Story County Genealogical Society

12/23/2025

Beautiful Swedish Christmas traditions that warm the heart🇸🇪

Glowing candles, handcrafted Dala horses, straw ornaments, and cozy red-and-white details this is Christmas the Swedish way 🇸🇪
Simple, natural, and full of meaning, every decoration tells a story of warmth, family, and light during the darkest winter days

No loud colors. No excess.
Just wood, candles, evergreen branches, and a feeling of pure Nordic coziness (hygge)

This isn’t just decoration it’s a tradition passed down through generations
A reminder that Christmas is about peace, light, and togetherness.

12/23/2025

Check out all 26 days

🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄
In the run-up to Christmas, we're sharing - 26 festive traditions our ancestors might have known, from A to Z!

Today - Y is for yule log. Every Christmas Eve, the men of the house would drag back the largest log they could find in the woods to burn in the hearth, lighting it, if at all possible, with a piece of last year’s log. The idea was to keep it burning throughout Christmas Day and was probably a remnant from the Viking traditions of old, when a piece of wood was burnt in honour of Yggdrasil, the world tree, as a harbinger of good fortune. Goodness knows what the Norse warriors would think of today’s chocolate equivalent.

📸 Getty

12/23/2025

From 1837 onwards, it's possible to find your English and Welsh ancestors' birth, marriage and death records on the General Register Office website - here's how to use it:

https://www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/getting-started/finding-birth-marriage-and-death-records

12/23/2025

Simple Steps for Creating a Timeline:

Sometimes your information for an ancestor may seem a bit tangled, with conflicting dates or places, and even doubts about whether you have the right person.

A genealogy timeline in a spreadsheet (https://www.heritagediscovered.com/blog/7-simple-steps-creating-genealogy-timeline-why-need-one") could be just what you need, as it helps you see information for entire family groups at a time, and that makes it easier to piece together research clues.

Learn more about timelines in Goal A2 in the United States page (https://www.thefhguide.com/project-9-united-statesa4.html ).

12/23/2025

12/23/2025

Dedicated to preserving, sharing and educating about Iowa's unique and diverse heritage. Learn about classes, resources, and events to discover your ancestors.

12/11/2025

November Newsletter https://drive.google.com/file/d/1X0cjnRDEuOzg4_JIDV4wePG-TqBnAgHN/view?usp=drivesdk

12/11/2025

Great news for IGS Members!
Your membership now includes full remote access to NewspaperArchive.com

No separate account required, simply log into the IGS website, click Research Tools & Help, and begin your newspaper research from home or on the go.

Click here to go to the member's login page: https://iowagenealogy.org/members.php

12/11/2025

📣 Exciting News for Iowa history and genealogy researchers! The State Historical Society of Iowa is proud to announce the continuation of our partnership with Ancestry.com (), expanding free public access (with no cost to taxpayers) to millions of newly digitized archival documents. 🤝 Over the next two years, SHSI and Ancestry will work together to digitally image and integrate more than one million additional records from the State Archives into Ancestry’s searchable database. 💻🔍

These newly available collections include:
• Iowa vital records
• State-level military files, including Iowa National Guard enlistments and WWI & WWII casualty files
• Iowa State Prison records, including convict registers, Bertillon cards and mug shots

Together, these materials offer researchers, students, and genealogists unprecedented access to Iowa’s past. The SHSI x Ancestry.com collaboration helps further preserve Iowa’s rich history and make it accessible to people around the world who trace their family stories back to our state. 👏

🔎 How to Access:
1) Iowans can explore these records for free using SHSI’s complimentary institutional Ancestry account at our Research Centers (https://history.iowa.gov/visit/research-centers)
2) Ancestry subscribers can explore digitized files as they processed and released on a rolling basis at www.ancestry.com

💡 Learn more and start exploring!

12/10/2025

Success with U.S. Research before 1850:

As you trace your ancestry in the United States, you've probably noticed that things can get tougher as you go beyond 1850 or so.

This RootsTech video by Julia Anderson (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qL1HIf49UAs) helps you break through the 1850 research with valuable strategies for dealing with less record information, lack of indexes, hard-to-find sources, and more.

See also the Record Information section of Goal A1 (https://www.thefhguide.com/project-9-united-states.html ) in the United States page.

12/10/2025

Today in Ames history: The current Ames Post Office building was dedicated on December 9, 1935. The previous post office building was smaller and located one block south.

To clear space for the present post office, one house was torn down and three were moved, including the homes of Elizabeth Hanegan (moved to 114 6th Street), G.F. Hanegan (moved to 1302 Kellogg), and Mr. and Mrs. Soper (moved to a farm near Kelley).

Postal operations moved to the new post office at the end of the year, after the Christmas rush.

The post office is on the right in this photo of Kellogg Avenue from 1949. Farwell T. Brown Photographic Archive, Ames Public Library.