Historical Records

Topographic maps and soil maps should help us identify a community, including neighbors, ferries, mills, cemeteries, historic houses, and many other landmarks. By using a combination of resources, the picture of this community will be more visible and more clearly understood.

Divorce in Queensland Australia was very difficult to obtain. Some couples then just lived together and some underwent a bigamous marriage. What were the penalties? The records? Follow these ten bigamy case studies.

Is it logical that a woman born in 1752 gave birth to a son in 1848? Do I have enough evidence to conclude that Johan Kannon of Trondheim, Norway, was the same person as John Connell from Cut-and-Shoot, Texas? Why do I share 300 cM of DNA with three people I’ve never heard of? Genealogists make hundreds of decisions everyday based on thousands of pieces of information harvested from various sources. We automatically, and often unconsciously, use common sense, logic, and even intuition, to identify relevant evidence, problem-solve, and answer complex questions. Learning to harness the power of logic, syllogism, and our own “Spidey-senses,” can help scale brick-walls, solve DNA mysteries, and organize mountains of information. This talk focuses on how to incorporate logic, common sense, and critical thinking in a more deliberate way to create hypotheses, test theories, and support conclusions. Johnson will share exercises that can bulk up logic and critical thought muscles, as well as practical tips on how to apply common sense and sensibility to your family history research and writing.

Why is what happened in Augsburg on September 25, 1555 one of the most important historical events in German history and of utmost importance to researchers? And why do we need to know about the French emperor Napoleon? Why does it make such a big difference if a birth took place in 1874 or 1876? Find out in this presentation why knowing the most important events in German history can be helpful for your research.

Did you know FamilySearch has a wealth of Quebec records that are not widely-known? These records have no search index so you would not be able to access them using the Search Records functionality and entering an ancestor’s name. FamilySearch has images of non-indexed Quebec non-Catholic parish registers from 1763 to 1967; images of Quebec non-indexed Catholic and non-Catholic church records from 1642 to 1902; images of Quebec guardianships from 1639 to 1930; images of Quebec notarial records from 1800 to 1920; plus many more hidden Quebec records. This session will show you step-by-step how to access these Quebec records on FamilySearch.

The new profile page on MyHeritage serves as a one-stop hub for researching and enriching your information on any given individual in your family tree. Join Uri Gonen, SVP of Product at MyHeritage, for a detailed tour of the recently improved useful features on the profile page. Learn how to use the page to edit details, make new discoveries and extract them directly to your tree with Hints, check consistency and correct errors, and much more.

Researching in a native country is hard. Researching in Germany? Even harder. When every family in town shares a surname and all the sons are Johann Christoph or Gerhard, and all the daughters are Maria or Margarethe, how do we distinguish among them? What are the tools we can use to figure out which Johann Christoph is mine?

Stuck? It happens to everybody. So, how do successful genealogists “prime their pumps” when their research wells seem to go dry? This session offers a slew of sources, methods, fresh ideas, and case studies to recharge your innovation when you think both you and your opportunities are totally exhausted.

As a major center of American history and starting point for westward migration, Philadelphia has much more to offer genealogists than just tourist sites. The greater Philadelphia area is home to a variety of underrated libraries and archives that should not be missed by serious family historians.