Thanks Lisa. Hope you have a relaxing Thanksgiving 😊

These suggestions are all great. The tech bag and joining a geneology society are the ones i am driven to now.

Kinda off topic but just started a KZbin channel about family history Any tips or tricks ??

Hi, I am watching from Sydney Australia. For the first time. Looking forward to your stream.

❤

I have a friend who is trying to identify her great grandfather...father of her father's father.....male line up to her. She knows who her great grandmother was and has taken Ancestry and MyHeritage DNA tests. I have plotted many of her DNA matches in her tree and have been able to group her matches to some extent, but think the great grandfather in question was her great grandmother's first or second cousin. Her MyHeritage AutoCluster contains 13 clusters....the largest group takes up about 25% of the square and has 52 members. The remaining clusters have 3 or 4 members except for one that has 10. The puzzle is complicated by the fact that this branch of the family is made up of predominately Norwegian immigrants to the US and the surname naming convention is Scandinavian, so identifying family line by surname is all but impossible. As such, I recommended she get her uncle's son to take a Y-DNA test to see if that would provided any insight. Given the Norwegian focus, do you recommend a particular company and, if so, which test? Do you have any recommendations beyond that?

What if I was your cousin? Wouldn't that be a trip.

Please, please, don't take this as a negative comment. I've been watching your videos for a long time. Your content is extremely useful and I get a lot out of it. My issue is that you seem to be over editing your videos. You may be trying to reduce the length of the videos, but the constant jumping makes it hard to view. I would rather see the videos be longer than watching the editing jumps in the video. Keep the content coming. We need this information from someone who cares, which is you. Thank you!

And also remember to go a page forward or backward to make sure part of the family is not on a page before or after

But sometimes I find birthplaces and those of parents and ages are not always correct or sometimes vary from year to year

Hi, I am watching from Isabella, Missouri.

My grandmother was put into a mental hospital in Washington State. I am told I am not allowed to have any of the record as why she was there. Sad. Thanj you very much for all of your videos and help!! ♡♡ you!!

Great info! What’s the best way to organize your scanned photos? Best way to label scanned photos?

One stumbling block in finding correct maiden names I found was if the first child was illegitimate and had the mother's name. Was it because she was previously married or is that actually her maiden name? In many cases (old Europe) I found it was due to men doing mandatory military service and they were not given permission by their local magistrate or lord to marry beforehand. ...I haven't found much besides the standards on my ancestors (I'm a 1st gen), but my husband's and my siblings ancestors a lot more. I've made some wonderful discoveries. My husband's 2x great-grandmother was on the hospital board. His great-aunt was the dietician at our University. My brother-in-law's mother worked for British Intelligence during WW2 decoding messages. He also has a great-grandmother(1x or 2x) who owned the local grocery store.

I think that my 2nd great-grandmother’s third husband Lloyd Dow McMaster changed his name for nefarious reasons. He appears out of nowhere in 1906 in Washington State, first serving 30 days for not paying his boarding house rent in the town where he was a traveling salesman, then in the Bellingham directory running a restaurant. Both times, he is just Lloyd McMaster, no middle name or initial. Next, in 1909, he has moved to Billings, MT, where is co-owner of a lunch counter. That is the first time he is recorded as Lloyd D. McMaster, and every single time he is documented after that until the end of his life, he is Lloyd Dow, Lloyd D., or L.D. McMaster. Next is his 1910 census record where he is my 2GGM’s farmhand in Fergus County, MT, and he is Lloyd Dow McMaster there. Their marriage record in November 1911 is where we get lots more info-his parents’ names, birth date, and birth place (South Bend, IN). Trying to find his father, Franklin McMaster, gave me absolutely nothing. Trying to find his birth record gave me absolutely nothing. But, his mother, Martha Jane Summers, unlocked a huge treasure trove! I found a woman with her name and general correct age elsewhere in Indiana than South Bend, but she was married to Francis “Frank” Finney, not McMaster. They had a son named Lloyd Dow Finney. I thought maybe my Lloyd just changed his last name. But, no-Lloyd Dow Finney stayed in Indiana his entire life. However, he did have two brothers who had moved to Montana in the early 1900s. My theory now is that Lloyd McMaster had adopted that name sometime between 1901-1905 or so (thus avoiding being recorded in the 1900 census). He just used that first and last name until he moved to Montana sometime between 1906 and 1909, encountered one or both of the Finney brothers, and somehow got close enough to him/them that he could draw out personal information like the parents’ and brother’s names and what state they were from. He then adopted that info and incorporated it into his own personal bio to bolster its authenticity. If he had adopted this new name just to be different, that’s one thing. But the deliberate identity theft makes me think that he reaaaaalllly wanted to be sure no one ever figured out his earlier name.

