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MARCH/APRIL 2025 M A G A Z I N E

Genealogy
Websites
COMPARED
TIPS for Ancestry,
FamilySearch
& MyHeritage

US CENSUS
Questions by Year

Find Female
Ancestors
DISCOVER
SWEDISH US $8.99
CAN $9.99
ROOTS

GUIDE:
DIVORCE
RECORDS Display until April 29, 2025
 Lifetimes of memories?

Don’t let your memories fade™

contents M AR CH / APR IL 2025

50

features
14 Three’s 42 How
E
Look for the green arrow Company Swede It Is
throughout this issue Which big genealogy website is Delve into your Swedish heritage
for hints to expanded the best for you? This comparison with these five key records.
versions, free downloads
and related products at
highlights the features—and billions by David A. Fryxell
familytreemagazine.com! of records—at Ancestry.com,
FamilySearch and MyHeritage.
by Sunny Jane Morton
50 The Feminine Mystique
Rediscover the lives of the women
This burst highlights special in your family tree with this advice
25th-anniversary articles.
30 The US census asked different
Question Marks for overcoming brick walls in female
ancestor research.
questions in different years. Learn by Gena Philibert-Ortega
what details it collected (and when)
with this at-a-glance table.
by the Editors of Family Tree Magazine
ON THE COVER:
Websites Compared 14
Census Questions by Year 30
33 State Research Guides
Tips and resources for tracing
BONUS INSERT:
Surnames Cheat Sheet
Find Female Ancestors 50 your ancestors in US states.
Swedish Roots 42 LOUISIANA 33
SPECIAL SECTION:
Divorce Records 60 by Andrew Koch
RootsTech 2025 Special
WASHINGTON 37
COVER PHOTO: COMPOSITE IMAGE, Preview (page 24)
PEOPLE IMAGES/ISTOCK AND by Kathleen L. Weber
LCODACCIISTOCK

family t re emagaz ine.com 1

M AR CH / APR IL 2025

10 departments
3 AOut on a Limb
note from the editor.
10 Lisa’s Picks
Family history faves from
by Andrew Koch the founder of Genealogy
Gems, LLC.

4 Tree Talk
Our 25th anniversary
by Lisa Louise Cooke

celebration. Plus: an
interview with MyHeritage’s
12 Stories to Tell
An expertly crafted quilt
Daniel Horowitz. tells of a man’s lifelong
passion for Scouting.

6 Tech News
MyHeritage LiveMemory,
by Sunny Jane Morton

RootsTech 2025, and more

59 can’t-miss news.
by Andrew Koch

treetips əɜ
59 Photo Detective
A memorial photo with bold
68 Now What?
Expert tips on your brick
backing presents a mystery. walls: Colonial immigration,
by Maureen A. Taylor Dominican ancestors, and
Massachusetts adoptions.

60 Source Spotlight
A deep dive into
by David A. Fryxell

divorce records.
by Judy G. Russell
70 From the Archive
An updated tutorial for
searching Irish ancestors

64 Using Goldie May

Website Tutorial in Griffith’s Valuation.
by Rick Crume
as a research aid.
by Sunny Jane Morton
72 DNA Q&A
Can you do a DNA test on hair?

66 Family History Home

Save old newspaper
by Diahan Southard

clippings with this guide.

by Denise May Levenick

66

Family Tree Magazine (ISSN 1529-0298) is published six times per year: January/February, March/April, May/June, July/August, September/October and November/December by Yankee Publishing Inc., PO Box 520, 1121
Main Street, Dublin, NH 03444. Copyright ©2025 Yankee Publishing Inc., Vol. 26, No. 2, March/April 2025. Subscription rates: one year, $36. Canadian subscriptions add $8 per year, other foreign subscriptions add $10 per
year for surface mail or $35 per year for air mail and remit in US funds. Postmaster: Send all address changes to Family Tree Magazine, PO Box 37900, Boone, IA 50037-0900. Periodicals postage paid at Cincinnati, Ohio
and additional mailing offices. Produced and printed in the USA.

2 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2025
 out on a limb
MARCH/APRIL 2025 / VOLUME 26, ISSUE 2

Editor Andrew Koch

Art Director Julie Barnett

r¨—Ã
ÜÊ—Ê×
ăÓÜ
Êèã
Digital Editors Katrina Farmer, Melina Papadopoulos
eLearning Producer Amanda Epperson
Contributing Editors Lisa A. Alzo, Rick Crume, I go to a genealogy conference every year,
David A. Fryxell, Nancy Hendrickson, they give me a quizzical look. “Isn’t gene-
Sunny Jane Morton, Maureen A. Taylor
alogy about dead people?” they ask. “How
VP Production and New Media Paul Belliveau, Jr.
can there be news?”
Production Director Dave Ziarnowski
Little do they know about all the excit-
Production Manager Brian Johnson
ing tech tools that are announced at each
Senior Production Artists Jenn Freeman, Rachel Kipka year’s RootsTech <www.familysearch.org/
Senior Ad Production Coordinator Janet Selle rootstech>. These tools change how we
New Media Designer Amy O’Brien learn about our ancestors, as well as how
Digital Marketing Specialists Jessica Garcia, Holly Sanderson we preserve and share their stories.
Email Marketing Specialist Eric Bailey The conference also showcases the
eCommerce Manager Alan Henning latest and best strategies for conducting
VP Consumer Marketing Brook Holmberg research—a gathering place for some of
VP Single Copy Sales Sherin Pierce the brightest minds in genealogy. Even
if you can’t attend in-person in Salt Lake
EDITORIAL OFFICES: City, you can take advantage of more than
PO Box 520, 1121 Main Street, Dublin, NH 03444
[email protected] 200 recorded presentations online (page
ADVERTISING: 7) and promotional offers from leading
Tim Baldwin, (248) 837-9293,
[email protected]
genealogy companies (page 24).
SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION:
In this issue, we compare and highlight
U.S.: (888) 403-9002; international: (515) 248-7692; the latest advancements of the larg-
[email protected]
P.O. Box 37900, Boone, IA 50037-0900 est genealogy websites—Ancestry.com,
FamilySearch and MyHeritage (page 14).
Visit FamilyTreeMagazine.com for more genealogy information We covered a similar topic in the August
and products.
2000 issue in our first year, making these
Family Tree Magazine, published in the United States, tips helpful reminders of just how far
is not affiliated with the British Family Tree Magazine,
with Family Tree Maker software or with Family Tree DNA. technology has come in 25 years.
Also part of our 25th-anniversary
celebration is this issue’s Surnames Cheat
FAMILY TREE MAGAZINE IS A DIVISION OF
YANKEE PUBLISHING, INC: Sheet, which addresses common ques-
President and CEO Jamie Trowbridge
tions about family names—including
Vice Presidents Paul Belliveau, Jr., Ernesto Burden, Judson
D. Hale Jr., Brook Holmberg, Jennie Meister, Sherin Pierce common myths. Coupled with up-to-date
<www.ypi.com> guidance on finding female ancestors
(page 50), the guide will help you topple
Copyright © 2025 Yankee Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved. even the most stubborn brick walls in
Family Tree Magazine is a registered trademark of Yankee
Publishing, Inc.
your research.
Genealogy is, ultimately, about “dead
people.” But it’s about the living, too. And
the family history community is very
much alive. 
PHOTO CREDIT: BOTOS PHOTOS

family t re emagaz ine.com 3

departments T R E E TA L K

Web Highlight: 25 Years of Family Tree

Highlights: Our
25th Birthday
Celebration
<www.familytreemagazine.
com/anniversary>

This year marks Family Tree’s 25th

anniversary—a milestone all the
more remarkable when you con-
sider how drastically media has
changed in the past few decades.
We kicked off celebrations in
our January/February issue by
revisiting some topics that we
covered in our first year of publi-
cation. We continue in this issue
with a comparison of genealogy
websites (page 14) and a guide to
finding Swedish ancestors (page
42); both subjects were covered in
our August 2000 issue.
Visit our 25th anniversary land-
ing page throughout the year to
see a collection of these articles,
plus some of our “Greatest Hits”
and a digital version of the “From
the Archive” series (page 70).

JOIN OUR COMMUNITY!

Your ticket to premium <www.facebook.com/

articles and guides <store. familytreemagazine>
SHOP familytreemagazine.com/
Genealogy how-to downloads and videos, standard-membership> @FamilyTreeMag
plus PDF back-issues of Family Tree Magazine
<store.familytreemagazine.com>
Family Tree Magazine
Free genealogy advice from host
Detailed online Lisa Louise Cooke and expert
@familytreemag
courses and guests Apple Podcasts/Spotify/
<www.familytreemagazine.
webinars full of PODCAST com/genealogy-podcast> <www.youtube.com/user/
expert advice familytreemagazine>
about key research
subjects <www.
familytreemagazine. Subscribe to our free email newsletter for how-to articles. Daily and weekly
com/course> options available <www.familytreemagazine.com/newsletter-signup>

4 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2025
 5 QUESTIONS with:
Daniel Horowitz - Genealogy Expert,
MyHeritage

FOUNDED IN A LIVING room near Tel Aviv, Israel, in 2003,

MyHeritage <www.myheritage.com> has swiftly grown into
one of the largest genealogy companies in the world. With a
global audience and some 33 billion digitized records, the site
has firmly established itself as one of the “Big Four.”
Over the past several years, MyHeritage has expanded its
offerings from historical records and family trees to DNA tests
(2016), photo-enhancement (2020) and -dating (2023) tools, I also have to mention the PedigreeMap <education.
and a sister site offering historical newspapers (OldNews myheritage.com/article/how-to-use-pedigreemap>, which
<www.oldnews.com>, 2024). The latest new feature, LiveMem- gives you both bird’s eye and detailed views of the places
ory (see page 6), uses AI to turn still photos into short videos. where your family was born, lived, carried out their activities,
We sat down with Daniel Horowitz, a genealogy expert and died.

3
who’s been with MyHeritage since 2006. With nearly 40
years of family history experience, Daniel regularly speaks at You’ve been with MyHeritage for nearly 20
genealogy conferences and holds a board-level position at years. What do you like about working there?
the Israel Genealogy Research Association (IGRA) <genealogy. MyHeritage feels like my second home—it’s a big
org.il>. family where everyone cares for one another. Addi-
Daniel’s interest in family history began with a school tionally, I have the pleasure and honor of seeing what’s com-
project as a teenager—and stories from his grandmother, ing, contributing my input, making requests, and providing
who survived the Holocaust but lost many family members. feedback on the features being developed.

4
He’s gone on to participate in crowdsourced digitization and
transcription projects, and he maintained the “Searching for How does MyHeritage acquire new records?
my Roots” education guide for 15 years. MyHeritage establishes partnerships with libraries
Daniel shares his impressions of the genealogy community, and archives to digitize, OCR [enhance with opti-
and provides a behind-the-scenes look at one of the leading cal character recognition software], and transcribe
names in family history. Though he declined to comment on new materials from around the world. Sometimes, we also
any specific upcoming releases from MyHeritage, he notes connect with owners of large record collections to license or
that the company “develops features that not only enhance purchase them.

5
the quality of research, but also attract younger generations”
through AI, storytelling, and family photos. MyHeritage continues to develop innovative

1
tools. Where does the tech team get ideas
What trends have you noticed for new features?
in how genealogists do research? Many ideas come from the developers or other
Everyone starts with pen and paper. But the use of the employees themselves when they research their own
internet, social media, websites, DNA, and, most recently, families and use our existing tools. [CEO] Gilad Japhet, a
AI is something younger people are increasingly adopting. genealogist himself, plays a key role, as he has the vision to

2
foresee what tools can be developed with new technology
What’s an underused feature of MyHeritage? to benefit the genealogy community. 
The Consistency Checker is probably my favorite
underused feature, as it provides leads on what might We compare MyHeritage with fellow big genealogy sites Ancestry.com
be wrong in your family tree—and yes, there are <www.ancestry.com> and FamilySearch <www.familysearch.org>
wrong facts on your tree. beginning on page 14.

family t re emagaz ine.com 5

departments TECH NEWS

WHAT ’S NEW BY ANDREW KOCH

MyHeritage LiveMemory

Above: Original photo

Right: Stills from an
animated LiveMemory
video

MYHERITAGE ADDED TO ITS LIBR ARY of photo tools Live- genealogy experts such as Roberta Estes (whose mother is
Memory, which creates five-second videos from still pho- animated to twirl in a floral dress) and Maureen A. Tay-
tos uploaded to the site. A later update allows users to lor (whose photo subject flashes a peace sign and interacts
select from multiple possible animations: hugging, laugh- with a now-barking dog; see above).
ing, dancing and more. LiveMemory builds off the Deep As of this writing, the tool is available only in the MyHer-
Nostalgia technology launched in 2021 that uses artificial itage mobile app. Eligible photos must be within a compat-
intelligence to generate realistic motion in a photo. ible dimension and less than 20MB in size.
A blog post announcing the new feature <blog. Any user can animate a limited number of photos for free;
myheritage.com/2024/11/introducing-livememory-bring- dedicated Photo plan subscribers can animate 20 photos per
your-photos-to-life-in-video> included testimonials from year, and unlimited usage requires the Omni subscription.

INTERNET ARCHIVE LOSES COPYRIGHT CASE

In late 2024, an appeals court ruled against materials (including those still under copyright
website Internet Archive <www.archive. protection). Though the “National Emergency
org> in a years-long copyright case. Filed Library” project lasted just a few months, it
by major US book publishers, the case triggered a lawsuit from book publishers who
determined that the Internet Archive unlaw- alleged the Archive used roughly 33,000 of
LIVEMEMORY: COURTESY MYHERITAGE AND MAUREEN A. TAYLOR

fully used in-copyright books as part of its their copyrighted works without authorization.
digital-lending program. The Archive argued that its policy of con-
The non-profit Internet Archive hosts trolled digital lending (i.e., lending scanned
a variety of digitized books, audio, records and other copies of physical books on a one-to-one basis) constituted
publications—many of them public-domain and some in fair use. The courts disagreed, and the Archive declined to
partnership with libraries and archives. Through its Open appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.
Library, users can borrow materials much like they would In effect, the ruling limits what the Internet Archive
from a conventional library. can make available to its users. The site can still lend out
In the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic when public-domain materials. But publications under copyright
many libraries and schools closed indefinitely, the Internet protection (likely including even those that have no official
Archive temporarily removed borrowing restrictions on its digital version) will be removed.

6 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2025
 AMERICAN ANCESTORS:
OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
After months of renovation, the Boston-based American Ancestors
reopened its facilities in January. On-site resources—which are available
to both members and the general public—include the Brim-DeForest
Library and the Wyner Family Jewish Heritage Center. American Ances-
tors, also known as the New England Historic Genealogical Society
(NEHGS), temporarily closed to the public in March 2023.
The organization was founded
in 1845 and hosts a database of
1.4 billion searchable names. Of
note, its ongoing 10 Million Names
Project <www.10millionnames.
org> seeks to digitize records that
document all people of African
descent who were enslaved in the
United States through 1865.
Learn about the center’s in-
person events at <www.american
ancestors.org/events>.

CHANGES TO
NEHGS building in Boston
FINDMYPAST SUBS
Subscription website Findmypast
<www.findmypast.com> updated
its membership options in fall 2024.

New RootsTech Sessions The site previously offered multiple

subscription tiers (each with distinct
benefits). But Findmypast now has just
NEHGS, CC BYSA 4.0 <HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BYSA/4.0>, VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

one—an “Everything” subscription—

with different payment options:
 Month-to-month: $34.49
 Every three months: $89.99
 Annual: $299.99
Users who commit to the year-long
subscription receive an additional
15% off as a “loyalty discount.” The
site continues to offer pay-as-you-go
“Micropayments” for individual records.
Findmypast has especially strong
AS OF THIS WRITING, ROOTSTECH 2025 is set to kick off on March 6. The records coverage for the United King-
in-person event in Salt Lake City is just part of the fun—FamilySearch also dom. Until this year, the site had exclu-
plans to add more than 200 new online sessions to the already extensive sive access to the 1921 census of England
collection at <www.familysearch.org/en/rootstech>. and Wales. See page 15 for a comparison
The On-Demand Library boasts more than 1,500 free genealogy videos, between Findmypast and the other “Big
some dating to 2019 <www.familysearch.org/en/rootstech/search>. Search Four” genealogy websites.
for relevant videos by keyword, or filter by language, country, speaker and
more. See a tutorial for using the site at <www.familytreemagazine.com/
libraries-archives/navigating-the-rootstech-on-demand-library>. 

family t re emagaz ine.com 7

 SPONSORED CONTENT

Saving the Stories of the Past

B eing the keeper of your family’s history is an honor…but
sometimes overwhelming. There are so many memo-
ries to capture before they fade. Photos and memorabilia to
Don’t let anxieties about which tools to use (and how to
use them) sabotage your digitizing goals. One solution, the
Vivid-Pix Memory Station Software, saves time by work-
digitize and label. Stories to share with loved ones. ing with your desktop scanner or all-in-one printer to add
You want to use the best (and easiest!) technologies, but important metadata to your digitized files and embed them
you don’t want to keep investing in different tools. Where with stories—in addition to reviving an image’s faded colors
are you in the following three-step process of saving your and correcting color imbalances.
stories? Consider our recommendation for a single, easy-to- The Memory Station Software works with most scanners.
use system that can help you all along the way. Or you can purchase the full Memory Station, which
1. Digitize the stuff. Many genealogists have piles of pho- bundles the software with a fast, space-saving overhead
tos, documents and artifacts that capture the faces, places, scanner. With it, you can scan even thick books, 3D objects,
and stories of the past. These bring memories back to life and large documents or albums.
and reveal loved ones’ personalities. Family documents 2. Record living memories. Chances are you’ve felt the
help build family trees and solve age-old mysteries. But until frustration of studying unidentified family photos. Perhaps
they’re digitized, they can’t be easily copied, preserved, as you’ve sorted through a deceased relative’s belongings,
quality-enhanced or shared. you wished you knew what everything was. Even more

8 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2 025
 SPONSORED CONTENT

By listening to family historians, The Health and Social Benefits

of Family Memories
social and health providers,
What if you could fill your free time doing
and leaders throughout many what you love doing and improve your
communities, Vivid-Pix invented the health and well-being. You can!
patent-pending Memory Station and By Rick Voight, creator of Memory Station
tools specifically to help connect and Co-Founder and CEO of Vivid-Pix.
people to their past – and future. Through our primary research we’ve seen how
people living with dementia can benefit when
they talk about the past, especially while looking
at photos or other personal items. Participating
heartbreaking can be the regret you feel at not having cap- in guided conversations like this is called Photo
tured their stories in their own voices. Reminiscence Therapy (pRT). It can help reduce
loneliness, stress and depression and even im-
Start capturing what you can now, before more memories prove brain function.
fade. And make it easy on yourself. Open your Memory
Station Software and pull up an image you’ve already This kind of therapy is affordable, and involves
no medication. It’s just the kind of resource that
captured, downloaded, or received from another. Find the
our large population of aging adults and their
person who can best tell the story of that image. (Maybe it’s
caregivers need. That’s why we developed family
you.) Then hit a button to record an audio narrative that will and continuing education courses, continue our
be saved with the image, so the item and the story behind it research, and are working hard to make pRT as
are reunited and preserved together digitally. widely available as possible.
In the process, you’ve also captured the speaker’s unique pRT is not just for those with cognitive decline,
voice and turns of phrase—and given them the gift of being though. Healthy brains need exercise, too!
heard. Reminiscing reaches into our memory banks and
3. Share your family story. Learning about your family’s activates multiple parts of our brain, releases
past can be exciting, even empowering. Many genealogists happy and healthy endorphins, and can improve
overall social well-being and interconnectedness
discover a deepened sense of identity and connection, or
in so many ways.
answers to long-standing mysteries.
It’s natural to want to share these insights with your rela-
tives. But the challenge remains: how do you turn all those Learn more at
digitized images and research discoveries into a narrative www.vivid-pix.com/reminisce and
your family will enjoy? www.vivid-pix.com/education.

Again, Memory Station Software has an easy answer.

