Val Greenwood on Military Records

Military Ancestors

By Joe Garonzik

After 30 years and three editions, why is Val Greenwood’s Researcher’s Guide to American Genealogy still the most respected genealogy textbook? It is clear, to the point, and authoritative, to be sure, but Greenwood is also extremely resourceful. The following illustration from one of its two chapters on Military Records is a good example.

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Who was Donald Lines Jacobus, and why should you care?

Genealogy Connect

By Joe Garonzik

The Connecticut genealogist, Donald Lines Jacobus (pronounced ja cob’ us), was the founder of the modern school of scientific genealogy and the greatest American genealogist of the 20th century. Jacobus and his protégés taught us how to research and write family histories, how to solve genealogical problems, what sources should be used, how to interpret them, and why we must abandon unsupported findings which, in many instances, were built upon flights of imagination as much as on facts.

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Washington D.C. Land of Genealogy

Library of Congress

By Joe Garonzik

Answer the following questions either True or False:

  1. No genealogical research is ever complete unless it has been authenticated by original source records.
  2. Salt Lake City is not the site of the greatest collection of accessible genealogical records in the U.S.
  3. The National Archives in Washington, D.C. is only one of many genealogy record repositories to be found in the nation’s capital.

If you answered false to any of these statements, you should read on. Why? In the first instance, it is an axiom of genealogy that all family research must ultimately be validated against original sources (or facsimiles of those sources on microfilm, etc.). How else can a researcher ever know that his data wasn’t derived from a mis-copied record, or that a lineage published in a book is simply incorrect?

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Rich Genealogy History in Carolina Origins

By Joe Garonzik

In 1663, England’s King Charles II ceded the Carolinas to Anthony Ashley Cooper and seven other proprietors who had supported the Stuarts in ending the Cromwellian Revolution and returning Charles II to the throne. Notwithstanding the 16th-century exploits of Sir Walter Raleigh and legendary Virginia Dare, it was a group of Virginians who established North Carolina’s oldest settlement along the Albemarle Sound in 1653–a full decade before the installation of the Lord Proprietors.

The Crown divided the Carolinas in 1691, although North Carolina would not receive its own governor for another 20 years. British, Huguenot, German and Swiss populated the North Carolina tidewater during the first half of the 18th-century. New Bern, established primarily by Germanic immigrants under the impetus of Christopher de Graffenried, would become the largest city in the colony. Large numbers of Scots Highlanders and Scots-Irish, many by way of the Great Wagon Road through Pennsylvania and into the Shenandoah Valley, populated the western part of the colony. Eighteenth-century North Carolina was also noteworthy for its large Quaker population and for Wachovia, a Moravian settlement in Forsyth County.

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Genealogy Tips to Handle the Pitfalls of Passenger Records

Genealogy Public Library Resources

By Michael Tepper

Researchers often run into problems when they are on the trail of an immigrant ancestor. The most common misconception about passenger lists is the belief that people had their names changed when they got to Ellis Island. In fact, immigrants did not change their names unless they applied for a change of name by deed poll at a courthouse or when they were naturalized. During processing at Ellis Island, officials had the actual ships’ manifests in front of them. They called each immigrant by name, according to the manifests, and often put a check next to the name after it had been called. So the passenger records are an exact reflection of the immigrants’ identities before they crossed the Atlantic, not after.

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Remove Confusion Around “Removes”

Family Tree Genealogy Connect

By Michael Tepper

What if your Aunt Rose walks up to you and says, “I understand you’re into genealogy, so explain to me in plain English the difference between second cousins and first cousins twice removed.” Could you do it? If you cannot, if you’re a little confused about the “removes,” consider the following excerpt from Jackie Smith Arnold’s little book, Kinship:It’s All Relative.

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