When I first started working on my family tree, I noted my 2GGM Carrie had four last names. I wanted to get her husbands’ death dates, so I looked at those. That’s when I discovered that she wasn’t twice widowed but twice divorced. I even found a 1925 Oklahoma City directory entry that had her third husband Lloyd listed as a minister. I wondered how a 1925 minister explained a wife with two exes running around, but then moved on with my research into the rest of my tree. A few months later, I went back to double-check that initial rush of info dumping. I found someone had added her obit to her profile page, and reading that changed everything for me. Turns out that HE wasn’t the minister-SHE was! And, it wasn’t the conservative Christian denomination I had imagined but was instead Spiritualist! After trying to find info about her church online, I finally reached out to the OKC library’s local history/genealogy page where they have an “Ask a Question” box. I asked for any info on the church, or better yet, her time in the church, including in the question what I knew about her. Within 12 hours, the librarian there sent me a folder full of Sanborn maps and newspaper articles and ads about her life there in the 1920s. She told me it was her first Spiritualist research job, and she was delighted to find as much as she did. The articles were there mostly because she had been arrested for illegal fortune telling in her work as a trance medium. Her appeal had been reported around the country (I’ve since found additional coverage that literally goes from coast to coast-Long Beach, CA to NYC). She had also found one article that was about Carrie’s husband and her attending a state Spiritualist conference when they were still living in Montana before moving to OK. That folder got me started on a so-far four-year adventure to get everything I can about Carrie to write a book. In addition to the newspaper articles and classified ads, I’ve connected with several second and third cousins, all descended from Carrie, and a descendent-in-law of her brother who has family letters including one from Carrie and a few that talk about her. I found a newspaper archive at the Central Michigan University’s site that has papers I’ve not found online anywhere else, including her town’s, which documented her custody battle with Ex #1. Then there was the Chicago city directories where I can track her decade there with Husband #2. She worked constantly in her own businesses after splitting up with Ex #1, and her professional life is documented in both directories and newspapers. One of the few things of hers that I inherited was her business card as a “Lady Barber” in Chicago’s Stockyards neighborhood in c. 1900. The directories gave me a year in which her second marriage split up, with him getting a separate home address. When she then moved from Chicago to Montana, I relied mostly on census records, newspapers, and BLM records to follow her. On the state library’s Montana Memory Project page, I found a history of the county that was printed for the Bicentennial in ‘76 which mentioned her restaurant as well as the man who bought it from her. She had the second business in the brand new railroad town, after the saloon-she operated out of a tent until her building was constructed. I do have a photo of her and her family in front of the restaurant in c. 1915 that I used in conjunction with the 1916 Sanborn map to locate it in the town. The other big resource I have for her I have to thank my third cousin Linda for. She’s another 2nd great granddaughter of Carrie’s and just as fascinated by her as I am. She found a book for sale online that is a 1928 collection of transcripts of readings done by Carrie and another OKC trance medium. Linda sent it to me since I am now the repository of all things Carrie. Being able to hold something that represents such a huge part of the last half of her life is a real thrill!

I found an article about my 3rd great-grandfather that talked about his early years in the community of Mt. Pleasant, MI. He came there to manage the sawmill on the nearby Native American reservation, something I didn’t even know was there (I’m in Chicago, not Michigan). I have to do a follow-up email with the reservation’s researcher, who I contacted several months ago to see if she could help me find documentation on what was in the article. Supposedly, he was so well-liked by the residents there that they petitioned the “Indian Agent” in DC to make him the reservation’s supervisor in 1861. He didn’t get the job because he was a Democrat and the Republican Lincoln administration was handing out the positions. I’m hoping to find that petition.

My 2x great-grandparents came from England to Monmouth, Illinois just as the Presbyterian-based Monmouth College was founded in 1855. This was one of the very few coed colleges in the 1870's and 1880's, and my great-grandmother attended. While I was snooping around, I found out how to order her records! From other evidence, she seems to have been very active in her community (where she met my great-grandfather) and intelligent.

I would love to challenge someone to find one of my brick wall Great Grandmother's, it would make a fun KZbin video!😊

But if you find them later in life, how would that help in learning her maiden name? Also, what about the women that married before the census records listed the names of the wives and children?

My Grandmother received a home nursing certificate from Virginia in connection with the National Defense Program. It was in her family Bible. I don’t remember her ever telling us about that. It’s interesting what you can find sometimes

Don’t forget to look for other databases, especially for smaller towns whose newspapers aren’t included in the big national databases. I found a great one at the website for Central Michigan University that includes papers across the state going back to the 1800s. That got me the article on my third great-grandfather’s unusual death (drunkenly fell off the wagon, literally, hit his head on the way down, landed face down in a puddle and drowned) as well as the years-long saga of my 2nd great-grandmother’s custody battle for her kids.

Your guest is painful to listen to.

I recently used chatGPT to translate some handwritten German church records to English. While not perfect, I was amazed at how well it did.

It would have been helpful (personally) to have this topic focussed on the colonial period. Of the clues here that apply to those years only court, tax, and land records are pretty much "it" (absent family bibles). And DNA clues (mitochondrial lineages) are currently pretty useless given the relative paucity of testees.

I have a big album of photos from my mom’s side. I am on a brick wall in my tree on that side. Nobody is alive and no clues on the photos to tell me who these people are.

First time on here from the UK, roots all over the country and Scotland

What about women in Germany?

Do these also apply to women of color? Which ones do and don’t?

My husband's 2x-great-grandmother served on a hospital board in Toronto in the 1800s. I had no idea women did that back then. I haven't done much digging yet, but I keep finding family members that are connected to prominent historical figures in early Toronto history.

This seems to be an advertisement for a product. No helpful info unless you buy the product. Bad idea.

Could an older photo be reprinted on a newer card? I have one of a woman that looks like it's from the 1860s but the photographer in the embossing didn’t start his business until 1883.

This is my story. I've got all the shoe boxes and albums. Help!

I just bought one for $4. This video was helpful in giving me a direction for it. It doesn’t have a case but I’d like to put it in one again. I might replace the glass in the case I get for it to be UV resisting so I can display the photo. Currently it’s in a plastic sleeve in a brown flat paper bag. It was in the sleeve when I bought it and I intend on keeping it in that sleeve until I am ready to put it in a case. I’ll probably get a digitized copy just in case something happens to it. Currently it’s in very good condition and I’d like to keep it that way. This video is beyond helpful. I’ll probably use this same concept for my other old photos. I’ll replace the glass in the frames to protect the photo or put film over the frames I can’t replace the glass on.

Can this method be used to find photographs of family members for whom we have no pictures in our own photo collections? For example, I have no photos of my second great-grandfather, but I have pictures of his wife and all of his children. I know he served in the Civil War and have hoped this might be a source of a lost photo. Can the pictures of family members I do possess, in order to compare the information we gave to locate a photo of him as well? And then, might he be identified by finding him in someone else's photos? This new area of research if very fascinating!

I love to analyze old family photos. Unless its for decoration, or display on the living room wall etc. (or maybe as a portrait photo for an Ancestry profile, etc), for genealogy research and sharing it's really better to display a photograph as you find it, not edited (and hopefully in a high resolution). This is true even if it's damaged. An edited photograph wouldn't be a primary source, any longer. Even colorizing will radically alter the original details of the photo.

Love your videos! Always helpful! Ü

Oh good grief! If Ancestry had a chromosome browser you could map your chromosomes per parent by known matches and you'd instantly know how you were related to any of your matches that you triangulate with. Much easier than this silly method of guessing.

have you taken a rapid test? 🙏

I’m watching from Melbourne Australia.

I will be interested in the Nov video. I am trying to find my maternal great-grandfather. I have found my great-grandmother, but they were not married as she was married to someone else. Their son was born in 1903 so no birth certificate. He was possibly raised my an uncle and in an orphanage in the 1910 census. Cannot find in 1920 census. Next time found was marriage in 1922. So, I am thinking DNA is my next step. Also last name is Smith.

Actually, sister cMs can not be accurate. My aunt and I are listed as siblings, but we’re not. We share 2703 cMs. She is my mother’s sister. We have severe pedigree collapse.

Live in Belton Texas but from Kentucky

Two family history experts In one video Oh yur that’s awesome

Hi from NYC.

Hello, from Knoxville TN

Hi from Saint Augustine, Fl

I made the mistake of taking some one else's research for the parents of an ancestor. Years later, when I got around to looking at them again, I realized my ancestor's mother was born AFTER my ancestor. Time traveler? I think not. LOL! And the father was only 3 when he fathered my ancestor. Now that's a precocious boy! Despite these ridiculous dates, I see these "parents" listed time and again for this ancestor of mine in on-line trees.

This is all new to me since I don't know much about my family