Author Archive
30 Nov 2019
USCIS Fee Hike Proposal
By Aaron Goodwin On 30 November 2019 In Uncategorized
According to Records, Not Revenue, “an ad hoc group of genealogists, historians and records access activists,” U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) recently proposed a 492% increase in fees for historical records held by the USCIS Genealogy
28 Nov 2019
Highlights from the 2020 Family History Conference Program
By Aaron Goodwin On 28 November 2019 In Uncategorized
I’m not normal; on this I’m clear. But for reasons that remain a mystery, I take an inordinate amount of pleasure from opening up a conference program for the first time, perusing the pages, and marking the
30 Oct 2019
Land Evidences and Geographic Clues: Mapping As a Research Tool
By Aaron Goodwin On 30 October 2019 In Uncategorized
It’s probably our most common research problem: A variety of records contain the same name; do those records refer to one person or to two or more? I’ve referred in the past to examples of solutions that
29 Oct 2019
Sheriffs and Other Grantors You Should Know
By Aaron Goodwin On 29 October 2019 In Uncategorized
You’re stuck. You were tracing your ancestor’s land ownership, and everything was going just fine. He bought; he sold; he bought; he sold; he bought again . . . but when and where is the sale of
10 Sep 2019
Non-Population Census Schedules
By Aaron Goodwin On 10 September 2019 In Uncategorized
Every genealogist works with federal census population schedules. Our work with them is so common that we generally don’t even bother to specify that they’re population schedules. They’re just “the census.” Far fewer of us make full
10 Sep 2019
Cause of Death Decoder
By Aaron Goodwin On 10 September 2019 In Uncategorized
Just as we in the field of genealogy have a friend in Steve Morse and the “One-Step” pages that facilitate effective searches of passenger lists, censuses, vital records, and more, so the scientific, technical, and medical research
21 Aug 2019
Determining and Expressing Dates
By Aaron Goodwin On 21 August 2019 In Uncategorized
The topic of dates and how to estimate or calculate them has been addressed in NGS Monthly before. In Laura Murphy DeGrazia’s “Calculating Dates and Date Ranges,”[1] qualifying terms like “about” and “calculated” are referred to, but the
20 Aug 2019
Chronologizing As a Research Tool
By Aaron Goodwin On 20 August 2019 In Uncategorized
When I started in genealogy, I thought I was being organized and mindful if I saved a record I discovered to the appropriate folder with an appropriately descriptive file name. But I didn’t abstract those records as
18 Jul 2019
Some Resources (and a New Roadblock) in African American Research
By Aaron Goodwin On 18 July 2019 In Uncategorized
On 19 June 1865, Major General Gordon Granger and his regiment landed at Galveston, Texas, to announce that the war had ended and the previously enslaved were free. “Wait,” you might think. “Wasn’t that 2½ years after
17 Jul 2019
In Defense of the Curious Meander
By Aaron Goodwin On 17 July 2019 In Uncategorized
Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) —Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” 51 In May’s issue, I wrote about the importance of starting your research plan with a