4. How I Accidentally Ended Up In the Wrong Cemetery

   A couple of months ago, I was in a cemetery looking for a tombstone of a white person. But I came to realize that I was in a black church cemetery. The person died in 1939, during a time when most churches were segregated. I needed to be at the cemetery for the church that was historically white, but I wasn’t. So how did …

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5. Birth Records from England's General Register Office (GRO)

   Prior to the Registration Act of 1836, the responsibility of maintaining English birth records fell primarily on churches. A method of documenting births to be held in a centralized location, apart from the church, was deemed necessary. With the creation of the Registration Act of 1836, the General Register Office (GRO) in London was established to maintain the birth records in England and Wales, no …

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6. Looking Up Old Links Using the Wayback Machine

   When reading genealogy articles or reports, sometimes I like to look up the references. Occasionally, online links provided in the citation no longer work. But all is not lost! The Wayback Machine stores old versions of many webpages.

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7. Paying to Avoid the Civil War Draft

   While some men willingly joined the Union Army during the Civil War, many only served when the draft compelled them to do so. Some men were able to buy their way out of serving in the Union Army, even when drafted, by paying $300.

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8. Not All Those Who Wander are Lost... But Maybe They are Strays

   In the famous words of J.R.R. Tolkien, “Not all those who wander are lost.”¹ But finding records of our wandering family members can be a challenge.

   The term stray refers to a non-local who shows up in a record. And a stray record is the record that contains that individual. For instance, a burial record that includes a person from a different …

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