Use A Genealogy Wildcard Search For Better Ancestor Search Results
It’s a wild, wild, wild(card) world of genealogy records out there! Are your ancestors hiding in them? As a researcher you perform genealogy searches daily to find your ancestors. But you wonder…. Are you maximizing your search results? Getting the best results for finding your ancestors? Are your search results limited because of misspellings and/or transcription errors? Or are you searching for ancestors but unsure of what spelling they used in the records? It’s time for a wildcard search! What is a Genealogy Wildcard Search? One of the best kept search secrets is the wildcard search that allows you to substitute the wildcard characters “*” or a “?” in place…
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…
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…
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