First off, let me just warn you: there are no lovable curmudgeons in this book. If you’re looking for another Man Called Ove or My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, you won’t find it here. However, you will find a moving, sensitive portrayal of a small town obsessed with hockey, and what…
1816 Illinois county boundaries, from the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries 1829 Illinois county boundaries, from the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries We who live in the 21st century find it difficult to imagine that the counties we live in now have not always been in existence. For example, before Illinois became a state in…
If you've been putting off purchasing a DNA test kit, this weekend might be the time to do it. Many DNA testing companies have sales on or around April 25, which is National DNA Day. To see what the sales are, check out Your Genetic Genealogist's blog post. This is a great chance to get started using…
Welcome back to my series on the history of Libertyville’s next-door neighbor: Mundelein! When we left it in early 1909, Mundelein, at the time known as Rockefeller and already on its third name, was home to two railroad lines, a rapidly growing downtown, and with a vote of 55-22 had, along with Diamond Lake, become the…
City Directories can be a great source of information on ancestors who lived in the 1800s and early 1900s, especially in big cities where it's hard to find anything on the average Joe. Ancestry and Fold3 both have a collection of directories for Chicago, but we found recently that the 1910 directory is incomplete in…
Recently FamilySearch hosted their British Isles Research Seminar, featuring experts on Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English records, both from civil and parish sources. You could attend in person or watch online as the sessions were aired. The FamilySearch folks have now made the individual sessions available for anyone to watch, still free of charge. And…
First, a confession: Neil Gaiman could write an air conditioner repair manual and I would cheerfully read it. So the odds I would enjoy his latest release, NORSE MYTHOLOGY, were pretty good. Even so, I was surprised by how delightful this collection is. With a television adaptation of Gaiman’s AMERICAN GODS coming to Starz at the…
One of our members gave a great presentation at our Genealogy Networking Group meeting last night. He shared how his DNA results helped him connect with a previously unknown branch of his family. This prompted lots of discussion and a list of websites and organizations to turn to for help in understanding and making the…
I’m always looking for new mystery authors to read, so after noticing positive reviews for this book in trade journals, I picked it up. It had everything I look for in a mystery: a unique setting (a chateau in Switzerland), a compelling sleuth, and a good puzzle. Agnes Luthi is a Swiss-American police inspector who…
Lake County’s written history began when French traders and missionaries traveling through the region noted the place in their journals. In 1673, Father Jacques Marquette referred to the Des Plaines River as “the river of portage” and wrote of its tendency to flood its banks. This characteristic seems to be how the river got its…