Its Stories feature allows you to string together multiple
images and voice recordings into the most common movie
format, MP4. It’s like creating your own mini-documentary
about your family!
Create short stories—with just one or a few images—or
longer narratives. The videos are easy to share with relatives
via email, video chat, or at your next family gathering.
Upload to social media and take your Throwback Thurs-
day posts to a whole new level. You can even customize
different versions with special photos and messages just for
certain relatives.
Connecting the dots between past and present—and con-
necting your people to each other—is so much easier when
you let Memory Station help you from start to finish. From Rick Voight is a lifelong snapshooter, who’s been in
Missouri, the show-me state? Download a free trial of Mem- the imaging business for a few decades. Founded
ory Station Software onto a Windows computer and create in 2012, Vivid-Pix invents and harnesses technolo-
five Stories – you can even fix ten images. No credit card gies, making it simple for individuals, families, and
required. Watch quick and easy demonstration tutorials at organizations to relive memories and share stories.
www.vivid-pix.com/memorystation.

family t re emagaz ine.com 9

departments L I S A’ S P I C K S

Back in Time

S RECENT READS:
The Record Keeper:
The Unfolding of a
Family Secret
Looking for a compelling
read that blends mystery,
family history, and genetic
genealogy? Check out The
Record Keeper: The Unfold-
ing of a Family Secret in the
Age of Genetic Genealogy
(Legacy Book Press LLC),
a memoir by family his-
torian and author Allison
Barnhart. Her lifelong
interest in family history
led her to order a DNA W S ROAD TRIP:

REGISTER CLIFF: ROD TADLOCK, CC BYSA 4.0 <HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/

test for her father in 2015. Mayberry Make-Believe

BYSA/4.0>, VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS. ALL OTHERS: COURTESY LISA LOUISE COOKE.
The results made them Many of us grew up feeling like Andy, Opie,
question their heritage and Aunt Bee and Barney were part of our family
remove an entire branch of thanks to the highly successful run of “The
their family tree. Andy Griffith Show” from 1960 to 1968 (and
Don’t miss her website the six decades of reruns since). That’s why
<www.allisonbarnhart. it would have taken more than a goat full of
com> featuring “the dynamite to keep me from detouring to Andy’s
scrapbook,” where you hometown of Mt. Airy <www.visitmayberry.
can “connect the story com> on my trip to North Carolina to keynote
with the visuals and the York County Library genealogy conference.
scroll through photos of This faux, friendly town of Mayberry features
people, personal belong- Floyd’s Barber Shop, Walker’s Soda Fountain,
ings, and records men- and the courthouse complete with Otis’ cell. I
tioned in the book.” enjoyed a long conversation with Wally’s Ser-
vice Station attendant Emmy Smith. Oh,
and Goober says “Hey!”

10 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2025
 W HISTORIC HOTSPOT:
Genealogy Carved in Stone
Pioneers who traveled the Oregon Trail
typically spent the night at Register Cliff near
Guernsey, Wyo. Even today, you can see the
names of brave and optimistic souls painstak-
ingly carved into the chalky limestone rock.
Most names were chiseled between 1841 and
1869, but some date back to early fur traders.
Learn more by watching CBS legend Charles
Kuralt in “A Stop Along the Trail” from his
1970s TV series “On the Road” (YouTube:
<youtu.be/-EY5RN6scec?si=sbbVtJFuMw-vf25r>)
and visit Register Cliff Historic Site <www.nps.
gov/places/000/register-cliff-historic-site.htm>.

W RESEARCH TIP:
Calculating Cousins
with FamilySearch
Take the mystery out
of determining cousin
relationships once and for
all using a blog post from
FamilySearch <www.
familysearch.org/en/blog/
cousin-chart>. It’s one
of the best collections
of cousin-calculating
tools and methods, and
well-worth bookmark-
ing. Choose from the
handy visualization chart,
the “Cousin Calculator” S RECORD RICHES:
drop-down menu tool, or a The Oldest Docs on Ancestry.com
math-based methodology. Ancestry.com’s search tools allow
you to filter by century and by 10-year
increments starting from 1600. But
does that mean 1600 is as far back as
their records go? Not by a long shot!
According to the genealogy giant
W Podcast <www.ancestry.com/c/ancestry-blog/
Hear more great genealogy Lisa Louise Cooke through-the-time-machine-the-
finds from Lisa and other is the founder of the oldest-documents-on-ancestry-amu>,
Genealogy Gems web-
experts in our free bimonthly site and podcast <www. deeds from Mühldorf, Germany, are
PODCAST podcast <www.familytreemag lisalouisecooke.com>,
and host of the Family
the oldest on the site, with some dat-
azine.com/genealogy-podcast>. ing back to 1300. Thanks to state-of-
Tree Podcast <www.
familytreemagazine. the-art technology, even the oldest
comgenealogy- documents in poor condition can be
podcast>. legible and searchable! 

family t re emagaz ine.com 11

departments STORIES TO TELL

Heirloom Scouting

David Smith poses in front of a quilt of Scouting memorabilia made for him by his daughter, Clare Long.

An expertly crafted quilt

tells of a man’s lifelong passion for Scouting.

S
couting is an important part of Clare Long’s fam- “I’ve been a sewist for a long time, and I’ve made a lot
ily story. Her father, David Smith, achieved the top of memory quilts from dress shirts and T-shirts,” she
rank of Eagle Scout at the age of 14. Later, as a father says. Long, who lives in Westlake, Ohio, is a member of a
and scoutmaster, he shepherded her six younger broth- local quilting guild and a board member of Sew4Service
ers through their own Scouting experiences. <www.sew4service.org>, a sewing charity.
As the only girl in the family, Long wasn’t left out. Despite her experience, Long knew the Scouting
“I was in Explorer Scouts in the early 1970s, when the quilt would be a challenge. While shut-in during the
Boy Scouts of America opened it up to women,” she COVID-19 pandemic, she started sketching out a plan
says. “I was one of the fi rst women, and I went to a and deconstructing the sashes, uniforms and bandan-
camp in Canada.” as. She also used a flag and patches that had never been
As her father’s 90th birthday approached in 2022, sewn on.
Clare considered how to honor his life. Then she remem- Long had paper items, too: the Scouting handbook,
bered the box of his Scouting memorabilia they dis- an Eagle Scout card, and small cards that listed the
covered when her father downsized to an independent steps to becoming an Eagle Scout. She scanned them,
senior-living community. then used a photo-transfer technique to print them on
COURTESY CLARE LONG

“He doesn’t hang on to a lot, so the fact that he kept it specialty paper.
said it meant a lot to him,” she says. Her brother Brian, The pocket of her father’s uniform was one of her
who had taken the box home for safekeeping, suggested favorite details. “I realized while I was sewing that the
she transform its contents into a quilt. patches on the pocket would have been hand-stitched

12 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2025
 Smith’s Scouting uniform pocket became part of the quilt,
including the patches that his mother originally sewed on it.

Long used a photo-transfer technique to include merit badge

certificates and other files in her father’s quilt.

by his mother, my grandmother Ruth Smith,” Long says.

“She passed away in November 1947, about a year after
he became an Eagle Scout, so I never met her. I felt con-
nected with her when I worked on that.”
For a center panel, she chose the large blue piece
“Modern Scouting” made by Riley Blake Designs
<www.letssew.com/modern-scouting-banner-panel.
html> to anchor the design. Coordinated fabrics from
that same line fill in the background. Each corner has
an applique fleur-de-lis (an emblem of the Boy Scouts
of America), and Long also appliquéd her father’s name
across the top. Embroidered at top-right is the date
David became an Eagle Scout, and Long wrote a birth- Long embroidered 10-3-1946—the date Smith became an
day message on the back next to a reproduction of a Eagle Scout.
newspaper article about David’s award.
Long finished the quilt in about two months. She pre-
sented it to her father at his birthday party, which was
attended by five of her six brothers, along with many Sunny Jane Morton is a
grandchildren and great-grandchildren. contributing editor for Family Tree
Magazine, content manager at Your
“The quilt was a total surprise,” she says. “He kept DNA Guide and industry expert on
looking at it and going over every detail, remembering the giant genealogy websites.
this and that.” 

family t re emagaz ine.com 13

 THREE’S
COMPANY
Which big genealogy website is the best for you?
This comparison highlights the features—and billions
of records—at Ancestry.com, FamilySearch and MyHeritage.
by SUNNY JANE MORTON

14 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2 025
 The top three genealogy websites
change so quickly that it’s nearly impossible
to keep up with them. During the time it took
Millions of genealogists—some of
to write this article, millions of new records them perhaps your relatives—build
were added to Ancestry.com <www.ancestry.
com>, FamilySearch <www.familysearch.org> their family trees on Ancestry.com,
and MyHeritage <www.myheritage.com>.
In fact, each hosts billions of records.
FamilySearch or MyHeritage.
Billions.
What does that number even mean? It’d take
more than 30 years to glance at each of 1 billion 623,000 name-searchable digitized books;
records for just one second per record. And at and nearly 1.7 billion names in their com-
this rate, it would take you about 1,014 years to munity tree. Its largest 20 searchable col-
get through MyHeritage’s current collections; lections comprise less than 20% of its total
1,800 years to get through Ancestry.com’s; and content.
an estimated 1,976 years to finish at FamilySe-  MyHeritage’s Collection Catalog <www.
arch. You’d have to live nearly 4,800 years to myheritage.com/research/catalog> counts
see them all. (And that’s only if they stop adding 32 billion records. The largest five collec-
records now.) tions account for nearly 40%: two are fam-
Here’s a quick glance at overall numbers: ily tree indexes and three are newspaper
 Ancestry.com <www.ancestry.com/ name indexes.
search/collections/catalog> claims more This quick top-of-the-charts comparison
than 60 billion total records. The top 20 hints at the different strengths of each site. It
collections account for a third of that total, doesn’t tell the whole story, of course. For that,
and are comprised of US city directories, you need to dig deeper into their historical
US yearbooks, user-submitted family trees, records; tree-building and photo capabilities;
and newspaper indexes. DNA tools; and the cost of using each website.
 FamilySearch <www.familysearch.org/ That’s what we’ll do in this article. Read on
search/collection/list> reports 13.1 billion to learn which how these three major websites
searchable names from historical records; stack up—and which are best deserving of your
5.2 billion unindexed record images; time and money.

Across the Pond FINDMYPAST

with Findmypast <www.findmypast.com/subscribe>
Based in London, a fourth website
Total searchable names 12 billion
called Findmypast <www.findmypast.
com> is especially helpful for those Records for how many countries 25-plus
who have ancestry from the United
Kingdom, Ireland and places where U.S., Australia, Canada, Ireland,
Selected geographic strengths
the British Empire governed. The New Zealand, U.K.
unique Catholic Heritage Archive Individual tree or collaborative? Individual
collects religious records from select
FAMILY TREE MAGAZINE COLLECTION

US cities. DNA testing? None

Here’s how Findmypast compares
to the other websites we’ve talked $299.99, with a 15% discount
Per-year access cost*
for renewals
about in this article.
*Findmypast revamped its subscription options in fall 2024 (see page 7). This price is for US
subscribers; UK subscriptions cost £199.99. Pay-as-you-go credits are also available.

family t re emagaz ine.com 15

 HISTORICAL RECORDS

W
hen it comes to historical records, who FamilySearch: Global Reach
has what? Or more precisely: Who has The not-for-profit FamilySearch aims to enable
where? You want the website that has everyone—from everywhere—to research their
the most records about your ancestors in their family history for free. Its founding organiza-
locations. tion (the Genealogical Society of Utah) began
Ancestry.com, FamilySearch and MyHeritage filming records in 1938, and FamilySearch still
all host significant numbers of collections for sponsors an aggressive global digitizing pro-
the United States, Canada, Mexico, the Unit- gram. This enormous head start explains why
ed Kingdom and Ireland, as well as Belgium, FamilySearch collections cover some 200 coun-
Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the tries (compared to Ancestry’s 88 countries and
Netherlands, Spain and Sweden. MyHeritage’s 60-plus countries).
Record depth isn’t equal for each place, FamilySearch prioritizes at-risk records and
Record view pages though. For example, Ancestry.com and Family- those most useful to genealogists that are not
at Ancestry.com Search dominate the United States, Mexico and already available at other websites. Look here
(top) and Italy, while MyHeritage and Ancestry.com reign for the best (if incomplete) coverage for Africa,
FamilySearch over French records. And each site has its own Central and South America, South Korea, the
(bottom) geographic strengths. Philippines, India and China. Use FamilySe-
arch’s full-text search tool to make discover-
ies in collections that haven’t been indexed yet
<www.familysearch.org/search/full-text>.

Ancestry.com: United States and More

Like FamilySearch, Ancestry.com is U.S.-based.
But as a for-profit company, Ancestry.com has
to make money. You can identify its target mar-
kets by the country-level subscriptions they
offer: the United States, Australia, Canada,
France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Sweden and
the United Kingdom.
In recent years, Ancestry.com has doubled
down on its US collections and made an even
deeper commitment to diversifying them. New
releases include records of Japanese intern-
ment, Chinese immigration exclusion, and
enslaved Americans. A 2024 agreement with
the National Archives will allow for the digiti-
zation of WWII- and Korean War-era records;
immigration and naturalization collections

tip
Many—but not all—of the millions of
records added to the big genealogy web-
sites in the past few years are AI-extract-
ed indexes of record-rich historical news-
papers. Use the indexes to identify articles
of interest, then view scans of the original
pages to see the stories in context.

16 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2 025
Records: compared
ANCESTRY.COM FAMILYSEARCH MYHERITAGE
Total searchable names
(including records 60 billion 66.24 billion (estimate*) 32 billion
and family trees)

Searchable names in trees,

3.6 billion 1.6 billion 6.1 billion
including possible duplicates

Records for how

88 About 200 64
many countries?

the U.S., Austria, Australia, Global, especially the U.S., the U.S., Australia, Denmark,
Belgium, Canada, Czechia, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Germany,
Selected Denmark, France, Germany, Germany, Guatemala, India, Israel, the Netherlands, New
geographic Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Italy, Mexico, Peru, the Zealand, Norway, Spain
strengths Mexico, New Zealand, Philippines, Portugal, South Sweden, the U.K.
Poland, Spain, South Africa, Korea, the U.K.
Sweden, the U.K.

*Many of FamilySearch’s records are not searchable. This estimate includes the 14.76 billion searchable names from records and the FamilySearch Tree as of this
writing, plus average figures for unindexed images and books: 10 names for each of 5.1 billion unindexed images, and 100 names for each of 622,000 books.

from the West Coast; and more Asian American MyHeritage has also been integrating histori-
and Native American collections. cal newspapers indexes into its search experi-
Another development at Ancestry.com has ence, thanks to its new website OldNews <www.
been the AI-assisted creation of enormous oldnews.com>. At OldNews, you’ll see that same
indexes of births, marriages, deaths and other commitment to curating records outside the
name-mentions in newspapers digitized at sis- English-speaking world. (See the January/Feb- Record view
ter site Newspapers.com <www.newspapers. ruary 2025 issue for a tutorial.) at MyHeritage
com>. Ancestry.com subscribers can search the
indexes; if you bundle your Ancestry.com sub-
scription with Newspapers.com, you can click
through to view newspaper images and attach
them to your family tree profiles.

MyHeritage: Looking International

Unlike FamilySearch and Ancestry.com,
MyHeritage is not a US company; it’s based in
Israel. Although it serves English-speaking
audiences, MyHeritage primarily focuses on
other audiences (and their ancestors’ records).
This diversity makes it an excellent complement
to the other two genealogy giants.
A quick measure of MyHeritage’s top regional
interests can be taken from the list of languag-
es in which its blog is published: in addition to
English and Hebrew, you can read it in Danish
(Dansk), Dutch, Finnish (Suomi), French, Ger-
man, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish
and Swedish. Their collection catalog is packed
with records for corresponding places.

family t re emagaz ine.com 17

 ONLINE FAMILY TREES

M
illions of genealogists—some of them In return, you can search other people’s pub-
perhaps your relatives—build their fam- lic trees, too. This may lead to connections with
ily trees on Ancestry.com, FamilySearch fellow researchers and new information about
or MyHeritage. While some simply copy others’ your shared roots.
trees or make unsourced claims, many others MyHeritage hosts about 52 million trees with
share priceless photos, documents and stories— a total of 6.1 billion names. Ancestry.com more
items you want to find. than doubles that tree count, with 131 million
trees containing 3.6 billion names. Of course,
Individual Trees there’s a lot of duplication within and across
At Ancestry.com and MyHeritage, you build both sites. But you may also make unique finds
your own individual trees. You can choose for at each.
your trees to be public (viewable by others) or The availability of MyHeritage’s website in
private (seen only by you and those you spe- 42 languages and non-English-language record
cifically invite). Others can’t change your trees collections attract users in many languages and
unless you allow them. many parts of the world. This is an especially
good place to look for any “never-left-the-home-
land” relatives as well as descendants of branch-
es who left for far-flung places. MyHeritage
also imports (and makes searchable) family tree
data from FamilySearch, French website Filae
<www.filae.com> and others that cater to differ-
ent regions of the world.
At Ancestry.com, you can name-search sepa-
rate collections of public and private trees for
your relatives. When you find a promising result
in a private tree, you can contact the owner for
permission to view the entire tree. You can also
search indexes to RootsWeb WorldConnect,
Geneanet <en.geneanet.org> and Genealo-
gieOnline trees <www.genealogieonline.nl/en>
(the latter two are French and Dutch resources,

Above: an Ancestry.
com family tree in
Vertical view

Right: a MyHeritage
family tree, created by
users “Adam and Jill”

18 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2 025
Family Trees: compared
ANCESTRY.COM FAMILYSEARCH MYHERITAGE
Individual tree or
Individual Collaborative Individual
collaborative?

Cost Free* Free Free* up to 250 people

 Compatibility with  Compatibility with  Compatibility with

Family Tree Maker and Family Tree Maker and Family Tree Builder
Other key features RootsMagic RootsMagic  Cross-language support
 Additional features  Profiles can be edited by
available with Pro Tools any registered user
*Building family trees is free at Ancestry.com and MyHeritage, though you’ll need a paid subscription to view most record hints.

respectively). Search all Ancestry.com tree files that you want shared. FamilySearch’s free
data—even without logging in or purchasing a Memories app lets you take photos or record
membership—at <www.ancestry.com/search/ audio files from within the app or import them,
categories/42>. then attach them to family tree person pages.
Both Ancestry.com and MyHeritage have
The Singular FamilySearch Family Tree tools for colorizing and sharpening images and
At FamilySearch, tree-building has a very dif- for creating slideshow-style narratives. MyHer-
ferent structure. The site has just one shared, itage’s photo enhancements are the most robust: An excerpt of
global Family Tree with 1.66 billion names in You can have an animated version of a relative’s the FamilySearch
it. Ideally, each person who has ever lived only photo narrate their own story and even turn still Family Tree in
has one profile (or “person page”). Though this photos into AI-imagined video clips (page 6). portrait view
hasn’t yet come to pass, the emphasis on one-
profile-per-person drastically reduces the dupli-
cation seen on other websites.
FamilySearch’s tree model prioritizes col-
laboration over privacy. All the information
you and others enter about deceased persons is
public, viewable and (most critically) editable by
anyone. The idea is that multiple descendants
entering information about the same person can
compare notes and build upon each other’s dis-
coveries. Of course, there are pros and cons to
this model.
Without logging in, anyone can search the
entire tree to see what others have document-
ed about their relatives at <www.familysearch.
org/search/tree/name>. With your free Fami-
lySearch login, you can also connect yourself
to the tree. Just add yourself and any private
profiles for your living parents, grandparents,
etc., working backward until you connect to
existing profiles for deceased relatives.

