Category Archives: Advice & How-To

Continuing on from My Adventure With Meyers Gazetteer, I was trying to take the information that I learned and develop some sort of research plan.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get very far as I ran into a stumbling block.

Back in February, I spent quite a bit of time at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City.  I hadn’t planned on working on my Miller/Wach/Wietzke clan, but after discussing German research with some friends over dinner, I shifted gears.  Later that night, I headed over to the reference desk to talk to an expert and after about 15 minutes and a pile of books, he had figured out where my second great-grandmother, Hulda Wach, came from. Mind you, I had some clues.  I had a town name from […]

Crista Cowan had an interesting post on the Ancestry.com blog yesterday, entitled Family History All Done?  What’s Your Number?  This gist of the post is that we are never really done with our family tree.  If you were to go back ten generations on both your maternal and paternal lines, you would have 1,023 people, which would bring you back to your 7th great-grandparents…and that’s just your direct-line ancestors!

The Scenario Members of the Miserentino family are known to be at 2909 W. Lexington, Chicago, in 1930 and 1951, meaning they’re bound to be enumerated there in the 1940 census.

(This post was updated on 22 January 2013.  Updates are in blue.  Also note that the screenshots in this post vary slightly from the current version of the app.) You may be aware that Ancestry.com developed a mobile app.  The Ancestry app (Android, iOS; free) is essentially a bridge to your online Ancestry family trees (public, private, and those share with you).  It’s a good app, and mimics the look and feel of your online tree.  You can view your tree, add to it, and edit information.

If you have a mobile device and you use Evernote for any aspect of your genealogy research (or writing), you should also be using the Evernote app (Android, iOS; free).  The app syncs with your online notebooks, allowing you to have access to all that information wherever you are. Even if you are offline, you can access the information that was stored since your last sync.  You can also make changes and add new notes while offline and it will all sync up next time you’re connected to the internet.

Reading genealogy blogs is important to me.  I find all sorts of useful information, such as genealogy news, research tips, useful resources, and interesting family stories.

I just LOVE the Families app (Android, iOS; $15).  It’s basically a mobile app for Legacy Family Tree (update: both versions 7 and 8), which is the genealogy software that I use.  The interface is very similar to Legacy so there’s not a big learning curve.  You do need to download Families Sync (free) and install it on your computer in order to transfer the files between your computer and device.