Ancestral Discovery

A guide to non-digital educational resources.

In the genealogy world, we use the term “brick wall” when we seem to go as far as we can in finding a particular ancestor or branch. I hope this isn’t too controversial a statement, but most of the brick walls we hit are ones that we inadvertently create.

FamilySearch has many features, but this column will only deal with the database, since it’s the most popular one.

The major genealogy databases are Ancestry, FamilySearch, MyHeritage and FindMyPast. All have international record sets and are overlapping, but all have some unique collections.

An important part of finding your ancestors (and not someone else’s with the same name) is developing your genealogical skills.

I want to share some other genealogical databases that are more general.

Here, we’re going to look at the value of newspapers. This insightful record set can give us details of our ancestors not found elsewhere.

When doing family research, first — or given — names can also be perplexing.

For Jewish genealogists, names are one of the most challenging aspects of finding our ancestors.

About creating online family trees: genealogy software can be a tremendous help in keeping your work organized.

Previously, I talked about organizing your genealogical documents, photos, stories and other materials and passing them on to future generations. One of the most recognizable results of all that work is the family tree.

As I watched the horrific Marshall Fire spread just five miles from me, I couldn’t help but think not only of the human suffering, but also those irreplaceable pieces of family history gone in moments.