site that has transcriptions or scans of The Oakland (California) Daily Evening Tribune from 1875?
It published a note about the "funeral yesterday" of Teresa Brennan on 30 Mar 1875 (she died 26 Mar 1875 and was buried Mon, March 29, 1875 at St. Mary's Catholic Cemetery in Oakland, California).
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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Wednesday, January 18th, 2012
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10:09 pm - Online Family Trees
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quinns_crossing
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Yesterday I was in the library looking at the 2001 version of "Genealogy for Dummies" and they had a section on privacy. They said it could be very harmful to have certain information available online. Private detectives, con artists and other potentially troublesome people can use search engines to look for living family members.
I went back to my Wikitree and changed all of the living relatives to "Unlisted" and several deceased to "Private." Right now I use it mainly for my own information, but I don't want to put my family in harm's way. On the Wikitree site, the default setting is automatically "Unlisted" for kids under 13. I think the default should be under 18, not 13. The wrong information in the wrong hands could even be dangerous: For example, a disgruntled former spouse might hire one of those detectives to track down an ex who wants to be left alone.
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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Tuesday, January 17th, 2012
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8:19 pm - Legitimate Independent Sites/Genealogists?
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author_by_night
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I've had trouble finding information on certain ancestors, and so I decided to give up on familysearch/ellisisland/ancestry and turn to more specific websites and people. However, I've had trouble figuring out how to know if they're trustworthy.
One thing I encountered was that these organizations charged by the hour. Is that typical for genealogists? I guess I'm just uncomfortable that, especially when it's online. And in one case, not only did the person charge by the hour, but there was a starting fee of $75.00 just to get basic information on one person. Something about that didn't seem right to me. Is that the norm?
Along a similar vein, I was about to sign up for genealogy.com and archives.com when I realized they take your credit card number before you've completed your free trial. That just sounds like a scam waiting to happen. Again, is that normal or was I right in not signing up?
I really want to find out more about these people, and the services I already use (and, in the case of ancestry.com, pay for), aren't working, so I'd like to go further. But I want to literally get my money's worth - and I certainly don't want to be scammed. So how do I avoid it? And what are normal practices?
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(7 comments | comment on this)
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Monday, January 16th, 2012
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9:52 am - Don't Hesitate!
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quinns_crossing
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I'm really glad I got started on my research when I did. The most helpful website, which had not been updated in almost ten years, has been taken over by another family. The site contained some inaccuracies, but I had enough supplemental information to do what I wanted to do. Basically, I think he lost interest in researching that branch of the family and has now moved on to something else.
( More about my experience )
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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Thursday, January 12th, 2012
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7:34 am - Overdue burial?
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author_by_night
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So I'm a little confused. I was looking at a death record for a sibling of an ancestor, and I realized that her death date took place seventeen years after her burial date. All I can think of is that perhaps the grave was moved? After all, they did live in two different places, and it seems that everyone was eventually buried in the cemetery of the second location - but she may have been left behind. (It also says she died there, which may have been an assumption.) Or was it just a transcription error?
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(9 comments | comment on this)
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Sunday, January 8th, 2012
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10:22 am - Top Five Things to Keep in Mind When Researching Family History
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Tuesday, December 20th, 2011
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2:57 pm - Brick Wall
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snowwand
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I have hit a huge brick wall trying to research a family for work.
Ann M. (CASSIN) YOUNG is proving to be quite a difficult woman to track down. Her stats are as follows:
Born: Ann M. CASSIN
Year: About 1869
Location: Maryland
Married: 12 Apr 1893 in Washington, D.C. to Casanove Howle Young (Sometimes also listed as Peter Casanove Howle Young) <1867-1910>
Children: Cassin Young (1894-1942)
Edward Young (1897-1987)
Peter Young (1901-1974)
I have found her in the 1900, 1910, and 1930 census records and the DC marriage records so far but nothing else. Any help would be awesome!
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(7 comments | comment on this)
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Sunday, December 11th, 2011
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3:44 pm - Canadian Records (Specifically Ontario?)
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author_by_night
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So I have been trying to get records for Canadian family (in Ontario) on ancestry.ca and familysearch.org, to absolutely no avail. I just realized that there seem to be a few problems.
- For some reason, there seem to be more records from Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia than Ontario.
- Records, in Ontario at least, seem to be limited to specific years - there are no census records after 1911, and I don't think there's birth records after 1913.
