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For those of us fortunate enough to have ancestors with Scottish heritage, researching is a fairly easy task. Knowing where to look is usually where we get tied up. Following these hints should help:THE place for Scottish records, of course, is the office of the General Register (GRO). Their website is the repository for all official documents: birth, marriage, death, census, wills and testaments. Here’s what you need to know:• The website is: http://scotlandspeople.gov.uk. It is a pay-per-view
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The Taylors of South Carolina

My genealogy search started over ten years ago.  I have researched many branches of my line and my husband's but the one that I am focused on is the family of John Thomas Taylor of South Carolina, my husband's great-great grandfather. 

John Thomas and his wife, Julia Nichols, left South Carolina after 1870 and headed to Arkansas via Cleburne County, Alabama.  I have much on our direct line from 1870 until the present, however, the past of John Thomas Taylor has eluded me for years.  I look forwar

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Fellow Researchers

The Registry of Deeds Index Project latest update has 63,008 index
records from 8,301 memorials of deeds.

This free resource gives researchers a start in using the tremendous
resource of the Registry of Deeds. The continued efforts of the
volunteers mean that the resource is growing steadily.

The efforts of the volunteers is recorded here:


A search page is here:


Researchers who have gathered data from the Registry of Deeds may
share 
it with the broader research community by se
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111 Years Later

After searching Homestead Records of my Grandparents, Greatgrandparents and Great greatgrandparents of my Mother and visiting the house in Hilliard that they lived in, I'm ready to visit Ukraine and walk on the land that they walked on.   My Grandmother, Mary Diduch age 13 came with her Father  George or Yuri (40) and Mother Wasylena Diduch(36) along with Wasylena's parents  Ivan Tofan (54) and Maria Tofan (54).  They left Rusiw near Sniatyn southwestern   Ukraine in March 1900 and sailed out of

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Often, on the records, the people listed as "witnesses" to a wedding or "informants" of the information (births, deaths) are close family members. Pay attention to these people. Search them out. Knowing more about them will help you to know more about your ancestors.

For example, my great grandmother's wedding registration lists her sister, Janet, as a witness. This particular sister was one of three sisters that my great grandmother had. But she was the oldest sister and the eldest child. My gre

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Lots Happening in UK Research

New at RootsIreland (www.rootsireland.ie):

 

 Recently uploaded 32,000 baptism records forCountyMonaghanin Ulster, meaning that all of theUlstercounties now have some representation on the database Irish Ship Passenger Lists. The Centre for Migration Studies, Co. Tyrone, has provided over 227,000 names of Ship Passengers. The records are of passengers, mostly of Irish origin, on ships travelling from Irish and British ports to ports in North America (United States andCanada) from 1791 to 1897.

 

New

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My 5x great grandfather, Andrew Munroe was not at the Battle of Lexington. He had died in 1766, and his wife had remarried to Caleb Simonds in 1774. At the time of the conflict on 19 April 1775, my 4x great grandfather, Andrew Jr., would have been only about eleven years old. Was he there? I’ll never know. It is known that many townspeople witnessed the event from their homes or from behind stone walls and trees. It is my bet that an eleven year old boy couldn’t have resisted watching history th
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I Am An Interpreter

I was recently telling someone about the work I do and I got some interesting feedback. He said, “you’re an interpreter.”

I have been spending some time with that statement and find it very intriguing. I guess I have always collapsed an interpreter with a translator. But when you look up the definition an interpreter is someone who facilitates communication. From the dictionary… “The interpreter will take in a complex concept from one language, choose the most appropriate vocabulary in the target

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13559123897?profile=originalThe Caukill and Taylor family that grew up in Parliament Street and Fourth Avenue, Goole, East Yorkshire were as close as any family living in the terraced streets of a northern town in Victorian Britain but more than that, both had been driven to the town by the decline in the farming industry in the late 19th century. Their life’s had changed considerably.   
William Pearson Caukill  and family lived across the street from fellow railway worker George Henry Taylor’s family in 1901. George’s bro
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13559123265?profile=originalThe Toll of Time….and Council’s

Still on the theme of local cemeteries. Following a visit to Eastern Cemetery in Kingston, I was astonished to witness in such a well kept cemetery that an eagerness to protect the visitors, the stones themselves were being damaged.
It looks to me as though the sinking of some older graves, very likely due to some flooding and certainly some excessive rain, perhaps caused them to be a little unsafe.

