Genealogy Tip of the Day

Remember that not every relative or genealogist who might be able to help you is on Facebook or even the Internet. If the only people you in...

Interacting with other online genealogists is great, but face to face interaction can be good as well. Consider joining and becoming involve...

Don't assume that your ancestor always was a member of the same denomination or that they were the same denomination as their parents. P...

Have you considered writing your own biography? It would be deeply ironic to have all that genealogy information on all those dead people wi...

Users, viewers, and fans of "Genealogy Tip of the Day" can email me if they see inappropriate postings to our Facebook page. Solic...

Many soldiers recorded a copy of their discharge papers in the county in which they were living when they enlisted or where they lived right...

Be careful using relationships from obituaries as your sole source of information for your database. Modern obituaries especially may: not m...

Are you looking in other records besides census records for occupational clues on your ancestor? Estate inventories are good places to get a...

Are there any living relatives you haven't talked to yet with your family history questions? Remember that cousins, near and distant, ma...

Have you tried to determine if the state archives where your ancestor lived might hold records that could be helpful in your search? Remembe...

Sometimes all of us need to admit that we've reached the end of our research on a particular person or a particular lineage. Maybe recor...

When looking for that relative's obituary, look in more than one location. Try where they were living where they died, where they were b...

[the earlier version of this that went out was a "draft" that accidentally went live instead of this version] Remember that the mo...

This post has been deleted in favor of the corrected one here .

If you are looking for a specific piece of information--ask yourself "where could that be written?" Don't focus initially on l...

There are several places where you could locate signatures of your ancestor. Two good places are packets of estate papers (for receipts, etc...

There's several counties in Kentucky where different individuals have transcribed the marriage records. Different people read things dif...

Have you considered the possibility that the indexer missed something when creating the index? It might be that the only way to be certain t...

Don't forget on 1840 census enumerations to look at both the left hand page and the right hand page. The left hand page includes slave n...

Remember that what "killed" your ancestor might not be what actually "killed" him. Look for the secondary cause of death...

Does your ancestor have a series of deeds where he sells land over time? Have you looked closely at the place where the widow releases her d...

Find your source for each fact on your ancestor, determine: do you have a source? is the fact an "assumption?" For each source: is...

Remember that virtually every record can be searched manually, particularly census and other online records. Indexes aren't perfect and ...

The 1900 census for a relative indicated his mother was born in Ohio. This was completely incorrect. What I learned later was that the mothe...

Do you have the right place for the right time in your genealogy database? An online tree for a relative indicates one of their ancestors wa...

A patronym is a last name derived from the first name of the father. For instance, Anders Swanson has sons with the last name of Anderson. A...

This has been discussed on the Fan Page on face book. An electronic copy of Evidence Explained is available here for $24.95.

A married woman whose legal rights have been combined into those with her husband, with the husband assuming control of those rights.

A marriage bann is an announcement of an upcoming marriage. Usually made for three consecutive weeks in church, banns may also be publicly p...

In some locations in some time periods, it was not unusual for couples to reuse names of deceased children. While today the practice would b...

It's possible that your ancestor did not even really know how old she was. A deposition in a Civil War pension file I'm using for an...

While there are aspects of genealogical research that are the same across time periods, certain things are different. Different time periods...

Discuss your genealogical problem with someone else with an interest in genealogy. They might have a different idea, see a hole in your rese...

If you don't know when someone died, have you gone through every document on them in order to determine the last date they were listed a...

When someone gives you advice, make certain it is applicable to where you are actually researching and the time period in which you need. Re...