by Katie Rebecca Garner | Oct 10, 2025
Cemeteries are one of the many spooky things associated with Halloween, to the pleasure of genealogists. For family historians, a cemetery is a source of genealogical information more so than a place for scares. If a cemetery scares a genealogist, it’s for different...
by Katie Rebecca Garner | Oct 3, 2025
Different periods of U.S. history present various challenges. Pre-1850 The first U.S. census to name every household member, not just the head, was 1850. Most places did not have civil registration until later. This is not a time period where you can easily conduct...
by Katie Rebecca Garner | Sep 26, 2025
Death certificates hold a wealth of information for family historians, and should be one of the key documents in a genealogist’s search. Photo: Eddie August Schneider’s (1911-1940) death certificate, issued in New York. Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Prior to civil...
by Katie Rebecca Garner | Sep 19, 2025
Having an organizational system for your genealogy helps prevent it from becoming a mess of information. There are different ways to organize things; each person has one way or another that works for them. Just because something works for my brain doesn’t mean you...
by Katie Rebecca Garner | Sep 12, 2025
When the United States was created, the founding fathers decided it was necessary to make a count of the population every decade. The first census was taken in 1790, counting white males and females, other free persons, and slaves. For the first six censuses, from...
