Category Archives: Advice & How-To

This book first belonged to my grandfather, Harold Miller.  It was then passed on to his younger sister, Mildred.  When she got it, she covered it with paper to make a book cover.  The Evangelical Catechism was used for religious instruction, so I gather that they used it either in a Sunday School setting or for confirmation.

Sometimes you run across a situation where a digital image of a document is very dark.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  But when you want to print it, that darkness uses a lot of ink or toner.  It coats the paper with so much ink/toner that it’s wasteful and with ink, it can sometimes warp the paper.  Plus, if you want to use the image for publication, it’s nice to have a cleaner version.  Following are instructions on how to make your dark images lighter.

I’ve been to the Connecticut State Library website a few times before.  But apparently I missed the big-ticket item of the Connecticut Archives.  I had previously viewed the State Archive Finding Aids and other genealogy-related pages, but somehow missed the page with all the online indexes to the Connecticut Archives.

Most people find a book related to their family or a location their family lived, and immediately look for an index.  If the book has an index, they look for their surname(s), refer to the page(s), make copies (or record the information), and move on.  I myself am guilty of this, especially when time is limited, even though I know indexes are not always complete.

This week’s challenge: Play with Google Maps. This is a helpful tool for determining the locations of addresses in your family history. Where your ancestral homestead once stood may now be a warehouse, a parking lot or a field. Perhaps the house is still there. When you input addresses in Google Maps, don’t forget to use the Satellite View and Street View options for perspectives that put you were right there where your ancestors once stood. If you’ve used this tool before, take sometime and play with it again. Push […]

About a year ago, I purchased a mobile scanner (Pentax DSmobile 600 Scanner).  It was prompted by a trip I took in December 2009.  It’s a great tool to use when on the go and certainly saves me from having to photocopy papers.  You can read more at my previous post, Another New Gadget – Mobile Scanner.

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately on my Oakland County, Michigan clan.  And I’ve been studying up on land records, so I thought I’d put my learnings to the test.

While I was at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Illinois, I requested the book With The Colors From Aurora 1917, 1918, 1919, as I knew there was a reference to a Ferdinand Henry Schwartz (obtained from an index).  I quickly found the reference, but all it said was:  “Pvt. U.S. Army.” Since there are a handful of Henry Schwartzes in Aurora during that time period, I wasn’t for sure if this was my great-granduncle or not, even though I know his middle name is Ferdinand (likely named after […]