In confirming my great-great grandmother’s paternity, I found myself digging deeper into her father’s family. It’s time to meet the Wallace family of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Emma’s father was Francis Wallace. It seems more and more likely that he didn’t marry Emma’s mother, Eliza (Elizabeth) Murphy. Francis was the son of James Wallace and Rebecca Elizabeth Smith. He is found… Read More
It’s time to decide what my genealogy goals are in the new year. This is more difficult than previous years, because I had the same goal from year to year. Ever since I broke through my nearest brick wall, I spent 2020 a little “scattered,” for lack of a better term. However, I did make excellent progress with my maternal… Read More
Censuses are the first records most people look at when getting started with family history, and with good reason. Censuses are widely available records that give us a snapshot of an individual, couple, or family every ten years or so. The types and frequency of censuses vary by country, state, and province. The most popular censuses are the U.S. Federal… Read More
I’m always curious about how my fellow genealogists organize their research. I admit it, I’m an old-fashioned sort of gal. I prefer to write letters on stationery and put them in the mail, to use a planner for my scheduling, a notebook for my list-making, and to read paperback and hardcover books instead of ebooks. Though I also use my… Read More
I work with someone who asks me a LOT of questions about genealogy – how do I figure out this or that, how do I know how closely DNA matches are connected, and where do I find answers to particular questions? So I thought it might be a good time for a good old-fashioned “how to” post on the first… Read More
Of course, all this research has involved digging deep into Italian records, using a combination of the FamilySearch catalog to find non-indexed records and the Antenati website, for those records to which FamilySearch currently restricts access.
Here’s a small reminder about why genealogists always strongly recommend you look for an original record or image of the original, instead of relying on transcriptions. Transcriptions can be handy, but incomplete, such as this one for the birth of one of my distant uncles…