I am currently working with a client in Bristol England. Before I started my search, my client made a special effort to sit down with his elderly parents to retrieve as much information on their relatives as possible. This is truly a lesson for all of us. Our parents and grandparents are our link to the past. Once they are gone, stories, dates, names, often go with them. In this case all I needed was my client’s father’s name and date of birth. As I work through a search to find…

Sometimes while researching a family history you find stories that truly reflect the times your ancestors lived in. It always reminds me of the opening line of a Tale of Two Cities; “It was the best of times it was the worst of times.” This disturbing newspaper clipping is from the Indiana State Sentinel, June 8, 1887. The “Squire McDonald” it mentions is third Great Grandfather of my client. I can’t help but feel sorry for the poor woman in question and the fate of her baby. She is rudely called…

I use a variety of sites and tools to research a family background. Often times the best way to find out more about the people and places that help create a complete picture of your family’s history is by using plain old “Google Magic”! I was working with a client whose paternal grandparents were from England. Along with the multiple avenues of research I was engaged in, I “Googled” the maiden name of the grandmother. One of the hits was from a bookseller in Portishead (where the family had lived for…

It all started with a single photo. I have been working with a client whose maternal grandparents were born in the Ukraine, and—independently of one another—immigrated to the US and settled in Chicago, Illinois. My client’s grandmother, Rose Skolnik, eventually moved to California in the 1940s with her husband and daughters. She died in 1981 in Oakland.  My client had a photo of Rose as a young woman. In the photo, she was with a man and two women. As the man and women did not look old enough to be…