Back in 2003, a family member in Boston, Lincolnshire, England took a family history trip to the local cemetery to photograph the memorials of our Davis ancestors. And I am so glad that they did! Why? Because yesterday, on a whim, I decided to check Find a Grave to see if there were any other … Continue reading The Missing Memorial
One of the most common questions I get is from people looking for passenger lists to South Africa. Unfortunately, there is not one big database we can search for that information. Passengers lists for those going to South Africa do exist but they are not complete, most are not indexed, and are scattered across various … Continue reading South African Passenger Lists Online – UPDATED July 2023
A recent DNA match caught my eye. It was a very good match on a line that I haven't been able to extend past my second great grandfather, John Bruce (born in Edinburgh, Scotland about 1843 but lived most of his life in Tunstall, Co. Durham, England). I immediately sent an e-mail to this DNA … Continue reading Alleged Bigamy at Sunderland
Last week I attended the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy and one of the lunch time sessions was with MyHeritage's Daniel Horowitz. Daniel introduced MyHeritage's new color restoration tool so I had to give it a go. So what is Color Restoration? From MyHeritage: Unlike colorization, which simulates colors of black and white photos, the … Continue reading Using MyHeritage’s New Color Restoration Tool
In the 1880s my great grandfather, John Gill Keown, left the Isle of Man for South Africa. He worked as a carpenter for the De Beers Mining Company in Kimberly. A little later in his life, he bought land in the Northern Cape and named his farm, Frisco Pokwani. That farm name was key to … Continue reading Locating farm land in South Africa
Is most reliable in her work and an extremely kind and capable nurse. The U.K. National Archives has opened up some of its digital content for free while we are all at home. I decided to do a little searching and hit pay dirt with a full military file for my 3rd great aunt, Charlotte … Continue reading Charlotte Lillie Davis, Nurse, H.S. ‘Brittanic’
Lately, I seem to read about someone's genealogical "brick wall" on every post I read on various genealogy sites. Are these truly all brick walls? I don't think so. A brick wall to me means a problem that you have been working on for a long time with little success. I've seen posts where people … Continue reading Solve Your Genealogy Brick Wall
Harry Joshua Davis was a seemingly complicated man. I never knew him, but the records he left often describe a man with many complexities. Living family members knew little of him, except rumors and hushed opinions as to where he had ended up. His birth in Lancashire, England in 1879, was innocuous enough. The oldest … Continue reading Finding Harry
At the time our ancestors lived, there were laws that came into being and which affected the way our ancestors lived and the documents they created. In last week’s post, we learned how important it is to understand the collection our record is in. It is perhaps even more important to understand the laws at … Continue reading Context is Key: Know the Law!
Records don’t exist in a vacuum. (For the purposes of this post, I am referring to microfilmed images of records we have located online). It’s important to understand the record in terms of the collection it's found in. Once we’ve located a record, we need to ask ourselves questions about the record and the collection. … Continue reading Context is Key: Understanding the Record within the Record Collection
KindredPast 