News — Getting Started

For genealogists who use genetic genealogy to conduct research, there is some important news to share about an online resource, Family Tree DNA (commonly known as "FTDNA") which has just undergone a major update. The FTDNA database and testing service is used by millions across the globe to extract genetic markers from kits and match with other test-takers, which makes it possible to trace one's origins and sometimes break through research "brick walls." According to genealogist and blogger Roberta Estes, FTDNA's recent update not only looks good and makes the site easier to use, it also has some behind-the-scenes changes...

Summer is here! For genealogists, summer often means going out on genealogy road trips to visit cemeteries, town halls, and relatives across the country. The above picture is from a road trip I took a decade ago - the house was built by my great-great-great grandfather in the wilderness of Northern New York in the 1830s, not far from Lake Champlain and the Canadian border. Across the street is a small cemetery where some of our forebears are buried, which allowed me to verify birth and death dates for several ancestors from that branch of the family.  We're going to take another...

A customer wrote in with a great question: What should be done with old photos with no names, and the people who might know the faces have already passed away? I have a name for unknown folks on faded black-and-white photos or old tintypes: unidentified genealogy people (UGP). Here's one from our collection: Some UGPs may be direct ancestors, others may be people from side branches. There may be some UGPs who married into the family, or friends of the family. You may not know who they are ... but it's so hard to throw them away. What if that old photo...

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to bring together my father and one of his distant cousins on the telephone. They grew up in the same factory town in the 40s and 50s, but lost touch after they moved away for college. They literally had not spoken with each other for more than 60 years.  Over the hour-long call, it was really interesting to hear what they remembered growing up about life in the town, and some of the similarities in their lives and careers. For instance, their fathers urged both young men to get into the management track at the...

I received a great question from someone on Facebook about how far back you can go with EasyGenie genealogy charts: How far back does the big print go? I can go back to beyond 15 generations. I have one that goes back to 400’s. My answer: The farthest a single chart goes back is 10 generations, which will take some people now alive back to about 1600 on certain lines. If you were to make a parent or grandparent the key person at the start of the chart, you could go back further on a single chart, to the 1500s. However,...