Moreover, even where the dates should still be workable, it's near impossible to find anything on anyone. I have records of when my family came, but while I have a few BMD certificates, it doesn't cover more than a few people on a very large "branch" of the tree, and I only have one census record.
Am I just not looking in the right places, or is there not that much available? I would really like to find more than I have. I have thought about just going to the historical society - would you recommend that?
Sorry if this comes across as annoyed... I've just about had it with trying to prove people I know existed did in fact exist! :P (And more importantly, learn a bit about them. Although I did learn an occupation, which is huge because it clues me into that person's life.)
ETA: I just remembered that Ontario's a pretty big province... if it helps, I'm looking at southern Ontario. If you're interested in specifics, I can PM you.
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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Wednesday, November 30th, 2011
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5:06 pm - Specific ancestry.com question
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author_by_night
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Is there a way to save a tree to file and send it to someone, or to transfer things to familysearch.org or another free site? I ask for two reasons.
1. I've been doing family research for a friend, and I'd like to email her tree to her, especially as she'd like proof that she is related to a famous person. (I know that's always flimsy, but in this case it looks more and more credible as I research, and she'd like actual proof if she is because of the very fact that claiming to have famous ancestry is perceived as flimsy and unlikely.
2. I've emailed my own family research links to certain relatives, but they are not exactly... computer savvy.
Anyone have any tips? ancestry.com does have the option for a GEDCOM file, but it seems like it's only one way (i.e. to the website). It says you can pay to have your tree in a special book, but it's kind of expensive.
T
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(5 comments | comment on this)
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Saturday, November 26th, 2011
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9:36 am - Historical Assumptions and Genealogy
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author_by_night
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I was just curious as to whether or not anyone else has found themselves noticing that they had assumptions about the way people lived "back then" (whether 1932 or 1732), only to question that after doing research?
One thing I had always assumed is that people used to marry young and die young, but I've found that as early as the 1700s, people were marrying at ages not that atypical now - still young, in their early twenties, but I know of a lot of people who married straight out of high school or college born within the past few decades. (So, say, 1970s onwards.) There was one person on my tree who I believe had to have been fifteen or sixteen, but she was an exception.
The other thing I've noticed is that the common stereotype is marriage between cousins... there's actually not a lot of evidence of that so far. There is one person in the 1600s who seems to have married a cousin, but I can't quite figure out if her husband is the same person as her cousin with the same name and birth date.
Anyone else notice that?
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(18 comments | comment on this)
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Thursday, November 17th, 2011
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6:38 pm - "Why do we care about our ancestors?"
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Tuesday, November 15th, 2011
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10:58 pm
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lilacmermaid
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My family is organizing a family reunion for next summer, for all the descendents of my great-grandparents. (There are a lot of us!) One of my grandfather's brothers, though, has always been a bit of a mystery, so I wanted to see if I could find out anything about him, and whether he had any children we could get in touch with.
On Ancestry, I managed to find some information about his death, as well as two marriage certificates, but that's all, and I don't know where to look for his children/grandchildren, if he has any. I thought of looking for an obituary, but he died in 1976, so it probably wouldn't be online. And I'm not even sure where to start, because he lived in several different states.
Any ideas?
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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Tuesday, October 25th, 2011
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3:33 pm - Close, but not quite
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siuil_sydan
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Hi everyone,
What do you do if you find a record that is SO close to what you're looking for, but not quite a 100% match with what you already have?
I've recently made some headway into finding my grandmother's biological father and his family, and I hit a dead end with his grandfather, my greatx3-grandfather. He immigrated from Germany, and the only source of his parents' names are on his US death record.
Then yesterday I found a pedigree line with very similar names, and I'm hesitant if I should add them to my tree, albeit with a big "MAYBE" note attached.
( more personal details here )
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(13 comments | comment on this)
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Monday, October 17th, 2011
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1:24 pm - Interesting things you find
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snowwand
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My parents were going through some of the stuff they took out of my grandmother's home about 10 years ago when she died and found what looks to be a gravestone marker for her uncle. There are no markings to indicate who made the marker or what cemetery it came from, but at least I have his exact death date? :)
Anyone else find anything weird like that?
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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Saturday, October 8th, 2011
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6:41 pm - More an ancestry.com question...
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author_by_night
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So I have a relative who, after marriage, kept her last name. However, when I searched records for her, it kept giving me her husband's last name.
Is there any way to emphasize that she is NOT Mrs. Jane Doe, but rather, Ms. (Last Name)? She's very proud of having kept it and I don't like that she's automatically given her husband's surname, because it's not hers.
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(8 comments | comment on this)
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