Are you one of the millions of Americans who have a German in your family tree? In an earlier series, Tracing Your 19th Century German Ancestors, I distinguished the largest wave of German immigrants to the U.S. who came in the 19th century from the smaller group who came in the colonial period. Colonial Germans, or as they are better known, the Pennsylvania “Dutch” (a misnomer of Deutsch, or German), make up one of...
Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is a discussion of the book American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard. Heidi Mathis, one of our researchers, joins us to discuss the general idea of American Nations. The book gives us a hypothesis to understand U.S. history as we research our ancestors. Also, the book excitingly has DNA evidence to back up the hypothesis it proposes...
In the last blog post, we learned how the book American Nations provides a framework for understanding U.S. History that can give greater context to the community our individual ancestors were a part of. Our ancestor’s small FAN club connected into a larger network of FAN clubs that can be seen in history and in large genetic networks such as Ancestry Communities or the 2017 study published the scientific journal Nature Communications, “Clustering of 770,000...
Research Like a Pro with DNA Book Diana Elder, AG, Nicole E. Dyer, and Robin Wirthlin Audiobook Resources RLP with DNA Figures for Audiobook RLP with DNA Reference Notes Templates DNA Research Project Template – copy this Google Doc to your own Google Drive. If you want to use it in Word, click file > download > Microsoft Word. RLP with DNA Book Airtable Base – copy this to your own Airtable account then delete...
Have you been struggling to write your family history in a way that is meaningful? Have you considered poetry as a vehicle to share deeply-felt experiences connecting you to your ancestors? All kinds of historical writing fascinates me and today I’m thrilled to introduce a collection of poetry titled Following Sea by author, Lauren Carter. Reading through the poems I was touched repeatedly by the insight so few words could induce. Lauren evokes images of days...
Have you ever been researching and run into two men of the same name? How do you know which was your ancestor? If you choose the wrong individual, you could end up tracing an entirely wrong line of ancestors. I encounter this scenario often in my research and have some tricks up my sleeve to share. My recent research subject was named Edward Sullivan, born March of 1852 in West Virginia. The son of Irish...
Grandparents Day 50 Books for Grandparents Day by Emily Schroeder at Growing Little Leaves How Well Do You Know Your Grandparents’ Story? at the Ancestry.com Blog Three Ideas for Honoring Your Grandparents This Grandparents Day by Maggie Mora at the Ancestry.com Blog News Professor Translates 1,700-Year-Old Obituary From Ancient Greek at NPR – a Brigham Young University Professor recognized ancient Greek on a mislabeled epitaph in a rare book room at the University of Utah. Guild of One-Name Studies...
