Introduction: Mary Harrell-Sesniak is a genealogist, author and editor with a strong technology background. In this guest blog post, Mary explains how research on her ancestor led her to investigate if Horace Greeley really said “Go West young man.” Whether your forebears have roots to the Mayflower, settlements on the western frontier, or Ellis... (Read More)
Introduction: Gena Philibert-Ortega is a genealogist and author of the book “From the Family Kitchen.” In this guest blog post, Gena writes about the knitting, sewing and quilting efforts of women on the home front during World War II to support the Red Cross and the war effort—and how local newspaper articles about these... (Read More)
In this article, Scott Phillips searches online newspapers to solve the mystery of why/how his ancestor’s hometown of North Hibbing, Minnesota, disappeared... (Read More)
Our ancestors have made the long trip to America starting with the days of the Pilgrims. These were not easy journeys and some ended in disaster. Here is a riveting newspaper account from an article written in 1837 showing just how brutal the trip to America could be. The barque Mexico left Liverpool, England,... (Read More)
More than one hundred years ago the renowned Boston Athenaeum librarian and author Charles Knowles Bolton (1867-1950) counseled genealogists to document their family histories by putting the generations in the context of their times. At what generation was “white sugar” a staple in the family diet? What were their political views? What about the... (Read More)
Introduction: Gena Philibert-Ortega is a genealogist and author of the book “From the Family Kitchen.” In this guest blog post, Gena shows how recipe contests that ran in local newspapers can turn out to be a surprisingly good source of genealogy information about your female ancestors. Have you ever won a contest sponsored by... (Read More)
Introduction: Mary Harrell-Sesniak is a genealogist, author and editor with a strong technology background. In this guest blog post, Mary talks about how valuable state archives can be for your family history research, and describes how to access them. If you’re looking for an exciting resource to help with your genealogical research, I recommend... (Read More)
Today’s Wall Street Journal (21 November 2012) has an op-ed editorial by Melanie Kirkpatrick: Thanksgiving, 1789 about the nation’s first Thanksgiving proclamation. It was also President Washington’s first proclamation—he had been sworn in as the nation’s first president just a few months earlier, on 30 April 1789. Washington’s proclamation making Thanksgiving an officially recognized... (Read More)
For Thanksgiving, Scott Phillips searches on “Tom Turkey” and examines some of the more than 12,000 historical newspaper articles his search returned... (Read More)
