December 30, 2023 · Christopher Hall
Parkside Lunatic Asylum: A Closer Look - A Criminal in the Family
This is the seventh installment in our on-going series about Robert Austin Shearn - A Criminal in the Family.
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Notes from the research
32 articles on finding ancestors, reading records, and keeping the story with the evidence.
December 20, 2023 · Christopher Hall
What Happened to the Flannan Isles Lighthouse Keepers
On a bitter cold, mid-December evening, on a small island in the Outer Hebrides of far northern Scotland, the icy seas were raging as waves crashed a hundred meters up the side of the craggy cliffs. Two of the three men who manned the isle’s lighthouse were securing equipment...
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December 10, 2023 · Tracy Hall
Irish Country Surnames
Have you come upon surnames in your family tree and thought, “wonder where that came from?” In my research for my ever elusive Irish family I came across different and unexpected surnames. We know there are surnames based on your appearance: Kennedy “helmet headed” or O’Sulliv...
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November 30, 2023 · Christopher Hall
Melbourne to Adelaide and Incarceration in the Parkside Lunatic Asylum - A Criminal in the Family
This is the sixth installment in our on-going series about Robert Austin Shearn - A Criminal in the Family.
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November 20, 2023 · Tracy Hall
Three Tips for Finding Your German Origins
Do you know where your German ancestors' place of origin is? There is no central repository of records in Germany, and during the period when the highest amount of emigration occurred there was no standard of what records were kept and preserved. What does this mean? Your Germ...
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November 10, 2023 · Tracy Hall
Tips for Dealing with Endogamy in Your DNA Matches
Have you ever heard the word endogamy? It is the way people within the same group marry over and over again. Some groups that have this issue are Acadian, Jewish, and Island populations, including Ireland. Another group of people it includes are those in isolated areas. An exa...
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October 20, 2023 · Tracy Hall
Using Newspapers for Genealogy
Are you utilizing newspaper articles and obituaries to find your ancestors? I remember when I was younger my grandma read the newspaper front to back, and then she would cut out any articles, obituaries, pictures she wanted to keep for her posterity. Of course I had no clue wh...
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October 10, 2023 · Tracy Hall
Ideas for Translating German Records
Do you have German ancestry? If you do you have more than likely run into issues with translating. Maybe it is the handwriting, or abbreviations and it is definitely the language if you do not know German. I would get so frustrated I even asked my husband, who picks up languag...
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September 20, 2023 · Tracy Hall
Divorce in Your Family Tree
While the world we live in today is full of divorce and remarriage, it did happen before this last generation. While not in the numbers as today I have run into divorces in the early 1900s. Either way divorce and remarriage happened, how do we add all of this to our family tre...
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August 30, 2023 · Christopher Hall
Timeline - A Criminal in the Family
This is the fifth installment in our on-going series about Robert Austin Shearn - A Criminal in the Family.
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August 30, 2023 · Christopher Hall
Leaving the UK - A Criminal in the Family
This is the fourth installment in our on-going series about Robert Austin Shearn - A Criminal in the Family.
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August 20, 2023 · Tracy Hall
Female Irish Servants in America
Having just passed the anniversary of a woman’s right to vote, it made me stop and once again contemplate what was available to women as far as work when many of our ancestors were coming to this country. What did my female ancestors who came here for a new life do for work? E...
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