Author Archive
29 Feb 2020
Little-Used NGS Resources: The Book Loan Collection
By Aaron Goodwin On 29 February 2020 In Uncategorized
I don’t blame you. I really don’t. I’ve never used it myself. So who am I to point a finger? When the National Genealogical Society was founded in 1903 in Washington, DC, it established a library for
31 Jan 2020
Hearing Voices
By Aaron Goodwin On 31 January 2020 In Uncategorized
Former NGS board member B. Darrell Jackson had an unusual request for his birthday. He asked his three adult children to read one of the six books he has written on their family history and write about
31 Jan 2020
Three Updates at the National Archives
By Aaron Goodwin On 31 January 2020 In Uncategorized
Record Group Explorer The National Archives houses billions of pages of records, a volume so significant that researchers can easily be overwhelmed. A new tool released by the Archives makes it easier to browse those records by
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