Photos and Memories

Public tree profiles are a great place to store
digitized photos, documents, and even audio

family t re emagaz ine.com 19

 DNA TESTING

B
oth Ancestry and MyHeritage sell autoso- relevant. Ancestry’s Ancestral Journeys
mal DNA tests. Many people test at both (formerly Communities) and MyHer-
companies, or test at Ancestry and transfer itage’s Genetic Groups <education.
their results to MyHeritage. (Ancestry does not myheritage.com/article/genetic-groups-on-
accept transfers.) Chances are good that, over myheritage> reveal ties to smaller, specific
time, you’ll learn new information from each historical populations that were so cohe-
test and want to take advantage of each site’s sive over time that they developed distinct
specific tools. genetic signatures.
How do these play out in your results? Let’s
Ethnicity Reports say that both companies define you as Finn-
AncestryDNA and MyHeritage DNA both pro- ish. MyHeritage may also assign you to one
vide two-tiered reports of your ancestral ori- of 54 different Finnish Genetic Groups, such
gins, based on their algorithms and panels: as Northern Savonia or Oulu. AncestryDNA,
 Ethnicity regions: The first is a higher- meanwhile, may assign you to one of their 25
level estimate of your broader or deeper Finnish groups, such as Vaasa Coast and North-
origins. AncestryDNA reports on 168 ern Ostrobothnia. These are clues to specific,
regions where people lived 1,000-plus recent places you should expect to find some-
years ago <support.ancestry.com/s/ where on your family tree.
ancestrydna-regions>. MyHeritage divides All these estimates continue to evolve. Some
the globe into 79 ethnicities, some location- people find the updates unnerving. No, you
Ancestral Regions based and others cultural. haven’t suddenly become “more Scottish” or
(ethnicity estimate)  Historical populations: The second “less Mexican.” Rather, the testing companies
report from report is much more granular and are becoming better at distinguishing genetic
AncestryDNA recent—and therefore genealogically connections to places and peoples. If you test-
ed a few years ago and haven’t looked at your
results since, you should.

DNA Matches
Both testing companies provide lists of your
DNA relatives (called matches) unless you opt
out. Both report how much DNA you share
with each match; the length of your longest
segment of shared DNA (which has implica-
tions for how distantly you may be related);
and a list of possible genetic relationships for
each match. Both allow you to communicate
with your matches through the testing com-
pany website.
Additionally, both have robust tools to help
you sleuth out your relationships to DNA match-
es. Provided you have the right subscription, you
can view matches’ family trees and the amount
of shared DNA between your matches. Paying
Ancestry.com subscribers can access that site’s
chromosome painter; MyHeritage’s chromo-
some browser is available to those who tested
directly with the site or pay a one-time fee.

20 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2 025
DNA Tests: compared
ANCESTRYDNA MYHERITAGE DNA
<www.ancestry.com/dna> <www.myheritage.com/dna>

Test format Saliva sample Cheek swab

Retail price $99 USD $89 USD

Globally, except France, Iran, Israel,

Availability 122 countries Lebanon, Libya, North Korea, Russia,
Somalia, Sudan and Syria

Ethnicity regions 168 79

Specific, recent historical populations 3,103 Ancestral Journeys 2,114 Genetic Groups

Testers 25 million-plus 8.9 million-plus

Theory of Family Relativity, showing

ThruLines*, showing possible
Relationship-reconstruction tool possible tree relationships between
descendants of specific ancestors
individual matches

Chromosome tool Chromosome painter* Chromosome browser*

Upload raw data No Yes

*Requires additional one-time payment or ongoing website subscription

Tree-reconstruction tools
Both MyHeritage and Ancestry offer tools that
attempt to build family trees when sufficient
data is available:
 Ancestry’s ThruLines tool shows, by
ancestral couple, all other testers who
appear to descend from them (and how
they descend).
 The Theory of Family Relativity at
MyHeritage provides possible relationship
paths between you and specific matches.
In both cases, the tree-reconstruction tools
may use data from your tree at the site, your
match’s tree and other trees, as well as his-
torical records. (MyHeritage also pulls tree
data from the global trees at FamilySearch
and Geni <www.geni.com>.) Subscribers can
explore the records or tree profiles to verify sug-
gested connections.

Other Tools Ethnicity Estimate

Each testing company also has unique premi- from MyHeritage DNA
um tools.
 Ancestry’s SideView technology divides
your ethnicity Regions, Journeys and
matches in two (for each parent). This

family t re emagaz ine.com 21

 works even without testing your parents, tree subscription for full access, while those who
though you must decide for yourself which transfer can pay a one-time fee of $29 per test.
parent is which. (Learn more at <www.myheritage.com/pricing>.)
 MyHeritage’s AutoClusters tool groups AncestryDNA testers can purchase a sub-
your matches into color-coded networks scription to unlock all the tools, either an
representing branches on your family tree. AncestryDNA Plus membership or one of
This can save you a lot of work! the site’s record subscriptions. Enhanced
How do you get access to the premium DNA DNA matches require the Ancestry Pro Tools
tools at each company? Those who test at add-on. (See <support.ancestry.com/s/article/
MyHeritage must maintain an ongoing family AncestryDNA-and-Memberships>.)

COST

S
peaking of subscriptions, you may be won- FamilySearch Center (find one near you at
dering how much it costs to use these <locations.familysearch.org>) or, occasionally,
record-rich genealogy websites. from the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City.
As previously mentioned, FamilySearch At MyHeritage and Ancestry.com, you can
is always free. You do need to sign up for a create (or upload) a family tree and search
free guest user login. Certain record collec- records with a free guest login. But most record
tions may only be accessible in-person at a free search results are behind a paywall. First-time

Subscription Costs: compared

ANCESTRY.COM FAMILYSEARCH MYHERITAGE

<www.ancestry.com/offers/ <www.myheritage.com/
subscribe> pricing>

Family tree plans:

$264/year, U.S. Discovery: $129 or $209/year
Basic per-year access Free
US records access
Data plan: $189/year

$299/year, Complete plan:

Complete $395/year, World Explorer:
Free family trees, data, and
per-year access global records access
photo tools

$599/year, All Access: adds

Enhanced access to some $399/year, Omni:
Newspapers.com Publisher
collections for members of adds OldNews, Geni.com Pro,
Additional options Extra, Fold3 (military records),
the Church of Jesus Christ of Legacy Family Tree Webinars,
Ancestry Family Plan (add
Latter-day Saints unlimited photo scanning
additional Ancestry users)

Ancestry.com offers separate rates for monthly and every-six-month payment options. (The prices here reflect the latter.) MyHeritage bills annually, and offers
discounts for the first year of subscription.

22 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2 025
 Website
Cheat Sheets
Over the years, we’ve published
dedicated, eight-page cheat sheets
for each of the four websites men-
tioned in this article. Each discusses:
 An overview of key tools and
features, from top record col-
lections to DNA tools
 Tips for searching genealogy
records and building family
trees
 A comparison of subscription
options, if relevant

You can find them in print or PDF

formats at <store.familytreemaga-
zine.com>. The PDF versions are
available as a discounted bundle at
<store.familytreemagazine.com/
genealogy-websites-cheat-sheets>.

subscribers get substantial discounts; see the  Rotate your subscriptions. Sign up for
table on page 22 for regular subscription prices. Ancestry.com for a month or six months,
If your budget requires you to limit your sub- then try MyHeritage, or vice versa. By the
scriptions, consider these options: time you cycle back, new collections may
 Get free logins to Ancestry.com and be available.
MyHeritage. Learn about the free versions
•••
of the site and watch for discounted offers
to try a subscription. The reality is this: All three sites are so
 Use institutional editions at a Family- record-rich and powerful that you won’t want
Search Center or other library near you. to content yourself with using just one. You’ll
Just be aware that you can’t build your tree want to know which to turn to first in any giv-
while using an institutional account, and en situation.
access to some record collections may also You literally have billions of reasons to dig in
be limited. at each one of these giant genealogy websites.
And so little time—you’d better get started if you
want to finish in less than 4,800 years. 

E
Find directories for more articles on each
Sunny Jane Morton, contributing edi-
website at <www.familytreemagazine.com/
ancestry>, <www.familytreemagazine. tor at Family Tree Magazine, regularly
com/familysearch>, and <www.family scouts for new user-contributed material
treemagazine.com/myheritage>. at all three of these giants.

family t re emagaz ine.com 23

 SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

RootsTech 2025
SPECIAL PREVIEW
The excitement is building for RootsTech, the biggest gathering of genealogists and family
historians each year. In 2025, RootsTech will be held in Salt Lake City, Utah, from March 6
through 8. Whether you plan to attend in-person, virtually, or not all, Family Tree is pleased to
provide you with this preview of special announcements and offers from our advertisers.

Since its first iteration in 2010, the aptly-named audio recordings and video. Through Sister site
RootsTech has been a showcase for both the NewspaperArchive <www.newspaperarchive.
roots of time-tested family history research com>, you can uncover the full story of your
strategies and the tech that makes genealogy ancestors’ lives in vivid detail. And thanks to a
more accessible than ever. recent partnership with FamilySearch, Storied
The conference draws thousands of attendees users can access a growing collection of vital
each year, as well as the top minds in family his- records, immigration documents, and historical
tory. Companies big and small share their lat- resources.
est innovations at the exhibit hall and through You also want a genetic genealogy tool that
presentations, and even use the event to launch can accommodate your family’s unique struc-
new tools and features. ture, in addition to its stories. BanyanDNA
As of this writing, we’re still waiting to learn <www.banyandna.com>, officially launched
all that the conference will bring. But here are at RootsTech 2024, does exactly that. Its family
three early takeaways from the innovations to tree-builder supports a wide variety of genetic
come out of RootsTech 2025. relationships—no matter how complex—and
can even help you overcome challenges such as
1. CELEBRATE WHAT MAKES YOUR FAMILY pedigree collapse.
SPECIAL Your family’s unique circumstances require a
No two families are alike, and telling your indi- unique set of research skills. Connect with a
vidual family’s story has been a major focus of network of genealogy professionals who have
recent conferences. exactly the expertise you need through the
Storied <www.storied.com>, a platinum spon- Association of Professional Genealogists <www.
sor of RootsTech 2025, pairs accessible family apgen.org>. Each member follows a code of eth-
trees with tools for creating rich multimedia ics for professional practice and works within
narratives that bring stories to life. This innova- established genealogical standards.
tive platform makes capturing and preserving The group’s newly redesigned directory <mem
family memories easy through text, photos, bers.apgen.org/members/directory/search_
24 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2 025
 :KHUHIDPLO\WUHHV
FRPHWROLIH
'LVFRYHUWKHPRVWDIIRUGDEOHDQGLQQRYDWLYH
ZD\WRSUHVHUYH\RXUIDPLO\ VOHJDF\

7KHDIIRUGDEOHDQGHDV\ZD\WREXLOGPHDQLQJIXOIDPLO\WUHHVXSORDG
SKRWRVDQGYLGHRVVHDUFKUHFRUGVDFFHVVQHZVSDSHUDUWLFOHVDQGFUHDWH
NHHSVDNHERRNVşLQRQHSODFH

6WDUWLQJDW
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6FDQWR'RZQORDG
3/$7,1806321625 VWRULHGFRP 6WRULHG$SS
 SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

No two families are alike, and telling

your individual family’s story has
been a major focus of recent
conferences.

APG.php?org_id=APG> allows you to filter

members by location, expertise (e.g., place or
ethnicity), keyword or language. It’s so useful
that we at Family Tree Magazine have used it to
identify qualified authors and speakers.

2. RESEARCH RELATIONSHIPS, NOT JUST

NAMES AND DATES
Every genealogy project is unique. With more
than 2,000 members in 40+ countries, APG can For many, connection—not just data—is at the
help you find the right professional genealogist heart of family history. You can use tech tools
to accomplish your family history goals.
to explore and document the relationships that
6WDUW\RXUVHDUFKDWDSJHQRUJ bind your ancestors to each other, and you to
them.
Studying relationships, including genetic ones,
can provide further connection. BanyanDNA’s
robust and flexible tree-builder can be used to
validate your tree and test alternative genea-
logical hypotheses using real-time solutions
and shared-DNA values. Alternatively, you can
upload a GEDCOM file, with customized high-
lighting features that help spot and visualize
patterns.
Like DNA, unidentified photos (common in
many historians’ homes) are often untapped
sources for relationships and stories. Related
Faces <www.relatedfaces.com> specializes in
revealing the mysteries within family photos.
Their patented technology analyzes photos,
compares faces, and shows similar faces in clear
pairings to help you identify unknown people.
Your photos then become powerful tools, mak-
ing your genealogical searches more insightful
and exciting. RootsTech attendees receive 20%
off their first subscription through April 2025.
Not all important relationships are gene-
alogical. Storied allows you to add non-
traditional relationships to people in your tree:
26 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2 025
 THE GENEALOGY CENTER
IS NOW OPEN!

UNCOVER YOUR FAMILY HISTORY

IN FORT WAYNE, INDIANA

“
The Genealogy Center at the Allen County
Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana is home to I have been there
one of the largest genealogy collections in the
[the Genealogy
world. Even better, they offer free, one-on-one
Center] many times
help from professional genealogists—making
and found a lot
Fort Wayne, Indiana one of the best places in
the country to research your family history. of information on
different branches
of my family. Anyone
IT’S WORTH A TRIP: interested in
Located in downtown Fort Wayne in a 42,000 sq. ft. state-of-the-art facility, the
genealogy research
Genealogy Center is just a block from dozens of restaurants, museums, hotels, and
other welcoming amenities. should go there.

From our top-rated Fort Wayne Children’s Zoo and minor league ballpark, to our JANICE M.
USA Today-lauded food, arts, sports and recreation scene, Fort Wayne is sure to delight
the entire family. It’s worth the trip!

Start Planning your Family History Getaway at:

VisitFortWayne.com/GenealogyGetaway

The Genealogy Center at the

Allen County Public Library
900 Library Plaza, Fort Wayne, IN 46802 927 S Harrison St, Fort Wayne, IN 46802
(260) 421-1225 | [email protected] (260) 424-3700
GenealogyCenter.org VisitFortWayne.com/Genealogy
 SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

neighbors, friends, classmates, pets and more.

And StoriedBooks (beautifully crafted, full-
color books) depict your family’s journey across
generations. Unique QR codes provide readers
with easy access to digital content.

For many, connection—not just

data—is at the heart of family
history. You can use tech tools to
explore and document the
relationships that bind your
ancestors to each other, and
you to them.

3. TRAVEL FOR FAMILY HISTORY

Though technology has made records eas-
ier to find than ever before, many resources
can still only be accessed in person. In addi-
tion to RootsTech, Salt Lake City is also home
to the FamilySearch Library, which usually
has extended operating hours during the
conference.
Another can’t-miss destination for genealogists
is Fort Wayne, Ind. Home of the Allen County
Public Library and its famous Genealogy Center
<www.acpl.lib.in.us/genealogy>, Fort Wayne
has the distinction of being one of the best
places in the country to research family his-
tory. On-site professionals offer free one-on-
one consultations and can tap the more than
1 million physical items held by the Gene-
alogy Center. Attractions including the Fort
Wayne Zoo and the Fort Wayne TinCaps base-
ball team make the trip fun for the whole
8¾ĞăĘŮ،łáá
8¾ĞăĘŮ،łááΨϚΨ€ĦĦŎņŒá×ÿ family <www.visitfortwayne.com/genealogy
getaway>.
9LVLWXVRQOLQHRUDWRXUERRWK
Can’t travel yourself? Find a professional “on
RIIGLJLWDOGRZQORDGV
the ground” who can help you request records,
)UHH3')RIWKLVLVVXH
browse archives, or translate foreign-language
1HZVXSGDWHV
6SHFLDOPHVVDJHVIURP documents. Look through APG’s directory for
VSRQVRUV researchers with the right know-how.

28 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2 025
SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

family t re emagaz ine.com 29

 Question Marks
1790 1800 1810 1820 1830 1840
Names
Head of household’s name ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣

All househould members’ names

Birth information
Age range: Free white males and females ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣

Age of all household members

Birthplace
Parents
If parents foreign-born
Parents’ birthplaces
Parents’ language
Marriage
Married in the census year?
Marital status
No. of years married
Immigration and citizenship
Number of aliens (non-naturalized residents) ␣ ␣

Year of immigration
Number of years in the United States
Naturalization status
Occupation and education
Occupation, industry and/or trade
Level of education
If attended school in past year
Ability to read and/or write
Other
Ability to speak English/mother tongue
Number of free colored people ␣ ␣ ␣

Relationship to head of household

Occupation, industry and/or trade
Veteran status ␣

Number of children mothered

(both living and total)
* The enslaved were not mentioned in the US census by name. Look for ** Most records of the 1890 census have been lost. See <www.family
the formerly enslaved beginning in the 1870 census, or in dedicated treemagazine.com/records/census/1890-census-substitutes> for
slave schedules taken as part of the 1850 and 1860 censuses. advice on “replacing” the 1890 census using other records.

30 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2 025
 The US census asked different questions in different years.
Learn what details it collected (and when) with this at-a-glance table.
BY THE EDITORS OF FAMILY TREE MAGAZINE

1850 1860 1870 1880 1890** 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950

␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣

␣* ␣* ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣

␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣

␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣

␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣§ ␣§

␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣

␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣

␣ ␣ ␣§

␣ ␣ ␣ ␣

␣ ␣

␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣

␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣

␣ ␣

␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣

␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣

␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣§

␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣

␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣ ␣

␣ ␣ ␣ ␣§ ␣§

␣ ␣ ␣ ␣§

§
Question asked only of a subsection of the population,
rather than of all respondents.

family t re emagaz ine.com 31

 US Census Checklist
Track which censuses your
E
Find year-by-year guides (including down-
ancestors would have appeared loadable forms for each census) at <www.
familytreemagazine.com/census-records>.
in—and if you’ve found them yet!

1950
1790

1800

1810

1820

1830

1840

1850

1860

1870

1880

1900

1910

1920

1930

1940
Ancestor Name

32 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2 025
 RESEARCH GUIDE

LOUISIANA
by ANDREW KOCH

FOR CENTURIES, LEADERS HAVE RECOGNIZED lation swelled, and Louisiana became a royal colony with
the importance of the land where the mighty Mississippi New Orleans as its capital in 1731.
River meets the Gulf of Mexico. “There is on the globe New Orleans—near the mouth of the Mississippi River
one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and as it enters the Gulf of Mexico—became a crucial port. Fer-
habitual enemy,” wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1802. “It is tile lands around the riverbanks were ideal for cultivating
New Orleans.” indigo, tobacco, sugar and cotton, leading to highly profit-
It’s not surprising, then, that powers jockeyed over what able plantations.
is now Louisiana: first indigenous peoples, then France, The Choctaw name for New Orleans’ location, Bulban-
then Spain and Great Britain, and finally the United cha (“place of foreign tongues”), could well describe the
States. Each resident left its mark on Louisiana, whose cosmopolitan population who has lived there over the
rich, diverse Creole character is known worldwide. centuries. French-speaking refugees from British-held
Read on to learn how to find your ancestors in the Peli- Acadia (ancestors of the city’s famous Cajun population)
can State. arrived in the 1760s. Slavery’s prominence led to a large
Black population, and Germans settled the “German
LOUISIANA: A HISTORY Coast” in the 1720s and 1730s. The city later attracted emi-
Indigenous peoples have lived in what is now Louisiana for grants from the Caribbean, particularly during the Hai-
thousands of years. Around the time of European contact tian Revolution (1791–1804).
and settlement, notable groups included the Chitimacha, Spain and France were allies in the Seven Years’ War.
Choctaw, Coushatta (Koasati), Houma and Tunica-Biloxi. After its end, French Louisiana came under Spanish owner-
All but the Houma are federally recognized tribes today; ship with one exception: West Florida (the “Florida parish-
the Houma are recognized only by the state of Louisiana. es” east of the Mississippi) was given to Great Britain. Spain
France claimed the Mississippi River Valley as early as quietly returned Louisiana to France after a few decades,
1682, when René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, and Napoleon Bonaparte (preoccupied with con-
sailed down the Mississippi River from Illi- quering Europe) sold it to the United States.
nois. But Spaniard Hernando de Soto, who FAST FACTS The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 nearly
arrived nearly 150 years earlier, holds the doubled the size of the United States. The
distinction of the first European known STATEHOOD: newly acquired land was split into two
1812
to visit what is now Louisiana. territories: the Territory of Orleans
FIRST FEDERAL CENSUS:
Colonization in the area didn’t (comprising most of the modern state)
1810 (as Orleans Territory)
begin in earnest until the early 1700s, and the District of Louisiana (com-
BIRTH AND DEATH RECORDS BEGIN:
and initial attempts floundered. 1911 (state) prising the rest). The former quickly
Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne MARRIAGE RECORDS BEGIN: gained a large-enough population to
de Bienville founded New Orleans in from formation (county) apply for statehood, which it achieved
1718, naming the city for the Duke of CONTACT FOR VITAL RECORDS: in 1812.
Orléans (who was regent to the 8-year-old LA Dept. of Health Soon after, New Orleans was the site
king of France, Louis XV). The area’s popu- of a climactic battle with Great Britain.

