Bixby Genealogy Services

Bixby Genealogy Services Want to learn genealogy? I can teach you how to go about it online (and off). Want someone else to do the research? I can do that, too!

09/07/2022

I stopped adding new material to this page due to a Iack of engagement. I figure I'll ask one more time before I delete it completely -- anyone willing to pay for some sessions to learn how to research your family tree?

01/16/2014

Online Genealogy Tip #15 - Another type of scanned database on familysearch.org that I'm finding worth looking through are land records. Finding the land transactions that your ancestor (or even their siblings) engaged in can provide genealogical clues, such as:
- the professions of the involved parties were often mentioned, so knowing that one "John Perkins" was a carpenter, and another a cordwainer, helps keep them straight.
- transactions involving land inherited from a parent, that either name the parent, or might be between siblings who inherited the land equally - especially useful when sisters are married by that time, and you have no other way to link your "Sarah (Perkins) Brown" to a specific Perkins family any other way;
- wives often had to agree to a sale of land by their husband, so are often named in the deed, and if the land had been inherited by her, it might even name her father.
- transactions in which father sells land to his sons (for a good price) rather than waiting to let them inherit;
- transactions where you can identify that the seller has moved away from the land he's selling (or is about to) might identify the new home, and could help you identify the timeframe when the move happened.

Any other tips from land records that I missed?

09/01/2013

Online Genealogy Tip #14: More and more, scanned images of probate files are coming online, particularly at familysearch.org. They might not be indexed electronically, but most contain an index within them. Finding a will that mentions children might be the only way to identify a parent for an ancestor whose birth was not recorded. But be aware that a lot of people did not leave wills, and will be referred to as "intestate".

12/09/2011

Online Genealogy Tip #13: Periodically check for new databases/sources online for ancestors you might have previously researched, especially your brick walls. This includes different search capabilities for data you've seen, like the ability to search on parents' names, to help you track down siblings.

05/25/2011

Online Genealogy Tip #12: Searching indexed newspaper archives for your families can be a great source of information that you would not otherwise find online. Obituaries are especially good at helping to track descendants who moved away from the family home, especially daughters whose marriage(s) and residence(s) you might otherwise not be able to track.

04/12/2011

To my current knowledge, six of my ancestors were passengers on the Mayflower. Two were accused and convicted and one killed in the Salem Witch Trials. Who have you found in your searches, and how important is that to you?

02/13/2011

Online Genealogy Tip #11: Cyndi's List is a website that acts as a directory for other genealogy websites, divided into lots of different categories, allowing you to more easily locate a resource that might specifically cover a geographic area, or a specific family, or just about anything you can imagine.

02/06/2011

Online Genealogy Tip #10: For me, the foremost feature of Ancestry.com is the digitized and indexed censuses, and the easy to use viewers, not just for the U.S., but also Canada and the U.K. Especially useful is the ability to suggest corrections for names in the index, when the indexer had a hard time reading them. These corrections tie into the family tree building software (tip #8), helping other researchers.

01/30/2011

Online Genealogy tip #9: Focus on researching entire families, not just your individual ancestors. For example, if you've found your great grandfather in the 1900 census with a mother but no father, and he was born in 1887, you won't find him in the 1880 census. But if he had older siblings born before 1880, they might be key to finding the same family in the 1880 census, to identify their father.

01/20/2011

Online Genealogy tip #8: Ancestry.com advertises that you can build a family tree online and they'll provide you with hints along the way. This makes the tree building easy - but it makes it very easy to mistakenly add the wrong data to your tree. I personally recommend not using the tree to do your research, but instead do your research thoroughly and then use the tree to publish results.

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