A tweet from the National Library of Scotland this morning reminded me that I had intended to blog about the facility offered by the National Library of Scotland, which allows you to place two maps side by side, for any place in the UK. Thus you can compare modern and Victorian maps for places that […]
I blogged a few posts ago about red herring hints on Ancestry, and discussed a specific case where the algorithm has been suggesting a wrong marriage and other facts for quite a time. If you remember, or haven’t read that post, the case involved a marriage between a farm labourer, John Pidsley, and his wife […]
When you first start studying your family tree, it is tempting to stick with the spellings of names that you are used to. In my own case, I stuck to Clarke with an “e” whenever I looked for my Clarkes, and Dickins with an “i” because frankly I got bored with looking at so many […]
One of the joys of using a genealogy website designed to help you make your family tree, is that most of them will provide hints as you enter information. It’s becoming more and more useful, as more people start researching their family tree and add information, the reliability of the information will, in theory, become […]
There are a growing number of genealogy groups on Facebook today. Whether you need help with a particular location, a particular type of genealogy or DNA, there’s a group for you. Many of these groups are free, and in many of them the members will put in considerable time and effort to help another member […]
There are many companies now offering DNA tests to the public. Some companies, like Ancestry, have been revising their ethnicity estimates in the light of the new data they have acquired by performing so many tests. Thus my own estimate, which originally showed I was about half Irish, has now been reduced down to 36% […]
I had no idea until I read a leaflet from the Friends House Library today that there was a discrepancy in dates between Scotland and England. Their helpful PDF leaflet on Quaker dates also has a section on the change from the Julian calendar, where the first day of the year was March 25 and […]
How you keep your records becomes more important, the longer you study your family history and the more records you have. Making your system too complex soon becomes overwhelming. It begins to become too much of a chore and starts to make the likelihood of you bothering to record the sources of your information less […]
I am indebted to the wonderful Lost Cousins newsletter for a link to an article on the Genetic Genealogist website, which explains that it may be possible in the future to test artifacts such as licked envelopes and stamps, in order to test our ancestors’ DNA. As reported in this article on testing artifacts for […]
I’ve been away for some months. Two family health crises and two bereavements later, I’m back. Apologies for the gap in transmission! I think one of the saddest jobs of a family historian is to add a death date for a family member or partner, and I’ve had to do that twice in five months. […]