Over the last few years I have found a new love: county record offices. County records are an underutilized tool for English genealogical research, possibly because of the cost of the records or lack of knowledge on how to find these offline records.
Genealogical research in England can be fairly straightforward, except for when it is not. Many researchers use census records, church records, probate …
read moreSeveral websites such as www.ancestry.com, www.familysearch.org, and www.fold3.com have Revolutionary War index cards which are digitally indexed and easy to find. Some of these cards have lots of great information, such as the one for Deliverance Wilson. It lists the captain’s name, what town the captain was from, dates of service, and a description of what the company did in the 16 days referenced on the muster and pay roll.
read moreSometimes when a record set or image is hard to read on one genealogy website, I look for it on a different website hoping their version is better. So when I suspected a pension file was incomplete on Fold3, I examined the same file on Ancestry and was surprised at how different the images were.
read moreWhen 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.
read moreIn 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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Karen Kowallis, MEd, AG® is an Accredited Genealogist® with a passion for learning, teaching, and researching.