Tip Roundup for 6 April 2026
If you're doing family research, you have experiences and knowledge worth sharing.
NOTE: As part of Barbara at Projectkin’s Skybridge plan, I’m including links to websites. While website URLs embed in Notes, they don’t in Posts. You’ll need to click the button to visit the website.
New Area of Research
I had no idea that you can sort the hints on Ancestry by record types. Thank you, Doris Kenney, for the tip. Kenney has been using the feature and the index panel to transcribe and mine the 1850 census for information. She describes her process in Ancestry’s Index Panel: I’m Trekking Through the 1850 Census Faster Than Ever.
In The Significance of Witnesses by Lynda Heines, she explains how looking at the witnesses helped her find more family members. In one case where the witness was “not related,” she found the families had intermarried.
Denyse Allen explains how she used Claude Cowork to prove Stephen Crumrine was “alive in 1800 and 1810, eighteen years after the SAR said he died.” You’re dealing with tick marks in those early census records, and Allen used Cowork to determine who those tick marks represented, giving her a more complete image of the household.
Tools to Help Tell Your Stories
The RootsTech Ridealong introduced me to the GeneaBloggers. One article that caught my eye was Drawing Family History: Floor Plans, Memories, and the Stories They Tell by Deborah S. Holman. While I think nothing of the homes I’ve lived in, the house plays a central role in the stories my husband tells of his childhood.
This blog post by Celia Lewis was written in 2022, but is still relevant. In CLUES GALORE! Greatgrandmother Sarah E. WHITEHOUSE’s 1858 Birth Certificate, Lewis used the information about the place and the father’s occupation to tell the story of why the area was “once termed the Black Midlands, due to the smoke/soot in the air…” And she found more stories.
Call for Contributors
Why should we all have to learn the hard way? Please share what you’ve learned. Email me at YourFamilyQuest@gmail.com
Upcoming Events:
Tuesday, 7 April 2026 at 10 am/1 pm (PDT/EDT) Mission: Genealogy Atlantic Gathering
Tuesday, 7 April 2026 at 4 pm/7 pm (PDT/EDT) Mission: Genealogy Pacific Gathering
Thursday, 9 April 2026 at 4 pm/7 pm (PDT/EDT) Speakers’ Corner: Stories from Down Under with Jane Chapman and Lex Knowlton
Sunday, 12 April 2026 at 10 am/1 pm (PDT/EDT) Stories 250 with guest, Dai Davies of GenealCymru
Thursday, 16 April 2026 at 10 am/1 pm (PDT/EDT) A conversation with Lori Olson White “How To Create a Time Capsule.”
Sunday, 19 April 2026 at 10 am/1 pm (PDT/EDT) Projectkin Live: The View from Kathy’s Corner
Bravo, Deborah Carl, I don't know how you do it all!
A special shoutout for a subtle, but I think important, innovation you have here. I appreciate the "skybridge" effort to include posts from across the larger genealogy community, but did y'all notice that Deborah included a "custom button" for each external site linked? Substack generously embeds the posts from the platform, but doesn't even auto-link those from outside.
To compensate, she's taken the time to grab the graphic image for each blog. Take Deborah S. Holeman's post about floor plans, for example. (Cool idea, t👀!) Beautiful solution, and great post selections!
Thank you for including my post. More on the Cumrine's coming out this week!