Surnames seem like something that have always been with us. So it can be surprising that the world’s population was once so small that first names were generally all that we needed. Everyone knew who Patty was and there was no need for formality. Surnames in Scotland evolved over time …
Genealogy software programs can be very confusing for many people. It’s hard to know why you need one when you start doing your family history. But after a while of accumulating information, it becomes quite clear and it becomes a burdensome task. For people that have been doing their family …
Many people tell me about an adoption in their family history. I have heard many miraculous stories of success in searching. Some of this success has sometimes been luck but definitely involved hard work. I think anyone that goes on this type of search opens up a whole new secret …
Ancestry is a great resource for genealogy, but you still have to be careful. Because the thing with anything on a computer is; garbage in – garbage out. This relates to an analogy of the internet I have heard. With the internet being like a dump truck backing up to …
A thousand years of Irish genealogy records were blown up in a 200m cloud of smoke in the Irish Civil War. The ammunitions being stored in the Public Records Office in Dublin caught fire and there was no saving them. There is some argument over what exploded to set the …
I was surprised to read Ancestry’s blog over Christmas, “we’ve made the decision to stop selling Family Tree Maker as of December 31, 2015.” Family Tree Maker has been one of the most popular genealogy software programs on the market. But for Ancestry, they admit that they make more money …
Over the Christmas holidays I have been engrossed in a novel called the “Potato Factory” by Bryce Courtney. The amount of detail and history has been fascinating. It covers the conditions in London, convict transportation to Australia and life for convicts in Tasmania in the early 19th century. An interesting …
