We had several good conversations at our Genealogy Networking Group last week. Our big topic was: what will we do now that Family Tree Maker will no longer be supported by Ancestry after January 2017? There was no consensus, but we looked at five different software packages: - Legacy Family Tree (Windows only) - Family…
The Genealogy Writers’ Group met yesterday. Everyone who attended reported progress on their writing or had goals for our next meeting on March 1. We have found that getting together keeps us on track with our writing and we enjoy both sharing our own work and hearing what others are working on. We also discussed…
Recently a patron asked how to take care of photographs, documents, and an old ledger that she had acquired after a death in the family. Looking into it, I realized this question has two elements. First, a fragile or historically significant item should be digitized so it won't need to be handled any more. Second, the…
There's been a lot of buzz lately about Ancestry Academy, video courses offered by Ancestry.com through their subscription website. However, not everyone has a subscription to Ancestry.com, and even if you do, the Academy courses are an additional expense. Do budget-minded genealogists have any other options? Absolutely! First, there's the Learning Center at familysearch.org. You can find…
In a recent webinar sponsored by Legacy Family Tree, presented by Dutch genealogist Yvette Hoitink, I learned some basics of researching ancestors from the Netherlands. The main website to use when researching Dutch ancestors is called WieWasWie (Who Was Who). Thankfully, the site is available in English as well as Dutch. On this site you can…
At our recent Genealogy Networking Group meeting we combined our years of experience to give out some advice for our newest members. Some of the great tips that were offered were: Start with yourself, work backwards in time. This is the mantra of every beginning genealogist. Cite Your Sources. Always keep track of where you…
About once a week we get asked by a well-meaning genealogist how they can get an obituary of an ancestor or relative who died in Cook County. We finally figured out that when people unfamiliar with the northern Illinois area Google "Cook County Library," the Cook Memorial Public Library District is the first hit to…
Libertyville has done a wonderful job of maintaining a downtown main street (Milwaukee Avenue) that reflects the past, but some buildings, on Milwaukee Avenue and elsewhere, have fallen into disrepair and been demolished. This is the first in a series of posts that will tell the stories of some of the buildings of Lost Libertyville.…
It's happy days for those with Irish ancestors, including our own Ellen Jennings. On July 8, Ellen and others of Irish ancestry went to the National Library of Ireland's website as they released all the Catholic parish records online---and for free! Until now, it required a bishop's permission to view these records and you had to view them…
At a recent meeting of the Lake County (IL) Genealogical Society, Jeanne Larzalere Bloom gave a fantastic talk about passenger lists. There's a lot more to them than just finding your ancestor's name and date of entry into the United States. I can't reproduce her entire talk, but here are a few tidbits that are…
