Genealeverage
The word leverage can be used in many ways. It means one thing in finance, another in social relationships. The original sense comes from engineering. It is simply the way in which a force can be made...
View ArticleWriting the Fine Print
Every genealogist knows, or should know, that keeping track of sources is a must. Each fact should have a source. There is something hidden in that last statement. It assumes we have a clear idea of...
View ArticleThe Shoebox in No-Man’s-Land
There is a facet of research that nags at me every so often. The other day was one of those days. Sometimes when we find something, we know exactly what it means. We can almost immediately claim that...
View ArticleTall Tales
When I started being interested in my family history one of the things my aunt taught me was that sometimes family stories turn out to be wrong. It was an easy lesson for her to teach. The family story...
View ArticleDuckuments
Duckument* (n) – papers that reveal a terrible error. Origin- derived from the Cold War civil defense phrase “duck and cover” combined with the word document. Genealogists encountering a duckument are...
View ArticleClues to Clues
Do you ever read compiled genealogies? Your answer is probably “yes” and if it isn’t, it probably should be. Part of doing research is understanding what has already been done. Once you know what has...
View ArticleA Word from their Sponsors
Do you have any ancestors that seem to be the end of the line? Forebears that resist every effort to discover enough to go back any further? Try working on someone else. No, I don’t mean give up. I...
View ArticleContent or Context?
I remember hearing a story years ago of a man who sat in an archive, in Spain or perhaps Portugal, sniffing documents. He was trying to detect the subtle, lingering sent of vinegar. Why? Long ago...
View ArticleCall me Ishmael part 2
(continued from Call me Ishmael) Ethnicity Names almost automatically preserve information about ethnicity. A given name might be used in many countries but its precise form might be unique to an...
View ArticleWhat’s the Antimatter
The other night my daughter borrowed the movie Angels & Demons and wanted to watch it with me. Part of the plot hinges on the theft of a container of antimatter from CERN, the particle physics...
View ArticleHinting at the Facts
A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting. —Henry David Thoreau Reading old...
View ArticleSketching Sketchy Sources
Ever wish you could just glance at a record and get an overview of what it means? Or for that matter, what about looking at several documents and see how they might fit together? Or clash? Or see that...
View ArticleThinking about the Thingamabobs
The story of one part of the life of an ancestor of mine comes from his son’s obituary. It is the brief but interesting story of a long pioneering journey. It is also clearly wrong. Not so wrong as to...
View ArticleSupporting Statements
I was tempted to title this post something like “Feeling Geeky” but that didn’t seem to be specific enough. There are so many things in genealogy that one could write about when feeling geeky. This is...
View ArticleWhat Goes Around Comes Around
Do you know where your data originated? Do undocumented writings support what you have found elsewhere or has been handed down in your family? Should you wonder where that data originated? Could it, in...
View ArticleLeave No Document Unturned
The other day a client whose Swedish ancestry I’ve been investigating asked me to take on a project researching in Norwegian records. Norwegian research isn’t something I’d done before except for a...
View ArticleResearching FANs
Summer is, perhaps, the right time to think about fans—except that the kind of fans that I’ve been thinking about aren’t for keeping cool and they don’t cheer at the ballpark. I don’t even mean...
View ArticleDoing Odd Jobs
I sometimes imagine certain things that can only be called genealogists’ blessings. This week one of them has turned up over and over. It would go something like this- May all your ancestors have had...
View ArticlePainting Your Ancestors into a Corner
Some ancestors make life easy on us. They can be found in record after record. Their names are clearly written and spelled in a way that makes sense. They seem always to be recorded with enough extra...
View ArticleWhile the Shutter is Closed
Sometimes one hears that the census is like getting a snapshot of a family taken every ten years. The time between “exposures” does change from place to place but many countries have settled into the...
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