Do you have an ancestor who emigrated from another country yet left no story about the why and how? Leaving a home and traveling to a new place, learning a new language and culture - these are significant events in our family story that can strengthen us in our own challenges. How do you discover the story of an ancestor? The Research Like a Pro process will not only help you organize a research project to break down a brick wall, it can give you the tools needed to research and write your ancestor's narrative. Nancy Gilbride Casey is an...
In our podcast episode today, Diana and I discuss how to put information from records into a table to help you organize the data and make connections. Nicole tells about a land study that she did and organizing lots of deeds by clustering the rows in the table by the names of the witnesses. Diana talks about showing data about a person's age from each census year with a table. Join us for a discussion of using tables for research reports! Links How to Add a File to Multiple Folders in Google Drive - YouTube Google help article Go to...
Have you thought about writing a family history story or book to share with your family? Maybe you have a famous ancestor who has grown larger than life with each subsequent generation and you'd like to find out the the real story. You might want to discover more about the bits and pieces of an ancestor's life that have been passed down. If so, the Research Like a Pro process can give you an organized methodology to tackle this type of project. Once I had written the Research Like a Pro blog posts, I wanted to try out the...
Do you need to escape into the pages of a good old-fashioned mystery with a genealogical twist? Then let me introduce you to author, Nathan Dylan Goodwin, and the fictional Morton Farrier, forensic genealogist. I'd been hearing about Nathan's books for some time, but missed meeting him at RootsTech 2018 when he made the journey across the pond to hob nob with fellow genealogists. I decided the first book in his series, Hiding the Past : A Genealogical Crime Mystery, would be perfect for our fall book club selection. There is something about settling down by the fireplace on a dark,...
In our podcast episode today, Diana and I discuss how to deal with and write about family secrets that we uncover during genealogy research. Often these skeletons in the closet bring up difficult emotions and threaten to upset family members. As the historians in our family, do we have a duty to tell the story? How should we tell it? Diana shares some thoughts about uncovering how her great grandfather died, and how another great grandfather was committed to a mental hospital. I will share about the illegitimate children I found in one family line as well as the ancestor...
What life lessons have you learned from a beloved ancestor? Have you recorded them or even thought about them? Reading bestselling author Adriana Trigiani's book Don't Sing at the Table: Life Lessons from My Grandmothers might be just the inspiration you need to get started. In the introduction, Trigiani writes: My grandmothers bestowed on me, through their example, the importance of developing character, rooted in kindness; and a spirit that might negotiate loss and rebound from grief to love more deeply. . .In dark moments when despair kicks joy to the curb, and I feel I don't have it in me...
Are you looking for an engrossing book? One that tells captivating, true stories about real women in history? Frontier Grit by Marianne Monson delivers twelve short stories, each based on a woman who was a pioneer in her own right. An excerpt from the introduction gives us the author's insights. The women in this book come from a variety of backgrounds and traveled in a number of different directions - these stories represent a mere handful of the women who survived and even thrived on a multitude of gritty, tumultuous frontiers. . . These stories are fit inspiration for modern-day efforts...
I wish I were in Salt Lake City! Diana is attending SLIG, the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy, this week and I'm feeling left out. SLIG is a week-long advanced genealogical education conference sponsored by the Utah Genealogical Association (UGA). She is taking Course 13: A Practical Approach: Establishing Genealogical Proof with DNA. You can read more about it here -scroll down to the section about Course 13. To see what Diana is learning at SLIG this week, follow her on twitter: @DianaElder11. You can also see other tweets about SLIG by searching twitter for #SLIG2018 and following @SLIGinstitute. Tonight, the International Commission...
Have you read These is My Words - The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine 1881-1901 by Nancy E. Turner yet? I featured the novel based on the author's own family stories as a book club selection in July of 2017. Because I'm fascinated with the writing of family history, I contacted Nancy to get her perspective on the world of genealogy and family history. She graciously agreed to answer my questions and share her thoughts. If you haven't read These is My Words, this work of historical fiction tells the story of Nancy E. Turner's great grandmother, Sarah Agnes Prine. The novel takes...
Have you ever completed a genealogy research project from the beginning to end? From objective to report? I just completed one and I want to share what I learned. I did the project for our Research Like a Pro study group. I wasn't planning to join the group at first - I thought I would just help in the background with whatever Diana needed. She developed the idea for the study group and was finishing up her planning. At the last minute, she encouraged me to join. I knew that having assignments and peer review would provide accountability. I do...