family t re emagaz ine.com 33

 LOUISIANA

Andrew Jackson, unaware that peace with Great Brit-

ain had been negotiated two weeks earlier, successfully
Each resident left
defended the city from a British assault.
Louisiana was reliant upon the institution of slavery, and
its mark on Louisiana,
New Orleans was a hub of slave-trading. Despite the state’s
large population of free Blacks, many living there were
whose rich, diverse
hostile to slavery’s abolition. Louisiana’s government voted
to secede on the eve of the Civil War. The critical port of
Creole character
New Orleans was captured by the Union in early 1862, then
occupied until war’s end.
is known worldwide.
Louisiana was readmitted to the Union in 1868. Postwar
Reconstruction temporarily elevated the rights of African
Americans. Jim Crow laws passed after the U.S. Army’s a-birth-or-death-certificate-1> holds records within those
withdrawal in 1877 ushered in an era of race-based segre- confidentiality windows, then transfers responsibility
gation, intimidation, and voting discrimination. for them to the state archives <www.sos.la.gov/Historical
It was in New Orleans in 1892 that Homer Plessy was Resources/ResearchHistoricalRecords/Pages/OnlinePublic
arrested for boarding a whites-only train car; the Supreme VitalRecordsIndex.aspx>. At the state archives website,
Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that the “separate but you can search record indexes, then request certified
equal” policy behind the law forbidding this was consti- copies for a fee.
tutional. A few years later, the state government added Marriages were documented by individual parishes
restrictive voting rules—poll taxes, literacy requirements, earlier and with more consistency than births or deaths.
and a “grandfather clause”—that effectively stripped Afri- FamilySearch holds many marriage records, plus an index
can Americans of the right to vote. from 1837 through 1957 <www.familysearch.org/search/
The state’s reliance on agriculture led to bleak conditions collection/1807364>. Colonial-era marriages may be men-
in the later 1800s. Discoveries of sulfur and oil—as well as tioned in French or Spanish judicial records.
the rise of forestry—helped diversify the state’s economy. Orleans Parish (coterminous with the city of New
And Populist politicians like the nationally known Huey Orleans) is a notable exception, keeping birth records as
Long (who served as Louisiana’s governor, then senator early as 1790. The state archives include early vital records
before being assassinated) encouraged reforms. in its collections, though note that individual certificates
Louisiana is widely known today for its unique cuisine, may not be available. Individual parishes have custody of
nightlife and jazz music, as well as a vibrant Mardi Gras marriages that took place there, but Orleans Parish mar-
celebration that reflects its multicultural heritage. riages are maintained by the state department of health
and are subject to a 50-year privacy rule.
BAYOU VITALS
Louisiana first required birth and death records in 1911, COUNTING LOUISIANIANS
though it didn’t achieve widespread compliance for a few Louisiana first appears as Orleans Territory in the 1810
years. Vital events prior to that were generally recorded census. Records survive for all but the 1890 census, and are
by religious organizations—notably the Catholic Church, widely available on genealogy websites. Note that French DOUG HANSGATE ISTOCK
which was most prominent before the Louisiana Purchase. and Spanish placenames and surnames may be misspelled,
State law restricts access to civil birth records less especially in early censuses.
than 100 years old and death records less than 50 years The state hasn’t taken any of its own censuses. Howev-
old. The department of health <ldh.la.gov/page/request- er, colonial-era counts (including one from 1799, right on

T I M ELI N E
1541 1682 1718 1731 1762
Spaniard Hernando René-Robert Cavelier New Orleans is founded Louisiana becomes Spain temporarily
de Soto reaches the de La Salle claims a royal colony gains Louisiana
Mississippi River “Louisiana” for France

34 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2 025
 Atchafalaya National
Wildlife Refuge

1803 1812 1815 1861 2005

The United States Louisiana becomes Andrew Jackson defeats Louisiana joins the Hurricane Katrina
purchases Louisiana the 18th state British forces at New Confederate States devastates New Orleans
from France and forms Orleans, the last battle of America; it’s
the Territory of Orleans of the War of 1812 readmitted in 1868

family t re emagaz ine.com 35

 LOUISIANA

TOOLKIT
the cusp of US acquisition) have been published in book
Websites format. Ancestry.com has a collection of various French
censuses from the early 18th century <www.ancestry.com/
Cyndi’s List: Louisiana <www.cyndislist.com/us/la>
search/collections/48009>, and the New Orleans Public
FamilySearch Research Wiki: Louisiana Library has a few censuses for that city <archives-nola
<www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Louisiana,_United_ library.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16880coll95/
States_Genealogy> id/23/rec/1>.
Voter registration books, some dating to the 1850s,
LAGenWeb <www.lagenweb.org> contain much of the same information as censuses.
Linkpendium: Louisiana The New Orleans Public Library has microfilmed cop-
<www.linkpendium.com/la-genealogy> ies of Orleans Parish books <www.nolacityarchives.org/
guide-to-genealogical-materials/voter-registration>.
Louisiana Digital Library
<www.louisianadigitallibrary.org> OTHER RECORDS
Find your Louisianian ancestors in these resources.
Publications O Immigration Records: Passenger lists were first
required by the federal government in 1820. Arrival
64 Parishes magazine and encyclopedia
records from New Orleans are held by the National
<www.64parishes.org>
Archives and searchable at FamilySearch <www.family
The Historic Indian Tribes of Louisiana: From 1542 search.org/search/collection/1916009>. They’re also
to the Present, reprint edition by Fred B. Kniffen et al. available at subscription websites Ancestry.com <www.
(LSU Press) ancestry.com/search/collections/7484> and MyHer-
itage <www.myheritage.com/research/collection-20413/
Historical Atlas of Louisiana by Charles Robert louisiana-new-orleans-passenger-lists>.
Goins and John Michael Caldwell (University of Records of earlier arrivals may be included in publica-
Oklahoma Press) tions such as First Families of Louisiana by Glenn Conrad
History of Louisiana, four volumes by Charles Gayarré (Claitor Publishing).
(Pelican Publishing) O Newspapers: The New Orleans Public Library holds a
large collection of newspapers published in “The Big Easy”
Louisiana: A History, sixth edition edited by Bennett and its environs <www.nolacityarchives.org/newspapers-
H. Wall and John C. Rodrigue (Wiley-Blackwell) serials/newspapers>. Some microfilmed papers are avail-
able to view only by appointment at the library, though digi-
Old Families of Louisiana by Stanley Arthur and
tal papers can be accessed online with a library card or at
George Campbell Huchet de Kernion (Clearfield)
subscription website Newspapers.com <www.newspapers.
com>. The library’s website has an obituary index covering
Archives & Organizations 1804 to 1972, which is free to search <www.nolacityarchives.
Louisiana Historical Society org/guide-to-genealogical-materials/obituary-index>.
<www.louisianahistoricalsociety.org> Find other titles through Louisiana State University
<lib.lsu.edu/louisiananewspapers> and the Library of Con-
Louisiana State Archives <www.sos.la.gov/Historical gress’ Chronicling America <chroniclingamerica.loc.gov>.
Resources/LearnAboutTheArchives/Pages/default.aspx>  O City Directories: Find directories dating to 1811
National Archives at Fort Worth through the New Orleans Public Library <www.nolacity
<www.archives.gov/fort-worth> archives.org/city-directories>. Some of them are avail-
able at Ancestry.com <www.ancestry.com/search/
New Orleans Public Library collections/2469>, and MyHeritage also has a large collec-
<www.nolacityarchives.org/guide-to-genealogical- tion of city directories <www.myheritage.com/research/
materials> collection-10705/us-city-directories>.
State Library of Louisiana: Genealogy
Andrew Koch is the editor of Family Tree Magazine.
Collection <library.la.gov/resources/louisiana-
collection/genealogy>

36 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2 025
 RESEARCH GUIDE

WASHINGTON
by KATHLEEN L. WEBER

IT’S HARD TO DENY WASHINGTON’S NATURAL the way to the 54th. The Treaty of 1818 allowed joint Brit-
beauty. The Cascade Mountains divide the state into east ish-US occupation, though the British Hudson Bay Compa-
and west, and the Columbia River serves as its southern ny was the most prominent force in the region. The British
border with Oregon. The waters of Puget Sound drew founded Fort Vancouver in 1824 in an attempt to protect
early settlement and connect communities to the Salish their fur-trading interests.
Sea and beyond, including into Canada and directly to the American settlement flowed gradually into the area by the
Pacific Ocean. mid-1800s, with pioneers arriving by horseback, then cov-
Find your ancestors in the Evergreen State with this ered wagon, then railroads. The famous Oregon Trail passed
timeless genealogy advice. just to Washington’s south, with some pioneers choosing to
settle the northern banks of the Columbia River.
WASHINGTON: A HISTORY The United Kingdom ceded its claim to Oregon Country
Native peoples have lived in what is now Washington for south of the 49th parallel in 1846 with the Oregon Trea-
thousands of years. By the time of European contact, nota- ty. This largely ended tensions between the two powers,
ble groups included the Chinook, Nez Perce, Puget Sound though they flared again in 1859 during the so-called “Pig
Salish, Walla Walla and Yakama. The names of many towns War” in the San Juan Islands.
and rivers attest to their presence: Walla Walla and Yakima Congress initially organized the land as Oregon Terri-
(referring to those respective peoples), and Tacoma and tory, then spun off Washington Territory in 1853. At the
Seattle (both derived from Puget Sound Salish names). The time, it included parts of Idaho and Montana.
state is home to 29 federally recognized tribes. Residents initially sought “Columbia” as the name of
A few intrepid European and American adventurers their new territory, but Congress felt that would cause
arrived in the 18th century by land and by sea, in search confusion with the District of Columbia. Ironically, they
of a famed Northwest Passage. They found waters full of chose “Washington” instead, in honor of the famous gen-
salmon, forests full of timber, abundant wildlife, eral and president. To distinguish the territory
wide expanses of open space, rivers for trans- or state from that “other Washington” (the
portation, and communities of Native FAST FACTS national capital), look for online resources
Americans. for Washington state.
STATEHOOD:
Lewis and Clark travelled west American settlers founded towns on
1889
under President Jefferson’s discovery the Puget Sound and near the Colum-
FIRST FEDERAL CENSUS:
mandate, all while recording their 1850 (as Oregon Territory); bia River, taking advantage of the area’s
observations. In 1805, their path 1860 (as Washington Territory) ample natural resources through log-
crossed Eastern Washington and BIRTH AND DEATH RECORDS BEGIN: ging, fishing, mining and farming.
along the Columbia River, toward the at formation (county); 1907 (state) Early standout communities founded
Pacific Ocean. MARRIAGE RECORDS BEGIN: in the 1850s include Walla Walla and
at formation (county); 1968 (state)
The United Kingdom also maintained Port Townsend, plus Seattle and Olympia
claim to the broad “Oregon Country,” CONTACT FOR VITAL RECORDS: (the state’s capital) along the Puget Sound.
WA State Dept. of Health
which stretched from the 42nd parallel all Nearby Tacoma was incorporated in 1875.

family t re emagaz ine.com 37

 WASHINGTON

Find your ancestors in the Evergreen State

with this timeless genealogy advice.
Encroachment on Native lands (hastened by gold rushes) ing for vital records (as well as for other documents in the
and broken agreements with the US government led to a archives’ robust collections), try alternate spellings.
series of wars with tribes throughout the 1850s. Territory
Governor Isaac Ingalls Stevens brokered treaties with sev- COUNTING ON WASHINGTON
eral tribes that confined them to reservations. Settlements in modern Washington were enumerated as
Washington gained statehood in 1889—marking an part of Oregon Territory in the 1850 US census. Washing-
important transition for genealogists from territorial to ton first appeared as a territory in its own right in 1860.
state records. The new state served as a jumping-off point Conducted every 10 years, the US census is widely available
for gold-seekers to Alaska and the Yukon, drawing a diverse on multiple websites, though most records of the 1890 cen-
population. By 1890, foreign-born residents (notably from sus have been lost.
Canada, England, Germany and Scandinavia) made up 28 Washington Territory helpfully kept many of its own
percent of the population. censuses, with some places enumerated as early as the
Among Washingtonians are many entrepreneurs, with 1850s. Counts in 1889 and 1892 can stand in for the lost 1890
internationally known brands such as Amazon, Boeing, federal census. The Washington State Digital Archives,
Nordstrom, Starbucks and UPS all being founded in Wash- Ancestry.com <www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1018>,
ington. Famed tech company Microsoft has been head- and FamilySearch <www.familysearch.org> each hold digi-
quartered in the state since 1979. tal copies.

EVERGREEN VITALS OTHER RECORDS

The state first required birth and death certificates in 1907, Find your ancestors in these resources.
and the state department of health holds documents cre- O Court Records: Courts have been active in Washing-
ated after July 1 of that year <doh.wa.gov/licenses-permits- ton since the territorial government was formed, and have
and-certificates/vital-records>. Prior to that, vital record- heard probate, civil, naturalization and criminal cases.
keeping was left to individual county auditors. Records You can find some records at FamilySearch and Ancestry.
are widely available through the Washington State Digital com; original files are held by the state archives and can be
Archives <digitalarchives.wa.gov>. requested for a fee. (Territorial-era cases are called “Fron-
Marriage records were not required by the state until 1968. tier Justice” case files.) A court records index for King
Prior to that time, counties documented residents’ marriag- County, the most-populous in the state, is held by the Seat-
es. The state digital archives hold record images; you’ll have tle Genealogical Society <www.seagensoc.org>.
access only to indexes for more-recent marriages. O Land Records: Like most Western states (which
Newspapers often report local marriage licenses issued are public-land states), Washington had its land distrib-
or wedding festivities, so they can often be a source of addi- uted by the federal government. Early residents may
tional details. Specific churches may also retain records of have received land grants directly from the government,
marriages, as well as baptisms, and burials. These records while others took advantage of the Homestead Acts of
are widely dispersed—consult the FamilySearch Research 1862. The Bureau of Land Management <glorecords.blm. DREW PAYNE ISTOCK
Wiki for suggestions <www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/ gov> holds land patents for these initial transfers of land.
Washington_Church_Records>. Subsequent transactions (usually between individuals)
Note that the state digital archives’ search form is are recorded by the county in its deed books. Each coun-
unforgiving when it comes to name-spelling. When look- ty has its own policy for if, how and where records are

T I M ELI N E
1805 1818 1846 1853 1859
Lewis and Clark reach A treaty establishes joint The Oregon Treaty Washington Territory US and British troops
modern Washington on occupation of Oregon confirms Washington is spun off from both occupy the San
their survey of the West Country between the is US territory Oregon Territory Juan Islands in the
United States and the so-called “Pig War”
United Kingdom

38 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2 025
Mount Rainier
National Park

1889 1909 1911 1962 1980

Washington become The Alaska-Yukon- Pend Oreille County is The Space Needle in Mount St. Helens erupts,
the 42nd state; fires Pacific Exposition created from Stevens Seattle opens for the making international
wreak havoc in Seattle, attracts millions of County, the last major Century 21 Exposition headlines and creating
Spokane and Ellensburg visitors to the region change to Washington’s world’s fair widespread destruction
county borders

family t re emagaz ine.com 39

 WASHINGTON

TOOLKIT available online; start with FamilySearch and the county

clerk’s office.
Websites O Newspapers: These document life events in differ-
ent ways than more-traditional records, and often with
Cyndi’s List: Washington <www.cyndislist.com/us/wa>
interesting detail. From a newspaper article, for example,
FamilySearch Research Wiki: Washington I learned that my great-grandparents’ window blew out in
<www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Washington,_United_ May 1915 after a boat full of dynamite mysteriously explod-
States_Genealogy> ed in Seattle’s Elliott Bay.
Free sites include both Washington Digital Newspapers
Linkpendium: Washington <www.washingtondigitalnewspapers.org> and Chroni-
<www.linkpendium.com/wa-genealogy> cling America <chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/newspapers/
WAGenWeb <www.wagenweb.org> washington>. Subscription sites include Newspapers.com
<www.newspapers.com/?region=us-wa> and Genealogy-
Washington Digital Newspapers Bank <www.genealogybank.com>.
<www.washingtondigitalnewspapers.org> O Military Records: Though far from the main theaters
of the Civil War, Washington Territory provided volunteers
Washington Rural Heritage
who maintained defensive positions elsewhere. And her
<www.washingtonruralheritage.org>
residents served in other conflicts, notably the various Indi-
Washington State Digital Archives an Wars. The FamilySearch Research Wiki provides a good
<digitalarchives.wa.gov> overview of military record sources <www.familysearch.
org/en/wiki/Washington_Military_Records>; FamilySearch
Publications and the state archives both offer ample sources to explore.
The National Archives holds many original military docu-
Exploring Washington’s Past: A Road Guide to History, ments <www.archives.gov>.
revised edition by Carmela Alexander and Ruth Kirk O Libraries and Societies: The Washington State
(University of Washington Press) Library <www2.sos.wa.gov/library> is Washington’s flag-
ship institution, but several other libraries have statewide
Historical Atlas of Washington by James W. Scott and
coverage. The Seattle Public Library has city directories
Roland L. De Lorme (University of Oklahoma Press)
from across the region, a fabulous map collection, digi-
Washington State Place Names: From Alki to Yelm tized newspapers, and genealogy librarians on staff <www.
by Doug Brokenshire (Caxton Press) spl.org/online-resources/genealogy-resources>. And Uni-
versity of Washington Libraries have collected original
Washington’s History: The People, Land, and Events
documents that are open to the public <lib.uw.edu/special
of the Far Northwest, revised edition by Harry Ritter
collections>. Request an appointment ahead of visiting if
(WestWinds Press)
you’d like help from library staff.
Likewise, historical and genealogical societies around
Archives & Organizations the state can hold valuable resources for your genealogi-
cal search. The Seattle Genealogical Society, for example,
National Archives at Seattle <www.archives.gov/seattle>
has a Pacific Northwest (PNW) Special Interest Group
Seattle Genealogical Society <www.seagensoc.org> that meets virtually each month to share sources, strate-
gies and successes. Run an online search for societies in
Seattle Public Library: Seattle Room Collections
your area of interest. Or visit Washington Rural Heritage
<www.spl.org/books-and-media/unique-collections/
<www.washingtonruralheritage.org>, where groups have
seattle-room-collections>
uploaded documents and photos.
Washington State Genealogical Society
<www.wasgs.org> Kathleen L. Weber’s ancestors moved to Washington by 1909. She’s
done extensive Washington research for her upcoming book Arrivals:
Washington State Historical Society How My Eight Great Grandparents Got to Washington, 1882–1909. Her
<www.washingtonhistory.org/research> specialties include using DNA for US and Irish research, and she’s
Washington State Library a faculty member of the Seattle Genealogical Society’s Beginning
<washstatelib.libguides.com/GenealogyatWSL> Genealogy virtual course. Contact her at the Association
of Professional Genealogists <www.apgen.org/users/kathy-weber>.

