Of course when we’re researching our ancestors, our initial goal is to find fact about them and their life. Unfortunately, many beginning genealogists stop with those facts. They write them down into their family tree or family group records and file them away, never learning much about their ancestor except their vital statistics. There is so much underlying information in any facts we find however, we just need to understand how to analyze the data so that it unveils the …
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A collection of centuries old papers filed away in the basement of a Catholic convent in St. Augustine, Florida have turned out to be America’s oldest written historical and genealogical documents. The documents date from 1594 till the mid-18th century, and are actually vital records (birth, death, and marriage records) and baptismal records of residents of St. Augustine. They are written in Spanish, and are now being digitized by a team from the University of South Florida headed by Michael …
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Yaniv Erlich is a computational biologist, but he is also the world’s most renowned “genome hacker.” He has conducted many experiments over the years to prove that the identities of those who participate in genetic research can be uncovered by cross-referencing the DNA data with that available in the public domain. He has now constructed the world’s largest family tree containing information on thirteen million individuals. Scientists will use the data to analyze how genetic traits such as facial features …
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For those of you who have decided that building your own website may be the way to go, you’ll first want to know how a website works. It’s not as difficult to understand as you may think, and a basic knowledge of what a website is and how it’s presented on the internet will help you to get the most out of your personal site. One good thing about modern technology is that it continues to make it increasingly easier …
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The three main ways that you’ll find data represented on the internet are through images, indexes and transcriptions. Images are usually scanned original documents, a transcription will hold the full textual content of the document in a file, while an index will contain a list of names with or without additional details regarding its members, and may direct you to where the original document is held. An online index would ideally lead you to a full transcription of the original …
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One of the most important compiled sources for genealogists is surname and pedigree compilations. There are many people who have posted their pedigree online, and there are a number of websites to which genealogists can submit details of the surnames that they’re interested in. This enables other researchers who are following a similar vein of research to get in touch with genealogists who might have information that they are looking for, or whom may be looking for info that they …
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The configuration of your web browser could cause potential problems during your genealogical search, especially on commercial sites. It is not possible for me to cover every possible situation you may encounter in this Blog post, but I can point out some of the most common problems a browser’s settings may cause, especially for beginners. If you don’t know what a browser is, it is simply the program you use to surf the net, i.e. Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape …
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If you have seen somebody wandering around a graveyard and pointing a strange looking object at the tombstones, you have probably spotted a genealogist with a wand scanner. Wand scanners are becoming increasingly popular amongst genealogists. Not only are they portable and can be easily stored, but they are great for taking a quick scan of an image, document, or as the person alluded to above, headstone inscriptions. They are a bit of an investment, averaging in price around $100, …
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