However, the actions of those safety conscious officials has not bee

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13559122689?profile=originalIn life we associate cemeteries with our own losses and they are often regarded as gloomy and miserable places to be. Yet in my capacity as a Family History Researcher, I see these places in an entirely different light, not just associated to death.  In fact they help bring the past to life and my experience combined with good information on a headstone, can open the doors to a celebration of that life and the achievements of those that have gone before us.
Several visits to local cemeteries over
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Who Do You KNOW You Are?

Is there any better way for a genealogist to spend a Friday night than glued to the telly watching Who Do You Think You Are? The programs have been mesmerising. And although we all know the things that the “experts” explain to the stars, it is once again fascinating to piece it all together and know the story.

 

Watching Kim Cattrall, Rosie and Steve Buscemi, I have decided that when my great grandfather went off to fight the Boer War and never returned, he likely wasn’t MIA at all, but probably s

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Barnett

I am looking For James Barnett Born 1825 in ten. married Milley Barnett.trying to find james dad.

I have no info on him

 

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Chat for Social Networking Class

I am learning a lot by just doing the assignments for the class.  At my age, I suspect it's unusual to be on all these social networking sites.  I am disappointed, however that I will be unable to join the chats for the class, because I have a Mac.  I won't be buying the Parallels program just for one chat.  Thanks for the invitation.
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The Cemeteries of Hull

13559122455?profile=originalA selection of my photographs from a recent exploration of cemeteries in Hull. Dating back to the early 1800’s, there is certainly much evidence of death, decay and disease. Many of the surviving stones had in fact been relocated from previous locations as the City expanded.

One of the most interesting finds was evidence of the 1849 Cholera epidemic in the City and the headstone of Labour Master James Myers of the Hull Work House, who died in 1883. Buried along with his wife Ellen, James is recor

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13559121498?profile=originalBeing of the surname Billington, my family, though in Yorkshire for over 100 years, is often asked about its Lancashire origins and in particular I am often asked by historians if I have any connections to the Hangmen of Bolton. In the south of England the question is quite different and I am asked of my connections to John Billington who travelled with the Pilgrim father’s from Plymouth on the Mayflower.

My second name is John, so you could say John Billington is my namesake but  the similaritie

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13559120893?profile=original

When Sam Cooke wrote the lyrics to the award winning hit ‘What a Wonderful World’ in 1959, he was telling us that he ‘did not know much about Genealogy’. You might now be humming the tune to yourself , frantically searching for the word ‘genealogy’ and you would be correct in confirming, it is not there. None the less, the references to history and geography are and my point is that without some knowledge of both, it is sometimes difficult to understand Genealogy and wok through the plot that is
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Last weekend we were in Washington DC, and at the top of my list of things to do in our capital city was to visit the National Archives.  If you read my blog story from last October, “Did George Washington Sign Here?”  http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2010/10/amanuensis-monday-george-washington.html  you will know that I was questioning the authenticity of George Washington’s signature on a document found amongst some Revolutionary War Pension papers.   My 5x great grandfather, Abner Poland

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My 5x great grandfather Abner Poland served in Revolutionary War, but so did his father, Abner Poland, Sr., and so the records have always been difficult to separate when I started to research the Poland family.   He was born in 1761, and was only fifteen when the Battles of Lexington and Concord occurred in 1775.  He enlisted not long after, on 15 January 1776 as a private in Captain Abraham Dodge’s Company in Ipswich, Massachusetts.   He reenlisted in 1777 for another two years, and reenlisted

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