40 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2 025
Find Your U.S.
Ancestors
Each state-by-state guide includes:
• How-to tutorials for finding records
Notes on how and when key documents were kept
in the state, including vital records, state censuses
and land records

• Historical summaries and timelines

Narrative history with special emphasis on events that
affected your ancestors, including year of statehood,
large migrations, and major border changes

• Links to key resources

Websites, books, and archives and organizations for
further research

1 READ AS PART OF
FAMILY TREE MAGAZINE
Each issue contains two
2 VIEW ONLINE FOR FREE
<www.familytreemagazine.com/
explore-by-state>
3 PURCHASE & DOWNLOAD PDFS
<store.familytreemagazine.com/
genealogy-research-state-guides>
newly updated guides on New states added each month. Purchase ($9.99 per guide; $49.95
a rolling basis. Subscribers for full collection) includes per-
collect all 52 guides. petual access to the most-recent
version of the guide.
RESEARCH GUIDE PUBLICATION HISTORY
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Hawaii Sep/Oct 2023 New Jersey Jan/Feb 2024 Washington, DC Jul/Aug 2024
Idaho May/Jun 2021 New Mexico May/Jun 2023 West Virginia Mar/Apr 2023
Illinois Sep/Oct 2024 New York Mar/Apr 2024 Wisconsin Jul/Aug 2024
Indiana Sep/Oct 2022 North Carolina May/Jun 2021 Wyoming Mar/Apr 2024
Iowa Jul/Aug 2022 North Dakota May/Jun 2024 UP NEXT*
Kansas Sep/Oct 2021 Ohio Mar/Apr 2021 Kentucky, May/Jun 2025
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Kentucky Jan/Feb 2021 Oklahoma Nov/Dec 2024
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*Schedule subject to change

How Swede It Is Delve into your Swedish heritage with these five key records.
by DAVID A. FRYXELL

Gamla stan f you’re among the millions of Americans them lived in Chicago alone, and the Windy City
(“Old Town”) with at least some Swedish ancestry, ranked behind only Stockholm as the city with
in Stockholm you’re in good company. From Chicago the largest number of Swedish inhabitants.
to Seattle, through Minneapolis and the If your idea of exploring your Swedish heri-
Great Plains, Swedish immigrants laid tage is a trip to Ikea, we have good news: It’s
the rails and broke the sod in America. never been easier to investigate your Swedish
Swedish-Americans flew the Atlantic (Charles ancestors—no little hex wrenches required.
Lindbergh) and landed on the moon (Buzz

1
Aldrin), made movies (Greta Garbo, Ingrid EMIGRANT LISTS
Bergman, Mark Hamill) and popular music Though US passenger records can help
(Harry Nilsson, the Beach Boys’ Wilsons), and establish your ancestors’ Swedish ori-
wrote literature (Ray Bradbury, Carl Sandburg). gins, they’re unlikely to contain the key
The total number of Swedes who left for to unlocking Swedish records: the name of the
America over the years was equivalent to about home parish. Fortunately, Sweden has its own,
MIKDAM/ISTOCK

one-quarter of Sweden’s entire 1880 population; typically more detailed emigration records.
by 1910, almost one in five of the world’s Swedes Ancestry.com has a collection of passen-
lived in the United States. More than 100,000 of ger and other records (Emigranten Populär),

42 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2 025
 caption

including those from eight Swedish ports

<www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1189>
and a dedicated collection for Göteborg
(Gothenburg) <www.ancestry.com/search/
collections/1910>.
ArkivDigital <www.arkivdigital.net> has the
records from the four primary ports: Göteborg,
Malmö, Stockholm and Helsingborg. These
emigrant records, called Emihamn, were com-
piled from police records of departing Swedes.
Swedish churches not only tracked emigrants
to “Amerika” but also between parishes. Online
COURTESY DAVID A. FRYXELL

collections of church records can be searched

for these records of persons moving in (infly-
ttnings) and out (utflyttningslängder). Ancestry.
com has a collection in Swedish <www.ancestry.
com/search/collections/61085>. Ship register for the Rollo, which launched in 1870

family t re emagaz ine.com 43

 It’s also possible Swedish emigrants might
have sailed from Hamburg, Germany. Check
Ancestry.com for these records <www.
ancestry.com/search/collections/1068>. Oth-
ers left via Copenhagen and can be found in
Denmark emigration indexes on Ancestry.
com and MyHeritage, or directly through
the Danish archives <www.aalborgstadsarkiv.
dk/UA.asp?UA=UAProtokol>. Departures from
Oslo, Norway, would be recorded in the
records of that country’s Digitalarkivet <www.
digitalarkivet.no>.
When searching for Swedish emigrants, try
every possible name variation and use search
wildcards when possible. On Ancestry.com, for
example, Jans* will find both Jansdotter and
Jansson. Consider that first names might vary,
too; Hannah could be Johanna or even Anna. Church and graveyard
An ancestor’s birth date can be the key to find- in Kumla, Örebro
ing the right emigrant among many similarly-
named Swedes (who may have changed their
names in America, anyway).
Centralized rules for Swedish recordkeeping

2
CHURCH RECORDS lagged until about 1860, when standardized
Why is it so important to discover your printed forms were issued.
ancestors’ parish back in Sweden? Even then, however, records continued to vary
Unlike in the United States, where from place to place until 1894, when another
vital records were kept by government authori- standardization initiative was implemented. All
ties, the role of vital recordkeeper in Sweden fell pre-1895 church books were sent to a regional

JONAS RØONNBRO/ISTOCK; BYSTUDIO/ISTOCK

to the established church (the Lutheran Church archive (landsarkiv) for safekeeping. If you find
of Sweden) for centuries. Sweden itself didn’t gaps in the parish records, these originals likely
begin keeping civil vital records until 1950. were lost or destroyed—just in case, though, you
The oldest Swedish church records (kyrk- can check neighboring parishes.
böcker) date from 1608 to 1615. Nationally, ArkivDigital boasts the largest collection of
the Church laid down regulations for records Swedish church books, which you can search
in 1686; adherence throughout the kingdom via a name index. You can also browse 102 mil-
was not widespread until the 1720s, however. lion record images there.

T I M ELI N E
1397 1638 1734
Sweden, Denmark and Settlers found New Sweden New Swedish common law
Norway form the Kalmar Union in present-day Delaware; requires estate inventories,
it’s conquered by the Dutch among other reforms
in 1655
1523
Gustav Vasa is elected king of 1753
a newly independent Sweden, 1686 Sweden adopts the
and begins de-emphasizing the A new church law Gregorian calendar
role of the Catholic Church in requires every parish
favor of the Lutheran Church to keep vital records
of Sweden

44 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2 025
 Births and baptisms
Records of birth ( födde) typically include the
names of parents, christening witnesses, birth
and christening dates, and the child’s name and
birthplace. In early records, the columns show
only date (birth/christening), name, name of
parent(s) and witnesses.
Other Swedish birth and baptism records
( födde och döpte) may have a few more columns Birth record, 1761
or more-formal headings, typically:
 Number
 Name
 Born (month/day)
 Christening (month/day)
 Parents’ names and residences
 Witnesses’ names and residences
 Conditions

Marriages Birth records, 1782

Swedish records of marriage (vigde) usually
include the names and residences of the couples,
date and place of the marriage, and sometimes
names of their parents.
Columns could be quite varied in Swedish
marriage records, but often represented:
 Number
 Date of banns
 Marriage date
 Name and residence of groom and bride Death register, 1895
 Remarks (facts about groom, bride’s spon-
sor, inheritance information)
 Number
Deaths and burials  Death date
COURTESY DAVID A. FRYXELL

Swedish death (döde) records commonly include  Name

the burial place, age at death, cause of death, and  Residence
last residence and occupation. Standard head-  Age
ings include:  Cause of death

1804 1814 1867 1905

The Edict of Inoculation Denmark cedes Crop failures and the Norway gains its
begins widespread Norway to Sweden Storsvagåret (Year of Great independence
smallpox vaccination, leading Weakness) prompt more
to a valuable record set Swedes to emigrate
c. 1845 1995
Swedish immigration to Sweden joins the
1809 the United States begins 1901 European Union
Sweden loses its last in earnest after emigration Swedes are required to
holdings in Finland laws are lifted adopt permanent surnames
to Russia

family t re emagaz ine.com 45

If your idea of exploring your Swedish
time. These were often notated in household
heritage is a trip to Ikea, we have examination records (see the next section),
good news: It’s never been easier to rather than in standalone records.
Churches also kept track of vaccinations,
investigate your Swedish ancestors— which were crucial given the ravages of small-
no little hex wrenches required. pox before a vaccine was made available in 1804.
Sweden recorded the shots in household exami-
nation books, using a variety of abbreviations: v,
vac or vacc, as well as s or sm for “smallpox.”
Some death records helpfully give the birth

3
date rather than age, which you can use to CENSUSES AND HOUSEHOLD
quickly scan for an ancestor. You may also find EXAMINATIONS
columns that mark married (gift) or unmar- Sweden did not take genealogically
ried (ugift). useful “censuses” (per se) until recent-
ly. But it does have a wealth of annual church
Other church records records called “household examinations” (hus-
In addition to vital records, the state Lutheran förhörslängder) that can be used much like a cen-
churches recorded when a child—typically as a sus. You can also find collections of these cleri-
teenager—was confirmed and ready to receive cal surveys online, searchable as though they’re
his or her first communion. These records may true censuses.
list details such as parents’ names and resi- First introduced by Bishop Rudbeckius in
dences, and can even partly substitute for birth the 1620s, surveys listed all the farms in the
records when those can’t be found. parish, with names and vital statistics about
Swedish confirmation records (konfirma- everyone living there. They even included per-
tionslängder) were not required, however, and sonal notes ( fräjd) from the pastor about these
some parishes didn’t keep them at all. Check members of his flock. Revisions to the forms
online collections of church records, by parish; in 1894 downplayed the counts’ religious
ArkivDigital and the Riksarkivet (SVAR) <sok. emphasis.
riksarkivet.se> are generally the most complete. Household examination books for many par-
You may also find communion records (nat- ishes date from the 18th century. They update
tvardsgång or kommunionlängder). They can be the status of parishioners and their house-
Street in used as a sort of census substitute, as they show holds—all listed by name—and span about five
Ystad, Scania that an individual was in a parish at a particular to 10 years per sheet (typically on two facing

MARTIN WAHLBORG/ISTOCK; DAVID RUMSEY HISTORICAL MAP COLLECTION; PYTYCZECH/ISTOCK

46 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2 025
 Norbotten

Västerbotten

Jämtland

Västernorrland

Political
Jurisdictions Gävleborg

of Sweden
Dalarna
Uppsala
Västmanland

Sweden is divided into 25 Värmland

provinces (Landskap), Örebro Stockholm
dating from medieval Södermanland
Västra
times. Those these no Götaland Östergötland
longer serve any adminis-
trative purpose, but they’re Jönköping Gotland

sometimes referenced in Halland Kronoberg Kalmar

records (and many Swedes Slane
identify with their tradi- Blekinge
tional province).
The country was also
divided into counties (Län), established in 1634; see the graphic.
Their names, number, and boundaries changed several times through
the years; for example, the province of Småland was briefly its own
county, but is now divided between the counties of Jönköping, Kro-
noberg and Kalmar. And at various times, provinces and counties have
overlapped and shared names. FamilySearch’s Catalog sorts records
by counties as they were drawn in around 1875.
Records are often further organized by parish (socken) within
a county. The parish—as the key to church records—is the most
important unit for research, though counties are also divided into
civil municipalities.
 pages). The intervals vary, simply depending on
tip
how much space the parish needed before start- Learn the Swedish alphabet, which has
ing a fresh set. three additional letters compared to the
Unlike censuses, household examinations Roman alphabet: Å (å), Ä (ä), and Ö (ö).
reflect changes within that span as they hap- Those three are usually alphabetized
pened: births, marriages, deaths, and families after Z in that order, so don’t despair if
moving in or moving out. These notations may you can’t find a name or place beginning
appear at the far right of the page(s), so be sure with Ä among the other As.
to study the entire entry.
As a result, the husförhörslängd provides
a valuable cross-reference to other Swedish strategy, in fact, involves working back and forth
church records for the same parish. A useful between household examination records and
church vital records for the same parish.
Make note of the specific location within
the parish in which you find a record, so you
can more readily find ancestors in the other
The Top Swedish records. With a little luck, you can trace a fam-
Genealogy Websites ily backwards in time—revealing husförhörslän-
gd entries, births, marriages and deaths—to the
beginning of a parish’s written records.
The free FamilySearch site <www.familysearch.org> has millions of Just as in US census records, however, expect
Swedish vital records from church books along with nearly 47 million spelling variations and erroneous dates in these
searchable records from household examination books (1880 to Swedish enumerations. The shifting patterns
1930—in effect, annual censuses) <www.familysearch.org/search/ of patronymics versus permanent surnames, as
collection/2790465>. Not long ago, such records could only be pains- well as the use of nicknames, can also lead to
takingly browsed on microfilm. surprises and roadblocks.
The subscription site Ancestry.com <www.ancestry.com> has Key to identifying your correct Swedish
searchable church vital records (by county), some clerical surveys ancestors is a birth date, which follows through
(1880 to 1896 <www.ancestry.com/search/collections/9731>), and sev- from one survey to the next and function almost
eral essential emigration resources. MyHeritage <www.myheritage. like a Social Security number in the United
com>, also by subscription, has 158 million household examination States. When forced to browse pages of chal-
records <www.myheritage.com/research/collection-10180/sweden- lenging handwriting, scan for a birth date to
household-examination-books>, church vital records, and several help spot an individual in the crowd.
Stockholm-specific collections. Household examination records are available
In Sweden, the Riksarkivet national archives (SVAR) <sok.riks on several websites, including:
arkivet.se/specialsok> has digitized church records as well as military  Ancestry.com <www.ancestry.com/search/
and other less-common records. Its census database <sok.riksarkivet. collections/9731>
se/folkrakningar>, compiled from household examinations, lets you  ArkivDigital <www.arkivdigital.net/online/
search any or all years from 1860 to 1930. The site has enough English register/population-of-sweden>
that you can get by.  FamilySearch <www.familysearch.org/
However, the most-complete collection of Swedish records overall— search/collection/2790465>
in easier-to-read color, with English instructions throughout—belongs  MyHeritage <www.myheritage.
to the subscription ArkivDigital service <www.arkivdigital.net>. com/research/collection-10180/
Search by archive (usually at the parish level) or in an ever-growing col- sweden-household-examination-books>
lection of indexes <www.arkivdigital.net/registers>, including:  Riksarkivet (SVAR) <sok.riksarkivet.se/
 vital records, notably church books folkrakningar>
 emigrant records
 estate inventories

E
 muster rolls Read an expanded version of this article at
 household examination records from 1800 to 1947 <www.familytreemagazine.com/heritage/
swedish/swedish-genealogy-records>.

48 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2 025
 4
LAND AND PROBATE RECORDS
Swedish records of land ownership
and usage cover 1570 to the pres-
ent, and sometimes contain infor-
mation of genealogical value. Most Swedish
land records created before 1875 have not his-
torically been indexed; that year, new records
called lagfartsböckerna and inteckningsböck-
erna were introduced.
FamilySearch holds land records for many
places in Sweden. Try to identify the relevant
district court (häradsrätt), then drill down in
the FamilySearch Catalog <www.familysearch.
org/search/catalog> for it and click on “Land and
Property.” Sweden’s national archives has also
scanned many of these records. Select the record
type on the Databases page <sok.riksarkivet.se/
specialsok>; options include land registers ( jorde-
böcker, about 1630 to 1750) and land certificates
(lagfartsböcker, 1875 to 1933).
Probate records—court records that describe
the distribution of an ancestor’s estate after
death—often pre-date even church vital records.
In Sweden, an act passed in 1734 made it man-
datory to conduct an inventory of a deceased’s
estate (bouppteckning), although only an esti-
mated one-quarter of the population actually of military service cards <www.arkivdigital.net/ Skansen Kronan
did so. The preamble to this inventory can often online/register/military-service-cards>. in Gothenburg
contain genealogically useful information. Riksarkivet has scanned images of army
Estate inventories and probate records have rolls as far back as the 17th century and muster
been indexed for many Swedish häradsrätt, and rolls, organized by regiment <sok.riksarkivet.
can be found online at ArkivDigital and the Rik- se/generalmonsterrullor>. You can also search
sarkivet <sok.riksarkivet.se/bouppteckningar>. a collection of 500,000 entries in the Central
These indexes as well as the actual records are Soldiers Registry <www.soldatreg.se/in-eng-
organized by district court. lish>, all of which come from the allotment sys-
tem. Though not complete, the registry covers

5
MILITARY RECORDS 1682 to 1901.
If your ancestors (like my great-great-
•••
uncle) served in the military before
leaving Sweden, you can easily search Start your Swedish research with the readily
for them in the general muster rolls (gener- available church records, then supplement with
almönsterrullorna) at ArkivDigital. other collections as necessary. You’ll be well
The main index <www.arkivdigital.net/ on your way to finding your Swedish roots and
online/register/general-muster-rolls-in-index> appreciating your heritage—maybe more easily
includes “allotment” (indelta) regiments—essen- than putting together that Ikea bookcase. 
tially, draftees—and enlisted regiments from
1683 to 1883. A “quick find” index <www.arkiv- Contributing Editor David A. Fryxell
MIKAEL SVENSSON/ISTOCK

digital.net/online/register/quick-find-for-the- is the author of The Family Tree Scandi-

general-muster-rolls> covers only allotment reg- navian Genealogy Guide (Penguin Ran-
iments. More-detailed information on soldiers dom House).
from 1902 to 1950 can be found in a collection

family t re emagaz ine.com 49

50 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2 025
 Rediscover the lives of the women in your
family tree with this advice for overcoming
brick walls in female ancestor research.
by GENA PHILIBERT-ORTEGA

When she died in 1958, Alma Clark Cha-

tham was laid to rest in Bellville, Texas, next to her hus-
band, Walter. Her simple grave marker provides her
birth and death dates, but just her married name: Mrs.
Walter Chatham.
Fifty years after her death, Alma’s granddaughter
visited the gravesite and asked, “Why is she not laid to
rest with her name?” Only the person who bought the
marker would know the answer to that question.
References to only “Mrs. [Husband’s Name]” are just one of
many challenges that genealogists face when tracing women.
Contemporary laws impacted women’s ability to own property,
NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY/UNSPLASH; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

vote, and partake in the legal and political systems. That means
many women were almost invisible in the eyes of the law—and invis-
ible in genealogy records.
Recordkeeping is even more dire for women of color.
Enslaved women, considered property, left few (if any)
records. And despite the 19th Amendment in 1920, Black
women couldn’t vote in practice in some parts of the
country because of restrictive voting laws. Likewise,
Puerto Rican women weren’t given the right to vote
until 1929; in practice, most still couldn’t vote until a
requirement on reading and writing was lifted six
years later.
 As you add information, consider what
records you’d expect your ancestor to appear
Contemporary laws impacted women’s in. For example, say you know that a woman
of interest married John Albert at some point
ability to own property, vote, and after 1850, but you only know her as “Mrs.
partake in the legal and political John Albert.” Look for John in the 1860 census
and see what details it has about a wife. That,
systems. That means many women were in turn, could lead you to the 1870 census or a
child’s birth certificate.
almost invisible in the eyes of the law—
and invisible in genealogy records. What’s Her Name?!?
CHALLENGE
Maiden names are infamously
# difficult to learn, and present
perhaps the greatest obstacle
to genealogists. But a woman’s
We need to meet challenges like these by con- first name at birth can also be
sidering location, history and the availability of hard to find.
the records that were created. Here are five com- Fortunately, specific records tend to list a
mon obstacles genealogists face when research- woman by her maiden name. (See the sidebar
ing women—and how to overcome them. on pages 54 and 55 for some examples, and
this web article for more suggestions <www.

ɕ
I Don’t Know familytreemagazine.com/female-ancestors/12-
CHALLENGE
Where to Start records-for-finding-elusive-maiden-names>.)
# You may feel overwhelmed
by how much you don’t know Marriage records
about a female ancestor. But as A marriage license or certificate includes infor-
always in research, you should mation about the couple, including the bride’s
start with what you know, even maiden name. A resource such as the Family-
if that’s not much. Search Research Wiki <www.familysearch.org/
Create a timeline for your ancestor that en/wiki/Main_Page> will help you determine
includes her name and every life event you know what records are available. You’ll obviously
about her, even if you haven’t fully verified all need to search for the marriage record by the
the facts. Add details about her husband or chil- groom’s name.

