Home on the Range: Kansas Research Tips

The settling of Kansas is a tale woven with Indian settlements, railroad grants, the Homestead Act, Pre-emption, and agricultural school grants. With this many players and conflicting interests, settlers – and genealogists – have their work cut out to make sense of the process.

Many Midwestern and Plains states have superb state census records. Learn about the indexes, the many personal details these censuses include, locating the censuses, and alternate sources. The lecture includes many specific examples from these enumerations, provides an overview of state censuses for Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri�

This presentation will give a broad overview of the history of Wyoming and how it’s development into a state will affect your research strategies. We will examine records, repositories both online and off, and take a look at a sample case study.

Newspapers were daily snapshots of our ancestor’s lives. Texas newspapers are no exception. Examine the broad spectrum and history of Texas newspapers for genealogical research. Methods, techniques, and strategies for obtaining those items of interest will be demonstrated.

The Oregon Trail extended approximately 2,000 miles from Independence, Missouri to Oregon City, Oregon from 1840 to 1869. More than 50,000 people traveled to Oregon and a great number died on the journey. This talk will cover resources for conducting research on the people and their lives along the trail.

Kentucky and Virginia have some of the most complete tax lists in the United States. Their value in research often goes unrecognized by even the experienced researcher. Tax lists can be a primary tool for solving difficult research problems and are invaluable when used with other records. Learn how to access original records, to best organize them for study, and to interpret their meaning. The lecture will use case studies to show their use in tracking individuals across time, estimating birth dates and death dates, separating individuals of the same name, determining the identity of other family members, and using them as substitutes for deeds, court records, and estate records in burned counties.

Researching Puerto Rican ancestors is a unique experience, requiring a knowledge of both Latin American and North American record types and strategies. We'll talk basics about finding your hometown and what records can help you trace your ancestry on both sides of the sea.

If you have any American heritage at all, chances are, you have at least one person in your family tree who lived at some point in New York City. Join Mike Mansfield, Director of Content Operations at MyHeritage, as he dives into a world of rich resources for researching ancestors who called the Big Apple home.

Family lore tells a different story than the records for the paternity of a southwest Virginia great-grandfather. Learn how DNA helps solve the mystery!