Did you know that most of my “brick walls” have been solved by doing one simple thing?

Truth be told, when I sit down and review the research I’ve already done, I have a habit of finding the answer to my research question or at least some clues to point me in the right direction. A lot of this has to do with that old research I did when I was a newbie and didn’t know any better. I missed a lot of key information in those days, as I’m sure you can relate.

The...

For the last couple of months, I’ve been on a journey to digitize my collection of slides and film reels. Probably ten or more years ago I envisioned buying equipment (which is reasonably priced) and doing the job myself. Heck, I even have a slide/negative/film scanner in my Amazon wish list!

But I figured that if after ten years, I still never got around to buying the scanner and doing the project, I wasn’t ever going to get to it. So I decided to outsource the project. There are...

Your favorite genealogy or genealogy-related website may have some secrets…

Wait, what secrets?

Each website has its own search algorithms, so the way you search on one site, may not be effective on another. Case in point: For many websites, a question mark represents one character (e.g., Sm?th), but at WorldCat, it’s the pound symbol (a.k.a. hashtag) that represents one character (e.g., Sm#th).

That’s just one example, but just know that each site's search works...

If you’re looking for another way to learn about the places your ancestors lived, gazetteers are something to be explored. Let’s take a look at what gazetteers are and how to find them (and yes, there are many available for free online!). Plus, I'll share two pro tips so that you can find and utilize gazetteers with ease.

What is a Gazetteer & How Can They Help?

First, you might be wondering what the heck a gazetteer is. Many years ago, when I was first encouraged to seek out...

If you do genealogy research outside of your native language, you probably already use Google Translate, which is a great tool for figuring out the meaning of a word you’re unfamiliar with. I certainly use it to look up words, but Google Translate serves another purpose for me, which I want to share with you.

You’ve probably experienced instances where names are way off in spelling, making it difficult to find what you’re looking for. From a US perspective, we see this all...