NATHAN ANDERSON/UNSPLASH
dren, if relevant. This should be a living docu-
ment, meaning you add information to it as you Delayed birth records
work. Don’t worry that some of the details will In the 20th century, new benefits programs
need to be corrected later. (such as Social Security) and forms of identifi-

TIM ELI N E: US WOM EN’S HISTORY

1839 1848 1850 1855
Mississippi is the first The Seneca Falls Conven- All members of a house- Non-citizen women
state to allow married tion approves a “Declara- hold are named in the US can become citizens by
women to own prop- tion of Sentiments” on census, rather than just marrying one or by her
erty in their own name, women’s rights; New the head of household husband naturalizing
albeit under the control York passes the Married
of their husbands Women’s Property Act,
which allows women to
own and control property

52 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2 025
 cation required applicants to have birth certifi- your woman of interest, perhaps because of a
cates. If the applicant didn’t already have one— remarriage.
for example, because they were born before
vital recordkeeping was mandatory—they could Children’s birth and death records
receive a delayed birth record. This would These sometimes specifically ask for mother’s
include parents’ names and (if she was still maiden name. Recordkeeping laws vary by US
alive) an affidavit from the applicant’s mother. state, however, so they may not be consistently
kept. And different states may have asked for
Death certificates different details.
In addition to often including a maiden name,
these may have named the deceased’s parents. Military pension records
However, biographical details on death cer- If a woman’s husband served in the
tificates are notoriously prone to error, as the military, she may have been eligible
informant may not have had firsthand knowl- to receive a pension. The application
edge of the relevant people and events. (And required a bevy of supporting docu-
the informant’s grief in the moment could mentation, some of which might pro-
affect their accuracy even if they did.) Even vide maiden name.
surviving husbands might not be able to accu-

ɗ
rately name his late wife’s parents, especially How Do I Research
CHALLENGE
if he never met them. That Location?
# Place is so important to gene-
Obituaries alogy research. You may have
A woman’s obituary may mention her maiden found ancestors in
GETTY IMAGES/UNSPLASH; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

name or specify the name of a parent, brother Western states

or unmarried sister. But women may also be but scratch
included in obituaries for her parents or sib- your head when looking for
lings, providing (if the deceased is her father, other lines in a New Eng-
brother or unmarried sister) a solid lead for a land town. Those two
maiden name. areas of the country had
Take care when viewing obituaries for a vastly different histories,
woman’s mother, though. The mother may have settlement patterns,
taken a different surname since giving birth to and available records.

1869 1907 1919 1922 1965

Wyoming is the first US-born women lose The 19th Amendment A woman’s citizenship The Voting Rights
territory to allow women citizenship if they marry gives US women the status is no longer Act outlaws racial
to vote; upon state- non-citizens right to vote in federal contingent on that of discrimination in
hood in 1890, Wyoming elections her husband, with one voting, effectively
becomes the first state exception: female US giving Black wom-
with women’s suffrage citizens who marry en in the South the
non-citizens of Asian right to vote
descent can still lose
their citizenship

family t re emagaz ine.com 53

 Women in Records
Approach your research as if you were a his-
torian, considering the location and time period
your ancestor lived in. Check out the FamilySe- Many records fail to mention women by name.
arch Research Wiki <www.familysearch.org/en/ But the following types of records tend to shed
wiki/Main_Page> for the state she resided in to more light on their lives and identities.
learn what’s available. The wiki also has pages
for specialized research topics, such as African
American genealogy <www.familysearch.org/
en/wiki/African_American_Genealogy>.
Then, determine where the records are
located today. I recommend searching web-
site card catalogs to find records for the
time and location of interest. Drill down
to country, then state, county and town to
see what’s available:
 Ancestry.com <www.ancestry.com/ Obituary for a husband, 1942. Courtesy Newspapers.com
search/collections/catalog>: Separate fields
for Title and Keyword (plus fi lters by
place and record type) give you multiple
options for identifying relevant collec-
tions. Alternatively, you can filter search
results from anywhere in the site by
location.
 FamilySearch <www.familysearch.
org/search/catalog>: This includes
materials digitized at FamilySearch,
as well as those held by the Fami-
lySearch Library in Salt Lake City
and its affiliate branches around the
world. You can also find collections
from a specific place at <www.family-
search.org/search/location/list>.
 MyHeritage <www.myheritage.com/
research/catalog>: Click Refine by Loca-
tion at left to see options for individual
countries or US states, or the search field
at top to filter using keywords.
SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE

But remember some records—nota-

bly, birth, marriage and death certifi-
cates—are not online yet. You’ll need to
do your due diligence to identify and
contact archives that hold physical or
microfilm copies.
Family Tree also has research
guides for all 50 US states, plus
Puerto Rico and Washington, DC
<w w w.family treemagazine.com/
explore-by-state>. Each issue of the
magazine includes two guides; see
pages 33 and 37 for Louisiana and
Washington, respectively. Marriage certificate, 1904. Courtesy Andrew Koch

M A R CH /A PR I L 2 025
Death certificate of
an adult child, 1926.
Courtesy FamilySearch

Delayed birth
certificate, 1922.
Courtesy FamilySearch

Military pension
record supplement,
1871. Courtesy Fold3

family t re emagaz ine.com 55

 She Disappears lived, then page through records image by
CHALLENGE
Between Census Years image. This may take quite some time in a large
# You found her in 1900, but not in city. (Find tips here <www. familytreemagazine.
1910. Where did she go? com/records/census/browse-census-records>.)
A lot can happen in 10 years.
Families move, couples marry, Considering deaths
and people die. For women in As previously indicated, it’s also possible your
North America who typically change their sur- woman of interest died between the census
name upon marriage, she may seemingly vanish years. Look for her in death indexes and col-
without a trace. lections of death certificates for that place and
time, or peruse burials at sites like Find a Grave
Searching by family member <www.findagrave.com>. Run a name search in
How do you find her? Use what you know to historical newspapers for obituaries or death
your advantage. Consider details about her from announcements.
the previous census: What was her name? Who You have an extra resource if you’re research-
was she living with? And what other biographi- ing the 1850 through 1880 censuses: mortal-
cal details do you have about the household? ity schedules. These log deaths that occurred
Next, think about alternative terms to search within the year preceding the census, and are
for. We usually default to searching by a per- available at Ancestry.com <www.ancestry.com/
son’s full name, birth year, and location. But search/collections/3530>.
instead, you could search by the name of a Before you “kill her off,” though, look for oth-
relative (Was the woman living with a child?) er records that might mention a woman in those
or just by first name and birth year (Did she in-between years: city directories, other news-
marry/remarry and have a different surname?). paper announcements, or state censuses.
You can also toy with “exact” matches in data-

ə
bases, allowing you to account for misspellings Why Isn’t She
CHALLENGE
in That Record?
BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY/UNSPLASH

or name variations.
# Great! You’ve found a record
Browsing images of your ancestral family. But
In other cases, you’ll need to browse records, that elusive woman isn’t listed.
rather than relying on keyword searches. Use What gives? As we’ve already
a site’s record-viewer to drill-down to the enu- discussed, perhaps the woman
meration district where you think your ancestor died before a census was taken. But another

56 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2 025
possibility is that she was staying with a family how residents were mentioned. Perhaps the
member when the enumerator arrived. directory was only to include heads of house-
Learning about how and why a record was hold by name.
created can also be enlightening. Perhaps a
•••
woman isn’t in a record because she’s not sup-
posed to be. Finding female ancestors can be tough, but
For example, she wouldn’t appear in voting not impossible! As these tips have demonstrat-
lists before women in that state had the right ed, there are several steps you can take before
to vote. Women living in California could vote giving up on a mystery woman.
beginning in 1911 (pre-dating nationwide wom- What about “Mrs. Walter Chatham”? I
en’s suffrage in 1920), but my female ancestors learned her long-lost name by first researching
in Texas could not. Other local issues—such as her husband. I had his birth and death dates,
poll taxes and a woman’s own feelings about which I used to find his entry in the 1950 census.
suffrage—might have hindered her voting. There was his wife, Alma. 
City directories, too, often only mentioned
women by their husbands’ names. Read the Gena Philibert-Ortega is an author,
introductory pages of a directory to understand researcher, and instructor specializing in
the social history and material culture in

E
For more articles on finding the women in telling women’s stories. She holds mas-
your family, see <www.familytreemagazine. ter’s degrees in Interdisciplinary Studies
com/female-ancestors>.
(Psychology and Women’s Studies) and in Religion.

family t re emagaz ine.com 57

 treetips

LOOK FOR STORIES WITHIN RECORDS. You can “read between the lines” when reviewing documents
to better understand the hows and whys of your ancestor’s life events. Divorce records (page 60),
for example, might list the cause of separation—even the name of the person with whom a spouse
PATPITCHAYA/ISTOCK

was unfaithful. Proceedings might also be mentioned (even sensationalized) in newspapers, which
contain a host of other stories about families and their communities (page 66). 

58 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2025
 PHOTO DETECTIVE treetips

Precious Metal
A memorial photo with gold backing presents a mystery.

Back

3 The young woman’s fringed

neck scarf and drop earrings
suggest the photo dates from
the early 1870s. Relatives often
chose an individual’s best (or
possibly only) photograph for
use in memorial pieces and on
gravestones.
3
4 The fashion also implies a
birth time frame: She looks about
4 20 or 25, putting her birth year
in the early 1850s. Estimating
a person’s age can be difficult,
so determining who’s depicted
1 relies on finding appropriate
matches in the family. Look-
ing at the reader’s family tree
Front
suggests Willie’s grandmother
(Isabella Tittle, born between
1 This memorial piece was beloved” was a formal way of 19th and early 20th centuries. 1850 and 1854) as a candidate.
found in the possessions of expressing loss common during Photographers made copies Reaching out to other descen-
reader Sherry Conway’s grand- the Victorian (1837–1901) and of photos on special paper, dants might yield a photo that
mother, Willie Abbott (1887– WWI (1914–1918) periods. then transferred the image to could confirm the match. 
1964). The challenge is figuring a metal backing available in a
out who’s being mourned and 2 These round enameled variety of shapes and sizes. (See
a time frame for the item. “In photos with a stand on the another example at <www.
loving remembrance of our back were popular in the late familytreemagazine.com/
photos/a-two-part-italian-

E
photo-mystery>.) The process
Have a photo mystery you’d like Maureen to investigate?
Email [email protected] with your photo, any allowed for the addition of
details you know about it, and Photo Detective in the decorative elements like color Maureen A. Taylor
is the author of Family
subject line, and your question may be selected for a (in this case, black), a banner Photo Detective (Family
future issue. and text. Tree Books).

family t re emagaz ine.com 59

 tips SOURCE SPOTLIGHT

Divorce Records

T
hey’re called vital records for a reason—those birth,
marriage and death records that are such critical
pieces in the puzzle of an ancestor's life.
But as genealogists, we shouldn't overlook the wealth of
family history information set out at another critical junc-  Divorce from bed and board (officially, “divorce a
ture in the lives of so many of our forebears: a marriage mensa et thoro”), which is similar to a modern legal
ending in divorce. separation in allowing parties to live separately and
Divorce records are often harder to find than other manage their own finances, but not marry again
genealogical resources, meaning many family historians
put off looking for them. But this article will show why you Divorce Laws
shouldn’t delay even a moment longer. Another challenge to researchers is that divorce records
In this article, we’ll look at the promise of these records, (like other vital records) were kept by individual states,
as well as the challenges to finding them and alternate who set their own laws about when and how records were
records that can clue us in to a divorce in the family. kept. States also determined under what circumstances
divorces could be granted in the first place. For example,
New York was the last state to allow no-fault divorce (in
CLUES IN DIVORCE RECORDS 2010), and South Carolina’s state constitution long forbade
A divorce record is a genealogical treasure chest, contain- divorce altogether.
ing not just family details but also stories and maybe even Differing divorce laws between states may have encour-
juicy scandal. At a minimum, a divorce certificate or entry aged residents to travel to seek divorces in states with lax-
in a divorce register will set out: er laws. These jurisdictions came to be known as divorce
 Husband's full name meccas, beginning with Indiana in the 1850s and ending
 Wife's full name (including maiden name) with Nevada and Alabama as late as the 1960s. It wasn’t
 Birthdates or ages of the parties until states started making no-fault divorces available in
 Residence of the parties the 20th century that divorce meccas fell out of use. By
 Date and place of marriage 1900, one out of every 500 US marriages ended in divorce.
 Number of children Fortunately, though, divorce records were among the
 Which spouse is seeking divorce, and on what grounds earliest records in the United States. The Massachusetts
 Date and place the divorce was granted Bay Colony Court of Assistants granted one Mrs. James
Some divorce records contain much more detail: what Luxford a divorce 3 December 1639, after proving she
name the divorced wife (and her children) assumed after wasn’t the only Mrs. James Luxford.
proceedings, the marital misconduct that resulted in the
divorce, and the names and birthdates of the couple’s Jurisdictions
children. Some adultery cases even name names—that is, By law, those seeking divorce in early America generally
they identify the person with whom the offending party had to petition the state or colonial legislatures. Over
had an affair. The possibilities are endless, and you won’t time, this responsibility passed to judicial officials in
know in advance how much detail is in a divorce file. individual counties.
These processes created distinct types of records that
are accessed differently today. (See the next section.) Early
DIVORCE RECORD COVERAGE divorces will be recorded in the proceedings of legislatures,
Terminology while later divorces are included in county court records.
First, “divorce” could refer to two different types of relief.
The proceedings came in two basic flavors, though it can
CASPER1774STUDIO/ISTOCK

be challenging to discern one from the other in records: ACCESSING DIVORCE RECORDS
 Absolute divorce or (in the language of the law) Legislative Divorces
“divorce a vinculo matrimonii,” which terminated all Legislative divorces were documented in four basic forms:
aspects of marriage and granted at least the innocent  a petition from the aggrieved party, which sets out
party the right to remarry their reasons for divorce

60 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2025
  a private bill introduced by a local legislator Records. Additionally, some states have compiled divorce
 legislative proceeding records that document how indexes, some of which are searchable.
the bill moved through the legal process, from debate States began requiring divorce certificates and/
to voting or divorce registers by the early 20th century. These
 entry in the statute books if the divorce was grant- were filed in a central office, usually the state vital statis-
ed—functionally, a legislative act proclaimed just for tics registrar. These only have the “bare-bones” facts of
that couple’s benefit the divorce: identities of the parties, dates and places of
The state archives or historical society typically hold divorce, and so on. Though they won’t contain records of
surviving legislative records, the most important of which the court proceeding, they can clue you to the existence
are legislative petitions for divorce. The National Archives of a case.
has a list of state-level archival repositories at <www. Some of these are available online, such as Ancestry.
archives.gov/research/alic/reference/state-archives.html>. com’s collection of post-1918 Virginia divorce certificates
Online access to these records varies widely. One stand- <www.ancestry.com/search/collections/9280> or Fami-
out is the Library of Virginia’s collection of 26,000 peti- lySearch’s collection of mid-20th-century records <www.
tions <lva-virginia.libguides.com/petitions>. The Wis- familysearch.org/search/catalog/655313>.
consin Historical Society, meanwhile has a more-modest
2,500 petitions dating from 1836 to 1891 <content.wisconsin Record Loss and Privacy Laws
history.org/digital/collection/petitions>; only a few-dozen Natural disasters and other courthouse losses have long
were related to divorce. threatened records, resulting in their not surviving or
Published journals often recorded the legislature’s being digitized. Legislative records may not have been
debates and votes. States have digitized some of these (for retained at all, or were discarded shortly after. Other
example, the New Jersey State Library’s Journal and Min- record sets simply haven’t been microfilmed or digitized
utes of the Legislature <www.njstatelib.org/research_library/ yet, requiring you to pursue in-person research.
legal_resources/historical_laws/legislative_journals_and_ Compounding these problems is that divorce records in
minutes>. Others are available through Google Books some jurisdictions are sealed for a period of years. These
<books.google.com>, HathiTrust <www.hathitrust.org> privacy laws restrict access to only the parties themselves
and the Internet Archive <www.archive.org>. until a certain number of years have lapsed.
This will vary from state to state. California, for exam-
Court Divorces ple, is an open-records state, with divorce records available
Judicial divorce records follow the format of court records: like any other. Virginia closes divorce records for 25 years;
docket books, minutes, case files and more. Fami- other states seal them for 50 or even 100 years.
lySearch <www.familysearch.org> has microfilmed court Even in states that have liberal public-access rules, doc-
records for many places (even from colonial times); run a uments in a divorce case (especially those involving chil-
Catalog search for the county where the action occurred, dren or marital misconduct) may be sealed by the court.
then look at subsections for Court Records or Divorce
DIVORCE RECORD SUBSTITUTES
What else can we look at to either alert us to a divorce or doc-
ument its details? Many documents can allude to divorces.
Fast Facts Censuses Every US census since 1880 has asked
for marital status (see page 30), including widowed or
Coverage: Varies by state divorce laws, but generally
divorced. The 1950 supplemental questions included how
documented from the mid-1800s
many years the person had been divorced.
Jurisdiction where kept: By state or colonial legisla- Death Certificates: Standard-form death certificates
tures, then by county courts as far back as the early years of the 20th century often
asked whether the deceased was single, married, widowed
Key details: Names, ages/birth dates, and residence of or divorced. Death certificates were generally filed at the
parties; date and place of marriage; number (and possibly state department of health or vital statistics, and older
names) of children; grounds for divorce; when/where the records turned over for preservation to state archives or
divorce was granted historical societies.
Alternates and substitutes: Censuses, marriage and Many death records have been digitized and may be
death records, newspapers, pension records available at FamilySearch or even at a state archives web-
site. Others, however, are available only as official state

family t re emagaz ine.com 61

 treetips SOURCE SPOTLIGHT

At a Glance: Divorce Records

1
Citation: Virginia State
Board of Health, Bureau
of Vital Statistics, “Divorce

2 Record no. 18-001861,”

5 Robert W. Bray-Ruth

3 Grey Bray, 14 October

1918; imaged, “Virginia,
4 U.S., Divorce Records,
1918–2014,” Ancestry.
com (https://www.
ancestry.com/search/
collections/9280/ :
accessed 13 January 2025).

Divorce certificate from Virginia

1 4 5 3
2

Divorce register from Michigan Citation: Mich. Department of Community Health, “Divorce Summary Register for Saginaw
County (1918),” 60; imaged, “Michigan, U.S. Divorce Records, 1897–1952,” Ancestry.com
(https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/9092/: accessed 13 January 2025).

1 Divorce records list the names 3 “Causes” (i.e., reasons) 4 References to children can 5 Records may have separate
of both parties—often including for divorce include “deser- encourage you to look for fields for date of application and
a wife’s maiden name. tion,” “non-support,” and records of them—potentially date of divorce decree.
“extreme cruelty,” and may under different surnames.
2 Date and place of marriage reflect what issues were legal
suggest where you should look grounds for divorce at the time.

E
for more records. These records also indicate Find Family Tree's best articles on birth, marriage, death
which spouse initiated the and divorce records at <www.familytreemagazine.com/
vital-records>.
proceedings.

