Tip 11: Searching Historic Small-town Newspapers - Newspapers have often been described as the first draft of history. They can be an excellent source for chronicling the lives of our ancestors. Newspapers are particularly useful in countries and times where government records are thin to nonexistent. Some newspapers, however, are more useful than others for genealogists searching for their ancestors. You can read more in our article Searching Historic Small-town Newspapers.
Tip 12: Tracing Ancestors by Their Accent - At GenealogyInTime Magazine, we are always looking for new and creative ways to help people find their ancestors. It is part of our passion for helping people connect with their past. In the article Tracing Ancestors by Their Accent, we discuss another first, a radically new approach to helping people trace their ancestors. Basically, it involves using an ancestor’s accent as a type of fingerprint that can be used to help trace someone back to a particular region within a country.
Tip 13: Look for Hidden Family Trees - One of the most frequent comments we receive from people tracing their ancestors is a desire for a pre-built family tree. Wouldn’t it be nice if someone had already written out your family tree? It would certainly speed up the process of tracing your ancestors if you already knew who was related to whom. You can certainly check using our free Family Tree Search Engine, which is unique in that it specializes in searching online genealogy forums and family trees to see if anyone in the world is talking about your ancestors. There is also another possibility. The article Look for Hidden Family Trees discusses one possible source of pre-built family lineage.
Tip 14: Look for Missing Marriages - Looking at historical records, it is not always easy to identify an ancestor who has been married more than once. Unfortunately, it is one of the most common reasons for misconstrued family trees. Missing a marriage can often mean missing an entire branch of your family. It can also result in assigning descendants to the wrong parent. Are there any clues that can help you identify missing marriages? See the article Look for Missing Marriages.
Tip 15: A Country Guide to Google Search Engines - To get the most out of any Google search for your ancestors, it is necessary to understand how Google works. An important consideration is to realize that Google runs different search engines in different parts of the world. For example, Google.com is the search engine for the United States, Google.ca is used for Canada while Google.co.uk is the search engine for the United Kingdom. In total, there are over 130 different Google search engines. Most of the Google search engines are organized by country. They all use identical search algorithms, but the actual search results will be different for each one. This has significant ramifications if you use Google to search for your ancestors. The article a A Country Guide to Google Search Engines is a must read if you are searching for ancestors in a different country.
Further Reading
Interested in more genealogy tips? At GenealogyInTime Magazine we have two other great articles with a further 77 genealogy tips to help you break through those genealogy brickwalls:
