May 20, 2025 Some time ago, I wrote about mistakes genealogists make when they’re building online family trees. Lately, I’ve been checking out some online trees, and my inner schoolteacher is still astounded at the types of errors that people make. I thought I’d rerun part of that earlier column. The trees make me …
Looking for BMDs
June 13, 2025 BMDs, short for births, marriages and deaths, are the building blocks of all genealogical research. They’re the skeleton upon which all other research rests. That’s why genealogists spend so much time looking for those all-important birth dates, marriage dates and death dates. As a new genealogist, I learned that civil registration records …
Finding Obits
June 6, 2025 As a volunteer researcher, I’ve received lots of requests for obituary look ups over the years. If the requester had a date of death, checking in the local papers for an obit was a simple matter. When I began my volunteering, most of the local historic newspapers were not digitized. They …