62 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2025
records and subject to state privacy in their own homes using some small
laws. The websites of the appropriate public assistance. In most cases, wid- Judy G. Russell, CG, CGL
state office will set out the limitations ows and divorced women were both is an internationally known lec-
applicable to the records and the pro- eligible, and both were required to turer and award-winning writ-
cedure for ordering them. set out information as to when and er who provides expert guid-
Home Sources: One of the best where they were married and how ance through the murky
sources for any kind of family infor- the marriage ended.  territory where law and family history intersect
mation, of course, is the family file <www.legalgenealogist.com>.
cabinet or even Grandma's attic. Cop-
ies of divorce orders or certificates
are usually among the papers a family
will file away and keep. It's also a good
idea to ask older relatives what they
know about divorces in the family.
Marriage Records: Both civil and
church records of marriages set out
information about the prior marital
status of the parties. Marriage licens-
es often required disclosure of any ô™Ùû
#‚Ĭ¾û
)‚Ý
‚
ZäËÙû
prior marriage and how that mar-
riage came to an end. Some church
,äDŽÝ
a¬Ä™
äË
a™¾¾
xËéÙÝ
records will also note prior marriages
of spouses, including an indication of
whether death or divorce terminated
the earlier marriage.
Newspapers: These are rich
resources for evidence of divorces,
both in their news columns and in the
sections for legal notices. The details of
a juicy divorce often made page one in
the local newspaper, while even a rou-
tine divorce filing might be recorded in
a column on “this week's action in the
courts.” Moreover, court actions often
required notice to other parties and to
the public so the legal notice columns
are worth reviewing as well.
Pension Records: These may dis-
close that an applicant (or his spouse)
had been divorced, as well as provide
a recitation of marital history. In
HéÙ
Ý»¬¾¾™•
¤™Å™‚¾Ë¤¬ÝäÝ
‚Ù™
©™Ù™
äË
©™¾Ö
ûËé
Ý˾ô™
some cases, the records may disclose £‚Ĭ¾û
ÄûÝä™Ù¬™Ý
‚Å•
™úÖ¾Ëٙ
ûËéÙ
ÙËËäÝƣ
the conflict between a current and a
former spouse. HéÙ
Z֙¬‚¾ä¬™Ý
,ŏ¾é•™ƥ
Another type of pension—known as Ƿ
£Ù¬‚Å
ę٬‚Å &RPHYLVLW
the mother's pension—is also worth
Ƿ
B
‚Å‚¾ûÝ¬Ý RXUERRWKDW
a look. This document is available
Ƿ
fŬ䙕
Zä‚ä™ÝƤ
‚Å•
ÄËٙƨ
only in some states and time peri- 5RRWV7HFK
ods (between the late 1800s and the
adoption of welfare in the early 20th ËÅ䂏ä
éÝ
ä˕‚ûƨ
century). It was intended to keep
mothers together with their children ƹĜĔĕƺ ęěĕƴĚĕĖĖ ¬Å£Ëǐ¾¬Å™‚¤™ÝƣËÄ õõõƣ¾¬Å™‚¤™ÝƣËÄ

family t re emagaz ine.com 63

treetips WEBSITE TUTORIAL

Using Goldie May as a Research Aid

Are you ready to replace your hodgepodge genealogy notes with a powerful tool for organizing research, analyzing
results and even finding records? Goldie May <www.goldiemay.com> is a Google Chrome extension that works as a
kind of virtual assistant with your favorite genealogy websites or software. With it, you can keep notes, define and track
progress on projects, and easily navigate to important bookmarks on websites such as FamilySearch <www.family
search.org> and Ancestry.com <www.ancestry.com>. Install the Goldie May extension from the tool’s website for free.
Log in to your FamilySearch or Ancestry.com account and click the puzzle piece to get started, then find Goldie May
under the puzzle piece icon on Chrome. (This tutorial mostly covers the plug-in’s tools for FamilySearch.)
Sunny Jane Morton

1
5

1
Under Projects & Tasks, I organize each of my research Under Tasks, you can add individual to-do items—those
questions into a dedicated project, which only takes “side quests” you want to address as steps toward your
about 20 seconds to create. Then I dump in my clues main question or goal. You can check them off when you’ve
and add notes about ongoing research and future leads. finished them, or add other users as collaborators to share
Of note, you can add quick links to relevant FamilySe- the workload.
arch person profi le pages. Under People, use a person’s You can even create tasks while still on FamilySearch,
name or FamilySearch ID. Click the drop-down to see a without having to switch between windows. Right-click
summary of their life details without having to open a a link, then select Goldie May > Add Task to Project from
new window. Link. (This also works for highlighted text.)

64 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2025
 2 3

2
Under Research Log, track online research and
record findings—both positive results with a like and
negative results (i.e., what you weren’t able to find)
with a dislike.
Entries can include comments, abstracts, citations and
screenshots. You can turn on automatic logging, helpful if and even overlap with record hints at major websites. The
(like me) you have 15 different browser tabs open at any latter includes bars for digitized newspapers available for
given time. that time and place.
The option for Boundary Changes adds grey vertical

3
The Subway Map is a powerful tool for visualizing bars to indicate county shifts, imported from Historical
where family members lived over time, including com- Atlas of County Boundaries.
pared to other relatives. You can add or remove rela-

4
tives (who are each indicated by a different-colored line), The Canvas tool is a visual workspace that allows you
to create virtual sticky notes and add them to screen-
shots—without the mess you’d see with a physical sys-
tip tem. You have one canvas available per project.
The features discussed here are free, though the
tool offers paid subscriptions <www.goldiemay.

5
Click the magnifying glass to search the catalogs of
com/#tier-plus>. If you like the tool, consider upgrad- multiple genealogy websites for record types, loca-
ing for additional features such as automatic cita-
tions or even specific newspaper titles. Additional sug-
tions and jumping back and forth between censuses.
gestions can take you to record-finding resources at Fami-
lySearch and Ancestry.com. 

4 5

family t re emagaz ine.com 65

treetips FA M I LY H I S T O R Y H O M E

Saving Newspaper Clippings

66 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2 025
 1 Identify obituaries. Newspaper
offices called it the “morgue”: the file cabinet
of clippings of obituaries and notes about
local citizens and events. Genealogists often
5 Use a consistent, easily remem-
bered naming system for your clippings.
inherit a similar clip file, a kind of “personal
Many news archives use a lengthy filename
morgue.” News clippings carry all kinds of
news: births, marriages, death, new jobs, mili-
3 Avoid laminating newspaper clip- that includes a brief title, newspaper name,
pings or enclosing in clear self-adhesive date, and page; for example: Local_Bank-
tary postings, graduations, and community
packing tape. These permanent solutions er_Dies_Colorado_Springs_Tribune_09_
events. Unfortunately, these clippings are
FACING PAGE: READY ELEMENTS/PIXABAY; SCISSORS: LORENCIUSIS/PEXELS; PHONE: EVGENIY ZIMIN/ADOBE STOCK; COUPLE: PRIVATE COLLECTION; CLIPPINGS, LEFT TO RIGHT:

will damage and eventually destroy the Mar_1915_p10. You may already have a
PRIVATE COLLECTION; FTM COLLECTION; PUBLIC DOMAIN VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS; FTM COLLECTION; NEW YORK CLIPPER, PUBLIC DOMAIN VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

doomed to disappear as the toxic newsprint

article. Likewise, deacidification sprays file-naming system that can be adapted to
deteriorates and crumbles to dust.
or homemade solutions need regular include news clippings.
renewal and are not the best way to pre-
serve newsprint.
2 Replace with copies. 6 Create a clippings box. Place the
Typical newspapers are printed original clipping against a sheet of acid-free
on cheap, wood-pulp paper that paper inside an acid-free page protec-
begins to degrade as soon as tor. Use the paper to add notes about the
the ink is dry. The acidic nature clipping and the digital file name of your
of newsprint taints anything it scanned image. Create an index sheet for
touches through acidic migra- the front of the file.
tion. Swap out original articles
in scrapbooks, family papers, or
the family Bible with copies to 7 Cite your sources. Include the title
preserve the clipping’s context
without endangering other files. 4 Store individually, and digitize.
of the article, full name of the newspaper,
city and state, day of the week and date,
Place clippings inside an archival plastic sleeve, page number and column. Undated clip-
or inside an acid-free file folder with buffered pings should include any available informa-
paper between items. Clippings can be digi-
tip tized with a flatbed scanner or digital camera.
tion such as article title and date, with a
Images of clippings add his- note about inferred information, such as
Most flatbed scanners offer an option for
torical and cultural interest to town or newspaper. 
written family histories. Photo “Descreening,” which minimizes the small dots
software can sharpen text used in the original printing. This is especially
and add a vintage tint for your helpful to refine noisy photos often included
slideshow or photo book. with obituaries and wedding articles.
Scanning can also automatically crop and
sharpen the image to be print-ready. If you
use a digital camera as your scanner, take time Denise May Levenick
to correct the white balance and crop the aka The Family Curator <www.
thefamilycurator.com> is the
image to the article’s margins. author of How to Archive Family
Keepsakes (Family Tree Books).

family t re emagaz ine.com 67

treetips N O W W H AT ?

Q How can I a Your ancestor would have arrived long before official immi-
gration records. But you might have luck in Ancestry.com’s
“Irish Emigrants in North America” <www.ancestry.com/search/
find out more collections/61849>, collected from two pamphlets recording about

about an ancestor 1,000 early Irish immigrants. Most entries include date of birth, name
of ship, occupation in Ireland, reason for emigration, date of arrival

who emigrated and sometimes place of origin in Ireland. If your ancestor came to
Virginia as an apprentice, you could check another Ancestry.com col-
lection <www.ancestry.com/search/collections/3111>.
from Ireland to For other passenger lists, the best bet is the Immigrant Ships Tran-
scribers Guild <www.immigrantships.net>, whose 26 volumes docu-
Colonial Virginia? ment many 18th-century arrivals. Crucially, however, most of these
early records lack specifics on parish of origin.
If you are able to uncover the parish, the National Library of Ire-
land’s collection of Catholic registers (browse-only <registers.nli.ie>)
dates to the 1740/50s in some city parishes. The subscription RootsIre-
land <www.rootsireland.ie>, home to 23 million records from 34 county
genealogy centers, has some of the same records and is searchable.
You can also try the National Archives <genealogy.nationalarchives.
ie>, home to marriage records, crew lists, will registers, tithe applot-
ment books, pensioner records, Catholic convert rolls and more.

Find your JOIN

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68 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2025
Q My third-great-grandfather was born in Santo Domingo
in 1781. Are there any genealogy resources available in
what is now the Dominican Republic?

A You could start at the free FamilySearch site’s collection of

Dominican Republic Catholic Church records, starting in 1590
<www.familysearch.org/search/collection/1918910>. FamilySearch
also has individual collections of burials, baptisms and marriages.
These and other collections are also available on the subscription
sites Ancestry.com, MyHeritage <www.myheritage.com> and Ameri-
can Ancestors <www.americanancestors.org>.
Depending on how long your ancestor stayed in the country, you
might also find him in FamilySearch’s Dominican Republic civil reg-
istration records <www.familysearch.org/search/collection/1619814>,
which began in the early 1800s. Note that genealogy records there
are kept in 32 different administrative districts, each of which has
its own entry in the FamilySearch Wiki; the Distrito Nacional, Santo
Domingo, is at <www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Distrito_Nacional_or_
Santo_Domingo,_Dominican_Republic_Genealogy>.
You can find more Dominican Republic resources at the Ancestors
of Paradise site <www.ancestorsofparadise.com/dominican-republic-
genealogy>, one of our 101 Best Websites. Because Santo Domingo
was occupied by French-controlled Haiti from 1795 to 1804 and 1822
to 1844, you might also check those resources <www.ancestorsof
paradise.com/haiti-genealogy>.

Q My wife’s mother and father were both adopted in

Massachusetts. How can we access adoption records?

A After 1851, the responsibility for Massachusetts adoptions was

transferred from the General Court (the state legislature) to
each county’s probate and family court.
Several counties have transferred these files off-site, though records
from other counties—especially those less than 100 years old—may still
be at the courthouse. The state’s Registry of Vital Records and Statistics
(RVRS) only holds adoption birth records from 1931 to the present.
Massachusetts restricts access to adoption records, though the
rules are no longer based on year of birth. Eligible applicants include
the of-age adoptee mentioned in the record and the adult child of a
deceased adoptee, meaning your parents (or, if they’re deceased, your
wife) can apply. (Others will need a court order.) For instructions, fees
and an application for ordering from the RVRS, see <www.mass.gov/
how-to/apply-for-a-pre-adoption-birth-record>. 

E
David A. Fryxell
is the founding editor of
Have a question you’d like
Family Tree Magazine. David to answer? Email
He now writes and FamilyTree@Yankeepub.
researches his family com with Now What in
tree in Tucson. the subject line, and your
question may be selected
for a future issue.

family t re emagaz ine.com 69

treetips FROM THE ARCHIVE

Searching
Griffith’s Valuation
One of the most important resources for 19th-century Irish genealogy is Griffith’s Valuation, a prop-
erty tax survey carried out between 1848 and 1864. Also known as the Primary Valuation of Ireland,
it’s a partial substitute for 19th-century Irish census records, most of which have been lost.
Back in 2013, we ran a tutorial for searching this valuable record set for free at the Ask About
Ireland website <www.askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation>. You can still access this database,
created by a concerted effort among public libraries, local museums and archives to digitize Irish
cultural resources.
Cover of the March/April 2013 issue of Family Tree

Griffith’s Valuation lists only those who James Clark, from the town of Belinaa, parish of Kill-
owned or leased land, so it’s like a head-of-household cen- more, county Cavan.”
sus. But it covers about 80 percent of the population and A search on the last name Clark, with the box checked to
every parish, including more than 1 million dwellings. Include Similar Names, produces 7,800 matches—mostly
Follow these six steps to find your Irish ancestral roots spelled Clarke. Specify County Cavan and the parish of
in its pages: Kilmore, and you get 11 matches.

1 3
ENTER A FAMILY NAME SEE DETAILS
From the home page, scroll down and click Click a link in the Details column to view more
Griffith’s Valuation. (Or visit the website directly.) information, including the townland. (An Irish par-
Enter a last name in the Family Name box and click ish might contain 25 to 30 townlands.)
the Search button. The first four occupiers, two Bernards and two
The results will give you a sense of the name’s geograph- Michaels, all lived in the townland of Bellananagh. The
ic distribution. For uncommon names, you might identify Bernard Clark mentioned in the previous step emigrated
a locality to focus your research. For example, a search for before Griffith’s Valuation was published, in 1857 for this
McMorris reveals 36 matches, including several in the par- part of County Cavan. But these four Clarkes were surely
ish of Donaghedy in County Tyrone. close relatives.

4
Try different spellings and forms of the same name,
with and without the prefix Mc, Mac or O’ (with and with- VIEW THE ORIGINAL IMAGE
out the apostrophe): O’Donnell, Donnell, Donald, McDon- Back on the results page, click an icon in the Origi-
ald and MacDonald. nal Page column. You can right-click (on a Mac,
Check the Include Similar Names box to find matches control-click) to zoom in or print the image.
on names that contain your query—for example, Don- The first occupier in the town of Bellananagh is Ber-
nell, O’Donnell, McDonnell and Donnelly with a search nard Clarke, who lived on Granard Road. The Immediate
for Donnel. Lessors column shows that he leased the property from

2
Major-General Fleming.
NARROW RESULTS USING The next column, Description of Tenement, says,
A PLACE OR FIRST NAME “House, offices and yard.” The term “office” was used to
A search on the family name Brennan produces 6,700 describe a farm building such as a stable or a cow barn. If
matches, but you get only five hits when you add the no house is mentioned, the occupier lived somewhere else.
first name Ambrose. Similarly, you’ll get 1,256 matches on

E
the last name Grant, but only 30 in King’s County (Offaly).
For more from Family Tree’s archive, sign up for our Plus
Bernard “Barney” Clark, an Irish immigrant who membership, which includes access to PDF back-issues
settled in Minnesota, placed an ad in the Boston Pilot <store.familytreemagazine.com/plus-membership>.
in 1867. He was trying to fi nd his siblings “Bridget and

70 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2 025
 Left: Gruffith’s
Valuation page at
Ask About Ireland

Below: Entry in
Griffith’s Valuation,
showing the heads
of household in
Kilmore parish

6
The area, if indicated, is given in acres, roods and perch- ADD TOWNS
es. There are 40 square perches to a rood, and four roods View a town plan by clicking Show Towns, then the
to an acre. house icon. Zoom in to see street numbers.
The next two columns show the Rateable Annual Valua- Return to the Griffith’s Valuation page image (no.
tion of land and buildings. The total in the last column—4 4). The first column refers to the number that you’ll see on
pounds 10 shillings—indicates the income Bernard Clarke’s the map. Bernard Clarke lived at 23 Granard Road, along
property could be expected to produce in a year. That fig- with other residents numbered from 1 to 16.
ure was used as the basis for local taxation. Congratulations! You’ve now pinpointed an ancestor’s

5
home with Griffith’s Valuation. 
PLACE IT ON THE MAP Rick Crume, March/April 2013
Click the map icons to see a map as a pop-up or in a
new window. (It’s easier to navigate around the map
in a new window.) Rick Crume is a contributing
The website lays an historical Ordnance Survey map editor of Family Tree Magazine
and specializes in online research,
over a modern interactive map. You can zoom in or out, and genealogy software, DNA testing
use the slider to alternate between historical and modern. and British genealogy.

family t re emagaz ine.com 71

treetips DNA Q&A

DNA Q&A

Testing Hair Samples

Q Can you do a
DNA test on hair?
dead cells, so the DNA within those cells degrades even
as technology improves. So we can never expect to get the
kind of DNA samples we do from other sources.

A The short answer? Yes. I was successfully testing

hair in the late 90s.
However, the question isn’t really “Can hair samples be
4. Laboratory/database relationships: I know what
you’re thinking: I don’t care if my great-grandmother’s
DNA profile isn’t perfect! It’s way better than what I have,
used for DNA tests?” Since you’re reading this magazine let’s do it! But even if you could get her DNA extracted,
about family history, your question is more accurately you’d also need a lab that analyzes the specific markers
“Can hair samples be used for DNA tests for genetic geneal- we use for genetic genealogy. Only a handful of companies
ogy research?” Again, the short answer is yes. do, and an even smaller subset of them would accept hair-
That still doesn’t capture the full story, though. What sample DNA.
you really want to know is “Can the lock of my great-grand- 5. Consent (maybe): Genetic genealogy companies
mother’s hair that I found in an old cedar chest be used for require consent from the sample-provider. Your great-
DNA tests for genetic genealogy research?” grandmother cannot give that, nor can you (unless
And the answer to that, my dear genealogist, is probably you’re her legal heir). This is a sticky issue that will need
not. Or at least, not right now. to be addressed as technology makes this kind of testing
Four—maybe five—obstacles interfere with your success: more feasible.
1. Sample source: Most genealogists have cut hair, not Those five reasons don’t even include cost—yikes!
the root itself. Cut hair is just dead cells, meaning it is much At this point, you’re better off testing other, living rela-
more difficult to get DNA from. tives using conventional methods. In a great-grandmother’s
2. DNA type: Even with the root of the hair, you can case, that means testing many second cousins to create a
usually test only mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from hair kind of reconstruction of her DNA profile. 
samples. mtDNA traces the direct maternal line, making it
helpful in some specific genealogy scenarios, but not uni-
THAMYRISSALGUEIRO /ISTOCK

versally as applicable as autosomal DNA. Diahan Southard is founder

3. DNA quality: Nowadays technology has advanced far and CEO at Your DNA Guide
<www.yourdnaguide.com>,
enough to make it possible to extract autosomal DNA from where she makes DNA education
a hair shaft. This is a big deal. But remember that hair is fun and accessible.

72 FA M I LY T R E E M AG A Z I N E M A R CH /A PR I L 2025
IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND

NE
M A G A Z–-I2024
2000

INTRODUCING
THE FAMILY TREE MAGAZINE
USB ARCHIVE
This comprehensive digital archive of America’s no. 1 genealogy magazine contains 25 years of guidance
on how to trace your roots. Navigation is easy with the included app. Search articles by keyword to get the
information you need fast!

Features include:
• PDFs of every issue of Family Tree Magazine from
2000 to 2024—more than 150 issues in total
• An easy-to-install app for browsing issues on your
computer
• Clickable index (curated by the Family Tree editors)
to help you find articles important to your research

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<store.familytreemagazine.com/family-tree-magazine-archive-2000-2024>
 CH E AT SURNAMES
Understanding & Researching Family Names
SHEET By the Editors of Family Tree Magazine

Common Origins of Surnames

PLACE NAMES OCCUPATIONS
A person may have adopted a sur- Somewhere up in your family tree
name based on the description of a might be a person who practiced a
nearby place, or their place of origin. trade corresponding to the name
This could have been a local land- he adopted. Smith (i.e., a craftsman,
mark (like a hill, valley, river or even such as of iron or tools) and Miller
tree) or a town, region or country’s (i.e., a person who operates a mill
proper name. For the former, make that grinds grain, corn or wheat)
sure you consider how a name might are two of the most common sur-
have been translated to or from an names in the United States today.
original language. Some examples include Moore (a moor Keep in mind that, as with surnames based on place names,
or bog), Torres (Spanish for “tower”) and Li (Mandarin Chi- occupation-based surnames may need to be translated from
nese for “plum” or “plum tree”). Look for suffixes—like -ton in the original language for you to derive meaning. For example,
English and -er in German or Ashkenazi Jewish names—that surname Müller (or Mueller) doubles as the German word
indicate someone came from another place (e.g., Berliner for for miller. Other examples include Baker, Cooper (a barrel-
someone from Berlin). maker) and Patel (from a Gujarati word for landowner).

