Darlene Vaillancourt's Blog
Posted by Darlene Vaillancourt
There are many print-on-demand publishing companies that you can use to have your family tree printed up in book form. But you might want to consider working with one that specializes in producing genealogy-related works. You never know, you might end up producing a valuable genealogy resource that people someday look for.
Posted by Darlene Vaillancourt
It is part of official Church teachings, that all members must study and record their family's past, in order to perform certain religious rituals for the dead. It may seem unusual, but the Mormon Church holds one of the largest genealogical databases in the world.
Read my article on the genealogy resources of the LDS Church.
Even if you are not part of the Church, don't ignore this vast and freely searchable genealogy resource.
Posted by Darlene Vaillancourt
Tracking down relatives is already a complicated and challenging project, having 2 surnames to deal with doesn't help. Especially when the patterns and reasoning for these double names doesn't seem to make alot of sense to the untrained eye.
Find out more about "Dit" names and how to handle them.
Not only may you want to understand the nature of these double names, but how do you organize your relatives who have them?
Posted by Darlene Vaillancourt
When the date of the new year changed from March 25th to the first of January, it took some time for people to change their views. So many old vital records between the 1500s and 1700s have years listed as 1720/21 if the date fell between the 2 different New Years. We call this "double dating" and it's common in British documents from this period.
So don't think you're seeing errors or uncertain dates. It's a legitimate way of recording the year for that time period. Keep reading if you want to know more about how to handle double dates.
Posted by Darlene Vaillancourt
Vital records are the basic records that are part of everyone's life, such as birth certificates, marriage certificates, death registrations and so on. You can get a good framework for any relative based on their vital records.
But finding originals or decent copies can be hard, especially for relatives who were born or lived in small towns. You won't likely find any handy databases with scanned records for those out-of-the-way municipal offices. You will have to start sending letters or making phone calls to do your research.
There are some places you can look to help located what you need.
