How To Find & Use Google Books For Genealogy Research
Genealogy researchers love books. I’m no different, but know what I love more? Free Books! Are you missing out on finding online free genealogy related books (including family histories)? If you have not already, it’s time to start exploring Google Books! What is Google Books? Google Books is a service of Google. It is essentially a very large digital public library of of books, magazines, and newspapers. Just image browsing the bookshelves of your favorite genealogy library – only digitally. Best of all, you as a genealogy researcher can potentially find thousands of family histories and other genealogy related books to read for free. (Who doesn’t like free?!) Types of…
How To Pull Genealogy Clues From Your Old Family Photographs
This post is sponsored by The Imaging Alliance; however, all thoughts and opinions are my own. Old family photos tell the stories of our ancestors. They tell a story of physical characteristics passed down from generation to generation. They tell the stories of special occasions. They tell the stories of everyday life. If you have been a longtime reader of Are You My Cousin?, you know how fortunate I am to have inherited a large collection of family photographs. My great-grandmother Esther Richardson grew up in the early 1900’s when the release of Kodak’s Brownie camera made photography more accessible (and popular) to the general public. Esther and her friends…
Understanding Your AncestryDNA Matches
Your AncestryDNA results are in. Maybe you’ve always been interested in genealogy, or perhaps you received the test as a gift, and really have no idea what to expect. There is a learning curve to understand DNA test results, even for seasoned genealogists. AncestryDNA’s test is an autosomal DNA test, which looks at chromosomes 1-22 and the X-chromosome and provides information about many relationships and ancestors from both paternal and maternal ancestral lines. This post focuses on AncestryDNA’s results, but several other companies which offer autosomal DNA testing, including MyHeritage, 23andMe, and Family Tree DNA, provide similar features. Autosomal DNA results include ethnicity predictions, as well as a “match list” – a…
An Introductory Guide to Scandinavian Naming Patterns
Welcome Jenny Hansen of My Favorite Ancestor as a guest writer today! One of the biggest challenges for research in Denmark, Norway and Sweden is understanding the Scandinavian naming patterns. I have an experiment I like to conduct when I teach groups about Scandinavian research. I ask, “Who here is related to Hans Jensen?” Usually the majority of the room answers in the affirmative. This question would be similar to asking if anyone is related to John Smith, except multiplied by about 100! Scandinavian Naming Patterns Our Scandinavian ancestors, like many other cultures, used patronymic surnames. The term patronymics refers to the practice of using the father’s given name as…
