​Happy Thanksgiving 2020!
This is a wish that you had a Happy Thanksgiving in 2020.  Hopefully you were able to celebrate with those in your household and reach out to other family by the multiple ways available to us electronically today.  We’re blessed to have so many options to socially connect.  Imagine what it was like in 1918 when people had to physically distance and many did not even have a telephone as a way to reach out.  Hopefully we’ll never have to experience anything like this year again.
Happy Thanksgiving!

​Sometimes we need to look at where we’ve been to better understand where we are going.  Gazetteers and Maps can be the tools that help us in our search for our ancestors’ lives.  Whether you are trying to find a hometown or better understand the history of an area, let’s look at resources for these tools.

​It seems like once we are in November the flurry of holidays is upon us…even with this strange year of 2020.  One of the holidays that often gets overlooked is Veterans Day.  All of us owe a debt to veterans for putting their lives on the line, putting their lives on hold, and sacrificing so much for their country and for us.  As genealogists, we likely have at least one, if not several, ancestors who served.  Let’s look at some resources to help us understand their military service.

If you have tried to read Latin vital records, you know that it can really become a tangle.  Not only are you dealing with a ‘dead’ language, but you also need to decipher old script, poor handwriting, and unfamiliar abbreviations.  Let’s look at some ways to tackle this.

​Well, this is an interesting year for all you ghouls and goblins and like everything else this year, your trick or treating might need to be virtual!  Now is the perfect time to capture what 2020 Halloween is/was like with the pandemic.  And talk to older relatives about what they remembered doing for Halloween.  It is doubtful that our pioneer ancestors spent any time celebrating this holiday.  Did your grandparents or aunts and uncles?  Or did it really start to be celebrated more in the 50s and 60s? 
Here are a few sites to satisfy your curiosity regarding this spooky holiday.  Happy Haunting!
Halloween on Wikipedia
The History Channel has several links such as Halloween around the world and Halloween 2020.
For those who really love the details, Stacker has put together a timeline history of Halloween.

This week my uncle dropped off a treasure trove of old documents, letters and notebooks that had been in my grandparents’ home.  Like many of us, they are busy sorting and sharing information with family.  Written within the notebooks were several recipes from my great-grandmother.  Let's look at how we can use these old recipes to add to our family history.

​I suspect that you have been using FamilySearch for many years.  I too find FamilySearch to be a helpful site as more resources are digitized from across the globe.  It is worth looking at some areas that you may not have tackled before.  Let us look.

​There is nothing like reading letters from family and friends from years past.  They jog your memory about events, and you can hear their voices through their written correspondence.   We have spent more time this summer talking about research and records, today let’s look at the importance of capturing stories

​If you have Irish ancestors, you have likely used Griffith’s Valuation in the past.  I know that I did but revisiting it has highlighted some new information and insights.  Let’s look a bit more.

​I am torn this week between working outside and digging into genealogy!  With our lovely warm days in North Dakota coming to an end with the first week of Fall, I have a long list of outside projects to do. However, I did want to share information about a free site that is not utilized as much as it could be.  Let’s look.