October 25, 2024 Land records are often underutilized by genealogists. We tend to think of them as dry legal documents that don’t contain much useful genealogical information. I used to feel that way myself, but some major brick wall breakthroughs based on land records have changed my mind. Land was a major reason that …
Civil Registration Substitutes
October 18, 2024 As I discussed last week, governmental vital records such as birth, marriage and death are important to building a family tree. Unfortunately, they’re often unavailable. In the United States these records have only been kept for the last century or so. Fortunately, for earlier ancestors, there are other records that can substitute …
Vital Records – Trickier to Obtain than you Thought
October 11, 2024 Vital records – birth, marriage and death information – are the roots of any family tree. Beginning genealogists often assume that finding these records will be as simple as ordering certificates from a state or county health department. For some ancestors, ordering those kinds of records can be that simple. For …