PATRONYMS NICKNAMES
Family names may have sprung from These may derive from characteris-
the father’s given name. Different tics used to describe a family mem-
cultures have different traditions, ber, perhaps their appearance (hair
and they typically involve adding or eye color, size or complexion),
prefixes or suffixes to the name of financial status, habits or even per-
the father (or other ancestor): -son sonality. Examples include Brown,
or -s in English (Johnson, “son of Young, Stark (German for “strong”),
John”; Edwards, “son of Edward”); Campbell (from the Gaelic cam and
-sen or -datter in Scandinavian béul, meaning “crooked mouth”) and
languages (Johansen, “son of Johan”); O’- in Irish (O’Neill, Kim (from the Korean gim, meaning “gold” or “iron”).
“grandson of Neil”); -guez or -quez in Spanish (Rodríguez,
“son of Rodrigo”); and -czyk or -wicz in Polish (Adamczyk,

E
Learn more about where your surname comes from at
“son of Adam”).
<www.familytreemagazine.com/names/surnames/
understanding-surname-origins>.
2025 YANKEE PUBLISHING INC. FOR MORE INFORMATION,
VISIT <WWW.FAMILYTREEMAGAZINE.COM>
TIPS FOR RESEARCHING COMMON NAMES

1 Include middle name. Not all

records have this information,
but (when they do) this extra
detail might help distinguish your
Mary Elizabeth Smith from Mary
2 Filter by life events. Use
relevant details like birth year
to narrow your search and
evaluate possible record matches.
3 Search with relatives. A
mention of a parent, sibling,
spouse or child might help
your ancestor stand out in records.
(Hopefully, that relative had a more
There may be thousands of Thomas
Margaret Smith. If you’re lucky, your Joneses, but there are significantly unusual name!) Also look for wider
ancestor’s middle name might be fewer Thomas Joneses who were clusters of extended family mem-
more unusual than her last—par- born in Kentucky in 1880. bers, friends, and neighbors who
ticularly in communities that used may have lived or traveled along-
a mother’s maiden name as the side your ancestor instead of his

5
child’s middle name. similarly named fellow countrymen.
Create a timeline of your
ancestor’s life. Write down

4 6
all you know about where
Look for places. Examine your ancestor was, and when. This Study all people in the town
records at the county (or will help you assess whether a who had that name. Research
even city) level with an open record containing your commonly- other families in the area who
mind regarding names. Perhaps named ancestor could be the right had the same (or similar) names. By
your ancestor was included in fit based on what you know about knowing who they were and what
a record at the right place and where he was living or working at they were up to, you can more easily
time, but under the wrong name. the time. Keep in mind ages, too— distinguish their activities from your
Likewise, carefully evaluate any your Elizabeth Williams probably ancestor’s. They might even be rela-
possible name matches in places wasn’t giving birth to a child at age tives of your target family.
you don’t have reason to believe 55, nor at age 8.
your ancestor visited or lived in.

8 Broaden your search. Leave

9 Consider context. Your
ancestor might technically be

7
no stone unturned! Look for in the same place and time
Take advantage of your ancestor in oft-forgotten as a match, but his social circum-
misspellings. Think about places such as city directories, year- stances preclude him from being
possible variations of your books, tax records, land records the right fit. For example, if you
ancestor’s name, and search by and newspapers. Details you find know your John Smith declared
them as well. Loosen a site’s “exact there might flesh out your timeline bankruptcy in 1851, he probably
match” filter feature to include of his life, or help you identify him wouldn’t have been the same John
more potential matches, such as in more conventional records. Smith who bought a huge plot of
those that “sound alike.” land in 1852.

UNUSUAL SURNAMES: BLESSINGS IN DISGUISE

Having to spell out your odd surname cheat sheet to nail down records with
may seem like a pain today. But because names that have been misindexed or
searching ancestors who had common just plain misspelled by record-keepers.
surnames can be such a challenge, con- Name changes can also prove vexing.
sider yourself lucky if your ancestors Families coming to the United States
had an oddball name like Loughty or may have “Americanized” their names
MacQuoid. These individuals will much to blend in with their new community.
more easily stand out in a crowd. has a lot of upside for your own ances- Look to immigration and naturaliza-
In fact, there may be so few people in tor’s family tree, and will help you sep- tion records to find original names.
a country or region who had that sur- arate your Loughtys from others. For more things to consider when
name that you can research everyone One potential complication of unusu- researching rare surnames, read
who had it, many of whom could be rel- al surnames: spelling variations. Use < w w w. f a m i l y t r e e m a g a z i n e . c o m /
atives. That “cluster research” method the search strategies mentioned in this names/surnames/unusual-last-names>.
TUTORIAL: SEARCHING RECORDS USING NAMES

1
Experiment with name-matching search filters.
Ancestry.com, Findmypast and MyHeritage each offer
additional search options that broaden or narrow the
scope of name searches. You can instruct the engine to
include only results that match your search term exactly,
or results that are phonetically similar to your terms. These
can be useful if you’re not certain of a surname’s spelling in
a record, or for identifying multiple records of the same per-
son that might spell a name differently:
 Ancestry.com: “Sounds like” covers phonetically simi-
lar names, while “Similar” encompasses names that are
spelling variants. “Soundex” (more on this below) covers
spelling variants identified by that system.
 Findmypast: “Name variants” is a built-in feature that
identifies possible misspellings or common nicknames. Ancestry.com “Exact” search options
 MyHeritage: “Match name exactly” and “Match all
terms exactly” (under the “More” menu) allow you to limit
results. MyHeritage also supports cross-language search,
so results will include (for example) names written in mul-
tiple alphabets.

2
Use wildcards. When supported by a site’s search
engine, wildcards will take the place of a letter (or mul-
tiple letters), opening up your search results. A question
mark (?) represents a single letter, while an asterisk (*) takes
the place of multiple (or even zero) characters. So a search
for Henders?n would include results for both Henderson and
Hendersen. A search for Henders*n would include both of
those, plus Hendersynn. Note that wildcard searches might
not turn up Soundex matches, and you’ll need to include at Findmypast “Name variants” search option
least a few non-wildcard characters in searches.

3
Track and try spelling variants. Especially for hard-
to-spell names, record every possible variation of your
ancestor’s last name, then search each in the database
in turn. The Surname Variant Chart in this cheat sheet will
get you started. The record-keeper who wrote your ances-
tor’s name may have spoken a different language than your
ancestor, so pay special attention to how a name would have
sounded to a non-native speaker of the language.

4
Understand Soundex. Linguists developed various
“Soundex” systems to categorize phonetic sounds from
different languages. Genealogists adapted the Soun-
dex to group surnames by how they sound, rather than how
they’re spelled. Then they created indexes and finding aids
for records using the Soundex. Though keyword searches
have made the Soundex somewhat obsolete, the Soundex can
still be useful when searching offline records. And Ancestry.
com includes Soundex among their search options for sur-
names. (MyHeritage once had options for multiple, includ- MyHeritage’s “Match all terms exactly” search option
ing the Daitch-Mokotoff system that’s especially useful for
Slavic and Yiddish surnames.)
SURNAME VARIANT CHART
If you’re not having luck finding records of your ancestors, consider the possibility that their name was mistranscribed or misin-
dexed in online databases. Record possible misspellings or alternate spellings of your ancestor’s surname using the form below,
then search for those variations. View and download a free, typable version of this form at <www.familytreemagazine.com/freebie/
surnamevariantchart>.

SURNAME

PLACE OF
ORIGIN

PHONETIC
VARIANTS

POSSIBLE
VARIATIONS
INTO ENGLISH

SURNAME
SUFFIXES
(-son, -datter, etc.)

OTHER
SPELLINGS/
VARIANTS
USING SURNAMES WITH DNA

What You Can Learn From DNA

DNA CAN DNA CANNOT
 Connect you with DNA relatives, potentially including those  Determine ancestral surnames. Your test results, by them-
who have the surname you’re studying. Your autosomal DNA selves, cannot tell you what surnames your specific ancestors
matches through services like AncestryDNA <www.ancestry. had, nor can they build out your family tree. They only give
com/dna> and MyHeritage DNA <www.myheritage.com/dna> information about DNA that you share with others in the
may reveal the test taker’s real name, as well as surnames in the company’s DNA database.
family tree attached to their results. Tools like shared surnames  Pinpoint ancestral locations, nor trace the geographic
(see below) and suggestions for genetic family trees make it locations of surnames. At present, ethnicity estimates do not
even easier to identify potential shared relatives. contain enough precision to tell you what town or state your
 Reveal more about paternal roots. Since surnames usually DNA came from. And tools for determining whether DNA
follow male lines, Y-DNA tests (which also follow male lines) can came from your maternal or paternal line likewise only report
give you information about that one line (your father, your pater- on ethnicity, not specific place.
nal grandfather, your father’s paternal grandfather, and so on).
 Help you find surname studies. These are groups of people
dedicated to studying one family name, usually based on tip
Y-DNA results. Family Tree DNA hosts more than 11,000 DNA can be a powerful tool, but it can only give
studies run by volunteers <www.familytreedna.com/group- you certain pieces of information. Right-size your
project-search>, and you can learn more about surname expectations before taking a DNA test (or having
someone else test).
studies at <www.familytreemagazine.com/names/surnames/
making-matches>.

YDNA Shared Surname Tools

Y-DNA tests offer a unique perspec-
tive on your family’s genetic history,
and can be particularly useful for
identifying surnames that (as so many
do) have passed down paternal lines.
Any Y-DNA matches will share a
common ancestor with you along
strictly paternal lines. Although
Y-DNA results can’t distinguish how
you and your matches are related,
they’re still useful for identifying pos-
sible relatives—many of whom might
share the surname you’re looking for.
Y-DNA tests examine DNA mark-
ers on the Y chromosome, which is
passed down from father to son. As MyHeritage DNA’s Shared Ancestral Surnames tool between two matches
a result, only genetic males can take (Names have been removed from this image out of consideration for users’ privacy.)
Y-DNA tests. But women can have
brothers, fathers or paternal uncles Some testing companies allow you to attach a family tree to your autosomal DNA
take a test. results. If you and your matches both take advantage of this feature, you’ll be able to
Family Tree DNA <www.family identify branches of your family trees that might overlap based on how you fit into
treedna.com/products/y-dna> is the them and the amount of DNA you share.
only of the large companies to offer Included in those results (such as at AncestryDNA and MyHeritage DNA) are surname
a Y-DNA test. Y-DNA tests tend to be tools that identify what names appear in both you and your match’s trees. Surnames listed
more expensive than autosomal tests, here don’t necessarily indicate shared relatives, but they do give you a clue about where
and Family Tree DNA offers tests with to start searching for your most recent common ancestor.
several levels of detail.
SURNAMES AND ETHNICITY
Every culture has its own naming traditions, and your surname can give you clues about your paternal line’s ancestral origins. Enter
your target name into a surname database like the ones listed in the Resources box. Then use the websites and books below to
learn more about your ancestor’s surname and its meaning and prevalence.

Ethnicity Websites Books

African  “Tracing Your Roots: Were Slaves’ Surnames Like  Black Names in America: Origins and Usage by Newbell
American Brands?” <www.theroot.com/tracing-your-roots- Niles Puckett (G.K. Hall)
were-slaves-surnames-like-brands-1796141007>
British  “The 25 Most Common Surnames in  A Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames With
Britain” <www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/ Special American Instances, two volumes by Charles
home-news/25-common-surnames-britain- Wareing Bardsley (Clearfield Co.)
family-history-university-west-england-bristol-  Dictionary of English Surnames by R.M. Wilson and P.H.
uk-a7423196.html> Reaney (Oxford University Press)
 British Surnames <britishsurnames.co.uk>  The Surnames of Wales: For Family Historians and
 Historic UK Surnames <www.historic-uk.com/ Others by John and Sheila Rowlands (Genealogical
CultureUK/Surnames> Publishing Co.)
Chinese  “101 Most Common Surnames in China and  Chinese Names: The Traditions Surrounding the Use of
Their Meanings” <www.improvemandarin.com/ Chinese Surnames and Personal Names by Russell Jones
most-common-chinese-surnames> (Pelanduk Publications)
 In Search of Your Asian Roots: Genealogical Resources of
Chinese Surnames by Sheau-yueh J. Chao (Clearfield Co.)
German  Geogen <geogen.stoepel.net>  Dictionary of German Names, second edition by Hans
 “What Does Your German Last Name Mean?” Bahlow and translated by Edda Gentry (University of
<www.thoughtco.com/german-surnames- Wisconsin Press)
meanings-and-origins-1420789>  A Dictionary of German-Jewish Surnames by Lars Menk
(Avotaynu)
Irish  Irish Ancestors by John Grenham <www.  The All New Surnames of Ireland by Edward Neafsey (Irish
johngrenham.com> Genealogical Foundation)
 Mapping Irish Surnames <storymaps.arcgis.com/  Clans and Families of Ireland: The Heritage and Heraldry
stories/a3b90776f4cd4052bf19e097da898f36> of Irish Clans and Families by John Grenham (Wellfleet
 “Old Irish-Gaelic Surnames” <freepages. Press)
rootsweb.com/~mallorybrody/genealogy/Eire/  Genealogist’s Master Guide to the Various Spellings of
irenames.htm> Irish Names by Michael C. O’Laughlin (Irish Genealogical
Foundation)
 Special Report on Surnames in Ireland by Robert E.
Matheson (Genealogical Publishing Co.)
Italian  “Italian Naming Traditions and Their  Our Italian Surnames by Joseph G. Fucilla (Genealogical
Ramifications” <www.italiangenealogy. Publishing Co.)
com/articles/italian-culture-traditions/
italian-naming-traditions-and-their-ramifications>
 Italian Surnames <www.italyheritage.com/
genealogy/surnames>

Jewish  “Is My Surname Jewish” <www.thoughtco.com/  A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Kingdom of
is-my-surname-jewish-3972350> Poland by Alexander Beider (Avotaynu)
 A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian
Empire by Alexander Beider (Avotaynu)
Norwegian  “Understanding Norwegian Naming  A Handbook of Scandinavinan Names by Nancy L.
Patterns” <norwegianridge.com/2011/07/10/ Coleman and Olav Veka (University of Wisconsin Press)
understanding-norwegian-naming-patterns>
Polish  “Naming Customs Found in Poland” <sites.  Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings, second edition
rootsweb.com/~polwgw/naming.html> by William F. Hoffman (Polish Genealogical Society of
America)
Spanish  “Most Popular Hispanic Last Names and the  Hispanic Surnames and Family History by Lyman D. Platt
History Behind Them” <www.fortlewis.edu/ (Genealogical Publishing Co.)
life-at-flc/clubs-organizations/el-centro/culture/
popular-spanish-last-names-research>
TIPS FOR RESEARCHING MAIDEN NAMES

1 Search around your female

ancestor. Look for her mar-
riage certificate using her
husband’s name, and check her
children’s birth, baptism, marriage
2 Look for in-laws in census
records. Pay special atten-
tion to any relative in a census
record who has a different surname
RECORDS LIKELY TO
INCLUDE MAIDEN NAMES
 birth certificates, both of the
woman and her children
baptism records, both of the
from the rest of the family they’re 
and death certificates for any men- living with. Women may have lived woman and her children
tion of a maiden name. Likewise, with their sibling or parents after  marriage certificates, both of the
search obituaries and probate being widowed or divorced. Or if a woman and her children
records of her relatives (especially man is head of household and you  marriage banns
parents and siblings) for clues. And see someone in the family listed as  anniversary announcements in
newspapers
find her in pre-marriage census his mother- or father-in-law, that
 military pension records of her
records using her father’s name or person’s last name is likely his wife’s husband, especially if she was a
that of any brothers. maiden name. Keep an eye out for widow
families living in the same area over  divorce records
multiple censuses as well.  court records

3
 death certificates of the woman,
Pay attention to record her spouse and their children

4
witnesses. Aunts and uncles  wills and probate records, both
(i.e., siblings of the parents) Take hints from unusual of the woman and other family
are often named godparents. If you middle names. Some members
see one listed on a child’s baptism people used the mother’s  obituaries, both of the woman
and other family members
certificate, investigate their last maiden name as a middle name
 family Bibles
name as a possible maiden name for children.
 family stories and correspondence
for your ancestor.

5 Prioritize marriage records.

We’ve got a list of records
likely to contain maiden
names in the top-right of this
6 Don’t forget family keep-
sakes. Baby books, fam-
ily Bibles, correspondence
and other items passed from one
generation to the next may include
7 ”Test out” a maiden name.
Even if you haven’t found
definitive proof that a
surname belonged to your female
page, but your first stopping point at least off-the-cuff references to ancestor, do a few searches as if
should be any marriage documen- a woman’s maiden name. Cook- it were. What records or details
tation for your woman of interest. books, in particular, were often start to fall into place? Can you
Remember that marriage records passed from mother to daughter find records that confirm or
came in many forms: certificates, and may include important names refute your theory?
banns, bonds and more. that were scribbled in the margins
of recipes.

Spanish-
8 Research in cemeteries.
Grave markers themselves
are somewhat unlikely to
9 Record women by their
maiden names. Once you’ve
found a woman’s maiden
name, make sure you refer to her
by that name in her family tree pro-
speaking cultures
include a married woman’s maiden file. This will prevent you from los-
traditionally give children
name. But look for the word née ing or forgetting the name, as well
two last names: the first from the
(French for “originally called”) pre- as make it easier for record-hint
father’s surname, and the second
ceding a name on a tombstone— software to find possible matches
from the mother’s maiden name.
that will be the woman’s maiden for her under that name. You can
Sometimes the order is reversed,
name. Women may also be buried either add the married name as an
but this naming pattern is a
in a family plot or otherwise near alternate, or the program will auto-
boon for genealogists.
their birth relatives. Find additional matically include record hints for
clues in burial records and funeral the woman under both her married
home records. and her maiden names.
Evaluating Myths
about Surnames
 Names were not changed at Ellis Island. Passenger lists
were created before people embarked from their home
country, then checked by US officials at port of arrival. Some
people chose to change their names to sound more “Ameri-
can”/English after the fact.
 Coats of arms or family crests are not passed down by
surname. These are granted only to specific individuals, and
there are strict rules about which of that person’s descen- The registry room of Ellis Island, present day
dants can inherit them. As a result, most knick-knacks with
supposed coats of arms are not based in historical fact.  Surnames of the formerly enslaved came from multiple
 Not all people with the same surname have recent shared sources, not just the name of their most recent enslaver. Some
ancestry. Surnames (even those in the same geographical selected a surname they’d already been unofficially using for
area) may have been adopted independently of each other, generations, while others picked a name that honored an indi-
or translated from a different language. vidual (such as Washington, for the first US president).

Surname Mapping Some databases offer surname maps, a visual tool that commu-
nicates the distribution of surnames in a given place (usually a
country). These can be helpful starting points if you know your
ancestor’s surname, but not the exact country or region where
your ancestor came from.
Forebears <forebears.io/surnames> and Geneanet <en.
geneanet.org/surnames> both have surname maps and indicate
which countries have the most prevalent occurrence of the
name, and FamilySearch <www.familysearch.org/en/surname>
generates a meaning as well as three countries where the name
is prominently found according to the FamilySearch Family Tree.
Geogen <legacy.stoepel.net/en> and Irish Ancestors <www.
johngrenham.com> have maps of German and Irish surnames,
respectively. Surname Maps in Europe <www.surnamemap.eu>
has data on several European countries, and the FamilySearch
Research Wiki has a directory <www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/
Surname_Distribution_Maps>.
Geogen Absolute Map of Germany for the surname Schmidt

RESOURCES
Forebears: Surnames <forebears.io/surnames>
Websites
Geneanet: Origin of Last Names <en.geneanet.org/surnames>
Ancestry.com: Surnames <www.ancestry.com/learn/facts>
MyHeritage: Surnames <lastnames.myheritage.com>
Behind the Name <surnames.behindthename.com>
Surname Maps in Europe <www.surnamemap.eu>
Cyndi’s List: Surnames, Family Associations & Family News-
letters <www.cyndislist.com/surnames>
Books
Family Tree DNA Group Projects <www.familytreedna.com/
Dictionary of American Family Names by Patrick Hanks (Oxford
group-project-search>
University Press)
Family Tree Magazine: Surnames <www.familytreemagazine.
Surnames and Genealogy: A New Approach by George Red-
com/surnames>
monds (Federation of Family History Societies)
FamilySearch: Surnames <www.familysearch.org/en/surname>
Nicknames Past and Present by Christine Rose (CR Publications)
Findmypast: Surnames <www.findmypast.co.uk/surname>
Take your research
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