Migrating Relatives Don’t assume that because only a birth date is on an old family group sheet that the individual never married or had a family. Sometimes, especially during the 1930s and 1940s, family members, often young men, would migrate to distant cities to find work. Often these individuals settled in these cities, married, had families, and perhaps rarely returned to visit relatives left behind. When this happens families tend to lose touch, and, in some cases, resentment may build among those left behind. So when a family history book is compiled, it could be easy for ...

The year was 1894 and the world was still in the midst of the “Long Depression.” In the U.S., following the Panic of 1893, unemployment was estimated at more than 18%. People were desperate for work and in 1894, Jacob S. Coxey led a protest march from Massillon, Ohio to Washington, D.C. Starting out with one hundred men, five hundred arrived in Washington demanding work on public projects. They were denied and the Coxey was arrested for trespassing when he tried to speak. “Coxey’s Army” was one of several groups planning to march on Washington, but the only ...

Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly. ~ Arnold Edinborough

Posted This Week Tennessee State Marriages, 1780-2002 France Historical Postcards Collection, c. 1893-1963 (in French) Free Index Lombardia Region, Italy, Civil Registration Records, 1866-1936 (in Italian) View a list of all new and updated databases Learn more about what’s new at Ancestry.com Search the Ancestry.com Card Catalog

Check out the websites of genealogical and historical societies for the areas in which your ancestors lived. You may find online exhibits or guides that are relevant to your research. And while you’re there, consider joining. You never know what goodies you’ll find in their periodicals and what benefits that may come with membership.

Every so often I read a book that changes the way I think about something. Harvard University President Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War is one of those books. Two of my great-great grandfathers fought in the Civil War. One served for a brief six months, returning home ill with dysentery while the other enlisted in several regiments until a ball went through his right hand causing a permanent disability. My family was one of the lucky ones. On the first page of the preface, Gilpin tallies up the numbers for us. Two percent of the ...

Assumptions get us into all kinds of trouble. For years I searched for an ancestor, Noentjelena Grass, in passenger lists, trying all kinds of variants of her first and last names. Censuses, family tradition, and her date of marriage gave me a consistent immigration time frame, but I still could not find her. I had almost given up. Then I received copies of letters she had written to relatives about ten years after her marriage. Not one clue about her immigration, but there were more subtle revelations. The letters were all signed “Lena.” Not Noentjelena or Noentje (names I ...

Truth in the Family Story In the “Ancestry Weekly Journal” of May 5th , you wrote about hyperinflation in Germany due to the country being hit with billions of dollars in war reparations in the 1920s. My mom had always said her Uncle Hugo and his family went back to Germany after WWI to make a better life. The family story was that Uncle Hugo thought they could live less expensively there. According to my mother, they ended up broke and had to work on the boat to earn passage back to the States. Was this a family fable? Ancestry brought answers. My Grand-uncle Hugo Fischer was ...

The year was 1943 and World War II raged on. In Leningrad , there was finally a break in the siege of that city as the Red Army opened a land passage that would allow food and fuel to the starving and freezing citizens who had been trapped in the city since September of 1941. The siege wouldn’t officially end until January of 1944 (900 days after it began) and by then an estimated 632,000 people had died of disease, starvation, and the extremely cold winters. In March and April of 1941, Jewish people in and around Krakow were rounded up and moved into a ghetto in the Podgorze ...

Contributed by Maynard L. Keller, Jr., Roanoke, Virginia Attached is a beach photo taken around 1910, probably Ocean City, New Jersey. My great-grandmother, Mary Ellen Mitman, is the person at the bottom left. Also pictured are her husband, Ulyssus Koder (top right); sister, Minnie (top center); Minnie’s husband, Linwood Singer (top left); and a family friend (bottom right). Click on an image to enlarge it. Contributed by Bill and Carol My mother was a welder in 1942 building ships for the war. Her name was Mae [Otis] Green and she lived in Napa, California. They called her ...

Working in my yard is one of my favorite things to do–next to chasing ancestors of course. This past Saturday was beautiful and I got the opportunity to go out and do some weeding and planting and just generally have fun in the yard. As I worked relocating plants, filling planters and weeding, my mind wandered and I found myself drawing parallels between my two favorite pastimes. Today I thought I’d share a few that I came up with while I was out playing in the dirt. Get to Know Your Location It took me a while after moving into this house to figure out what plants work best, ...

Remember how Dad’s face would light up when you gave him that special Father’s Day gift you made in school? This year, skip the necktie and get Dad something he’ll treasure for years–a family history book that you created yourself with AncestryPress. June 2 is the last day for guaranteed delivery by Father’s Day with standard shipping so get started on your project today! Plus get a free upgrade to a leather cover* (a $10 value) when you enter this coupon code at checkout: DAD2008. Click here to start your AncestryPress Project. * Coupon expires June 2, ...

346 years of Quebec vital records searchable online for the first time – largest collection Largest collection of French-Canadian records in existence Famous names descended from those listed include Celine Dion, Madonna, William Shatner and John Labatt Original images available (Montreal, QC – April 8 2008) Ancestry.ca, Canada’s leading family history website, today announced the online launch of the fully searchable indexes for the historic Drouin Collection , which contains Quebec records spanning 346 years from 1621 to 1967. Starting with 29 million names for the ...

Hide not your talents, they for use were made. What’s a sundial in the shade? ~ Benjamin Franklin

Posted This Week South Carolina Naturalizations 1783-1850 Indexes to the County Wills of South Carolina Index to Wills of Charleston County, South Carolina, 1671-1868 View a list of all new and updated databases Learn more about what’s new at Ancestry.com Search the Ancestry.com Card Catalog