Family History Fanatics

If you’ve looked at Ancestry recently, then you may have noticed that your ethnicity results have changed. Does that mean that you’ve changed as well?

Have you wanted to take a DNA test? Are you worried the tests are a scam? If the same person tests at with the same company and two different times with two different names, will their results be the same? I love the comments and the questions we receive on our YouTube channel, through social […]

by Andy Lee We receive our DNA from our mother and father and it sticks with us throughout our life. But is there any way that our DNA can change during our lifetime? Lots of people have asked about specific situations where DNA can be changed. Today we are going to talk about them and […]

Genetic genealogy is complicated for some, which is why we curated a list of ten videos to help explain the top ten questions we’re asked about DNA an genealogy. To view the videos, click on the viewer to watch from this page or click on the link below each suggestion to watch the video on […]

    Half relationships can be confusing for some people. I know it was for me and still. I usually have to draw the half-relationships out to understand what I am talking about. So let’s talk about those people we are halfly related to.   Growing up, I had friends who were part of blended […]

Peer reviewing is the most important part of analyzing the research that you encounter or receive from others. However, it’s important that you evaluate your own work before you head off on a research quest. In the video Developing a Research Question, I explained the need to add specifics to your research question so you […]

Genealogists like to say that the hobby is as popular as porn or gardening. They couldn’t be further from the truth!

Question: What is your methodology for tracking down a birth date for an ancestor? – Newbie in Crawford, Nebraska Answer: Great question. Additionally, you don’t have to be a newbie to wonder about the best procedure for tracing down a fact like this. Before I answer the question, ask yourself, how deep do you want […]

How can you go to a specific place if you have not determined the destination you’re headed toward? In genealogy, your research should be headed somewhere if wish to conduct quality research. The destinations you head toward always begin with a research question. The fundamental step in quality genealogical research is to develop a research […]

Viewer Question: What do you do, when researching an ancestor, and you find his birthplace listed as a certain town that you know for a fact the town was not even established till a good 20 years or so after their birth? When researching your family history, you will run into errors and you have […]

Perhaps you want to find a document that mentions the birth, marriage, or death your great-grandmother. How are you going to go about this? As a beginning genealogist, you may think that vital records were always available because they are so commonplace today. However, birth, marriage, and death records are a modern invention Depending on […]

Are you struggling to find records on FamilySearch, MyHeritage, FindMyPast or Ancestry for your ancestor? Here are a few things you can do to attempt to force your ancestor to bubble up to the surface while using online search forms. Expand or contract date ranges Sometimes you need to add +5 or +10 to either […]

Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here? The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to. Alice: I don’t much care where. The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go. Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland This is probably […]

No matter when you begin seeking out your family legacy, you have to be warned about what lies ahead. Sure there will be dead ends, tangents, and records you can’t access. Sure you’ll run into family members who don’t play nicely in the sandbox. Yet, those aren’t the biggest cautions I would put forth as […]

Why on earth would people do family history if it wasn’t fun? For years I have fought with folks who take the fun out of genealogy. Finally, I want to push back online. If family history isn’t fun, you’re doing it wrong. Family History is a huge tent of activities that work together to support […]

Question: I noticed that you added a historical fact about Stalin banishing Trotsky to the marriage story of your ancestor who married in Utah. If she wasn’t Russian and not connected to Stalin or Trotsky, why on earth would you add this fact to your family’s history? ~ Maralee, Cypress, Texas Answer: Social and Political […]

Reader Question: Where should I put the photos in my writing? Should I put the images next to the paragraph I wrote? Should I put them at the end of a chapter? Or should I put all the photos in a photo section?  ~ Robert Murphy, PA Thanks, Robert. Great question. Having written over 120 […]

Tall, dark and handsome. Is there any other character description more cliche than that, even if it’s true? Your ancestor might have been marked on military draft cards or passports as Stout and Medium for this build and height. What can you do with these descriptions, combined with photos, to describe your ancestors to your […]

How would you describe someone to another person who has never met them? Sure you can define their character and positive traits. It would be better to describe their facial features so the second person can locate the first person in a crowd. When it comes to describing our ancestors, we need to use words […]

  In previous posts, we’ve discussed the importance of writing about your ancestor’s physical appearance and how to find details about their physique, if you don’t have photos to aid your writing. Today, let’s give you a quick list of adjectives that can help you describe your ancestor’s hair color and style if perhaps you […]

Descriptions of our ancestor’s physical appearance can help us see them in our mind’s eye. But how can we discover what they looked like if we don’t have videos or photos to provide evidence? Discover some of the best resources for physical descriptions. Then use these clues to improve your family history writing projects as […]

When I started scrapbooking, I just stuck pictures on a page without caring about design. As I learned more about page layouts, I discovered a quick trick that changed everything about my pages and it will improve your pages too. It’s called ANCHORING!!! Many pages all over the internet in scrapbook galleries and in Facebook […]

Photoshop Elements is my favorite platform to use to create scrapbooks because of the ability I have to customize layouts to accommodate the pictures and text that I want to share to tell a great story about my ancestors or my family’s daily life. Let’s walk through a few basics of the program so you […]

Every year, you take photos by the thousands and rarely do anything more than storing them on the computer. For decades, scrapbooking has been the solution to the picture accumulation problem, but it has also been a curse. Scrapbooking is too crafty or too time-consuming. It doesn’t have to be that way. During the Power […]