Category Archives: Research-tips

Assessment

Do we really need to assess all the published resources we use in our genealogical research? It obviously takes time and effort to consider even the ten categories we are using for this experiment in “scoring” genealogies, not to mention that assigning numbers to..

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An imperfect score

Continuing a review of Donald Lines Jacobus's Bulkeley genealogy of 1933:

Citations: Jacobus notes in his preface that “Full references are given in the section of this volume which relates to English origins, but in a volume of this size it was found impractical to..

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Belated recognition

In the Summer 2017 issue of Mayflower Descendant,  we published an interesting article by NEHGS member Gregory J. Weinig entitled “Elisha Freeman of Provincetown, Massachusetts (ca. 1758/9-1825).”[1] The article clarified his age and parentage (establishing his mother..

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DNA and a brick wall

Click on the image to expand it.

Recently I’ve been playing around with DNA Painter. It is a colorful, easy-to-use tool for understanding the chromosome segments you received from an ancestor. This free program lets you map DNA segments and assign or “paint” them..

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Three Eatons of Watertown

Dr. John Eliot Eaton (1756-1812) of the Reading Eatons.

After my recent post on my Eaton ancestors, my aunt e-mailed me, curious to know if “those Eatons” were related to our “other Eatons”? The quick answer is yes, but I don’t know how! Let me explain.

Through my..

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Accessibility

Until very recently, the vast and rich world of genealogical publications was limited to those who could visit a library with a specialized collection, such as NEHGS. Most genealogies are, as one would expect, privately published by the author or client in limited..

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Analyze what?

Genealogical articles, such as those published in the Register, very often address a problem or omission from a previously published genealogy. The author explains the problem, describes methods and sources used to address it, reports results and, then, if the answer..

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Closer in time

General William Eaton (1764-1811). Courtesy of Wikipedia.org

Alicia’s post last week on certain advantages to older genealogies reminded me of an example where a published biography was the only contemporary source of a stated relationship (indirectly), despite the..

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Age and Methodology

Although it would seem logical that an older genealogy would always be less valuable than a newer one, as we would assume that the author of the newer work had access to more and better resources and modern genealogical methodology, that is not always so.

The biggest..

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El Dorado 1914

Jeff Record’s post on Monday, and the comments on it, have nudged me into summarizing how I was able to use his father’s DNA results to determine Jeff’s grandmother’s biological father. Jeff has written two articles in Mayflower Descendant, one on the Young family from..

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