​As mentioned in past Blogs, I’ve been on a mission to scan, label and update my family history photos for myself and future generations.  There are several websites that delve into tools as well as magazine articles that we can explore.  This week we’ll check out Vivid-Pix RESTORE to see if this photo editing tool will work for you.  Let’s look.

Recently I’ve been searching for additional information about one of my family branches.  My default search engine is Microsoft’s Bing.  Usually, I’m happy with the search results but sometimes I cannot find a site that I’ve seen before (and forgot to bookmark or save to favorites.)  This has reminded me that I should be leveraging other tools to see what else is out there.  Each database search result is slightly different.  Let’s look.

​Memorial Day and the start of summer officially begins.  This week has felt a bit more like fall in my part of the world but soon the heat will return.  While Memorial Day has become a long weekend for most, we need to pause to remember those who have made it possible for us to enjoy our freedom to spend time with family and friends.
 
The History Channel has a nice article of about Memorial Day and how it started: Memorial Day 2021: Facts, Meaning & Traditions - HISTORY.  
 
However, you spend the holiday weekend, I hope that you can spend time remembering those ancestors who came before and served in the military.  We owe them a great debt.  Happy Memorial Day!

We are approaching summer and soon Memorial Day Weekend.  As you research your ancestors who served in the military, there is an interesting resource that you might want to check out:  National Soldiers Homes.  These homes often started shortly after the Civil War when many wounded veterans needed additional care. Let’s look.

Even though many of us will live in several homes during our lifetime, our ancestors may have settled in a particular region and stayed there.  If they were farmers or owned a business in town, they put sweat equity into building a home and life in their new community.  After leaving their home country, they were ready to have a sense of place.  That’s not to say that children of these ancestors or even some ancestors continued to see new opportunities…often further west.  As we write about our ancestors, we need to understand the places that they lived.  Let’s look at hometowns and what information we can find to enhance their stories.

​Iceland seems to have been a common thread this past week.  Relatives are planning a trip there late this fall, a fellow genealogist was telling me about Icelandic heritage and another friend has talked about their yearly celebration of all things Icelandic.  Plus the volcanic eruption in Iceland in the news. All of this made me curious to know more about what is involved in researching your Icelandic roots.  Sadly, I do not have Icelandic ancestors and so do not have firsthand knowledge, but research is what I do!  Here is information that I have discovered about researching Icelandic family history.  Let’s look.

​Hope Spring has returned to your part of the world.  Here is has been up and down as far as temperatures and the weather.  Today is one of the beautiful spring days with little wind, bright sunshine and temperatures in the 70s.  Perfect in my book!  A recent email from my internet provider has sparked this week’s topic.  They are discontinuing their email service.  With so many memberships, online accounts and friends and family to contact this is a huge task.  Why am I bringing it up with genealogy?  We all have many emails and contacts over the years with our family history research.  How are we saving and protecting this data?  Let’s look at some things we can do.

One of the reasons that many of us love genealogy is we are truly sleuths at heart.  We love a good puzzle, a tantalizing clue or missing ancestor.  One of the other things that I love in genealogy is finding the unexpected when doing family research.  Let’s look.

​This week seemed like an appropriate time to discuss taxes.  As I write this on the day that in a normal year, personal taxes would be due.   We can use tax records to discover more about our ancestors.  Taxes can be a surprisingly useful resource to fill in the blanks between census years, church records and civil records.  Let’s look at what is available.

​Libraries have been doing a juggling act with this pandemic.  Some are open, others closed and still others are balancing being open with restrictions while providing additional online resources.  People who use library versions of popular genealogy databases may have felt the lack of access.  Some libraries are making their library edition of genealogy databases available for at home use during the pandemic.  Let’s look.