Online Research

World War I Research: Training Millions of Soldiers

With the 100th anniversary of America’s entry into The Great War (aka World War I) fast approaching, I have begun doing some research on events leading up to the war, training of troops, and the service of blood and shirt-tail relatives. On April 6, 1917, “two days after the U.S. Senate voted 82 to 6

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Do You Know About FamilyTreeNow.com?

Yesterday (12 Jan 2017), Judy Russell blogged about FamilyTreeNow.com in her blog, The Legal Genealogist. She strongly suggested that you “opt out” of allowing this public information aggregator website to present your personal information. I follow her blog, but I only caught up with “Suggestion: opt out now” today. On its home page, this website

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Who Was that Little Girl Buried Next to MJ’s Grandmother

In discussing our family history, my wife, Mary Jane (MJ for short), has mentioned many times that her paternal grandmother was named Mary Margaret Caroline Heinselman Butcher Van Court. She was somewhat unusual for having two middle names and three family names. Heinselman was her maiden name, and Butcher was the name she assumed when

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Surnames in Finland

Today, I accessed the wiki page on FamilySearch.org labeled “Finland Surnames.” It was quite helpful as it very clearly explained the surname practices in Western Finland versus those in Eastern Finland. Eastern and western Finland have different naming traditions. Both naming customs date back to the earliest written sources. There was frequent overlap of these practices

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Online Repository Tracks Nearly 10 Years of Genealogy News & Developments

I am constantly amazed by how much news has come from genealogical and family history organizations and companies over the years. One way to track developments is to access the online repository of the Family History Newsletter — Genealogy News, compiled by by Sylvia and Jack Sonneborn. The newsletters are available for viewing on Rootsweb, beginning with

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My First Experience with Interment.net

I was working just now with a tree I had started in MyHeritage.com and a record match came up for the burial of my great uncle Frank A. Betts, b 1866-d 1929, on Interment.net. The match was for his burial in Park Lawn Cemetery, just outside of Jamestown in Mercer County, Pennsylvania. I have visited

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MyHeritage Yields Finnish Researchers Interested in My Ancestors

I just gave myself a Christmas present of a premium membership to MyHeritage.com. By poking around in the free version, I gathered the strong impression that this genealogical database provider has a bigger presence in Europe than Ancestry.com. I entered some very limited information about my Huuskonen (original spelling) ancestors on an online tree I created

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Address Lookup for Relative Was Instructive

When we sent out our 2016 annual holiday letter a few days ago, we expected that we might get a few “not deliverable” returns. Sure enough, today we did get one envelope back. Ironically, we had received a Christmas card from this family but in our haste to hold down clutter, we threw away the envelope

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Search Cleveland Catholic Cemeteries with iPhone App

Yesterday (16 Dec 2016),  the Catholic Cemeteries Association, Diocese of Cleveland, introduced a FREE iPhone App for searching nearly 700,000 burials dating back to the mid-1800s in Catholic cemeteries throughout Northeast Ohio. Some other features: Save loved ones and cemetery info to your profile for easy access later. Use GPS navigation to your loved one’s

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Wow! Nine Hints for 7GGF Johann Valentine Landt from Germany

When I opened my Huskonen-Dingman-Van Court-Scheppelmann Family Tree on Ancestry.com this afternoon, I saw that 99+ ancestors and collateral relatives had “hints.” I clicked on the first name on the list: Johann Valentin Landt from Germany who is my 6th great grandfather. Here is how I am descended from Johann on my tree: Johann Valentine

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