Level : All Time to read : 3 mins Need some relevant pictures to make a Family History story or genealogy presentation more engaging? Is purchasing high resolution photos or other graphics outside your budget? Then read on to learn about the free websites that I use regularly myself. Most written works, whether published in traditional print or online formats, are enlivened by the addition of images of some sort. If, like me, your own photos are not quite good enough for pub

Level : Intermediate Time to read : 2 mins As discussed in a previous Blog article, many of us volunteer to transcribe records in order to make them available online. Now it is possible to get paid in kind for your contributions. The Genealogist this week reported their joint project with UKIndexer wherein people who transcribe records with the latter or who volunteer to photograph and/or transcribe headstones will, in return, receive credits to use with either The Genealogis

Level : Basic Time to Read : 2 mins With Anzac Day commemorations on 25 April, I’m proud to say that my family has a long history of military service starting with the Boer War. With this in mind I’m sharing this first photo essay I created in their honour some time ago. Lest we forget . . . Our family’s military service started with Great Great Uncle George Patrick Roney of the 5th Victorian Mounted Rifles in the Boer War. “They cheerfully underwent the hardships…in perhaps

My website of the week is The Schools Collection in Ireland. Were your parents or grandparents among the 50,000 young children from 5,000 schools who participated in the Irish National Folklore project in the 1930s? Or were they perhaps among the teachers who also contributed their own folklore stories? Read on to learn about this unique digitized collection and online database . On this website you will search by name and discover images of the children’s original work as

Level : All Time to read : 1 min Have you ever thought I wish someone would write about the topics I’m interested in? Well, today I’m turning the tables and asking you to nominate three genealogy or family history topics you would like to read about in Your Family Genealogist’s blog. Deciding which blog topics to write is a little like deciding what to cook every night for dinner. There are so many options to choose from, but you want it to be something the family finds enjo

I recently came across The Irish Famine Eviction Project which caught my attention as a worthy online volunteering opportunity. It involves more than just transcribing record images, yet it can still be done from the comfort of home. The Project’s aim is to document evidence of eviction during the terrible years of the Great Irish Famine in the 19th century. It seems every time we turn around these days there are organisations seeking our voluntary assistance with transcribi

Level : Advanced Time to read : 4 mins During World War 1 (WW1) German casualties totalled more than 7 million people killed, wounded, missing, or taken prisoner. For non-German speaking family historians, searching for information about German military ancestors who were injured or killed during World War 1 can be challenging - not least due to the foreign language records. I have been successful in using the following sources when researching WW1 German military and naval

Level – Advanced Time to read – 3 mins This week's most memorable website is DNA Painter. The free web-based tool is designed primarily to 'paint' and colour-code DNA segments on your 23 chromosome pairs according to the ancestors from whom they were inherited. DNA Painter is a third party product, not a DNA-testing business. To use the tool you will need your DNA test results on hand as well as details of at least one and preferably more matches. Note: Not all testing comp

A key online resource for New Zealand family history research is Papers Past, a digital online archive for millions of pages New Zealand newspapers dating back to the 19th century. The free website does not specify the earliest newspaper date in the archive, but it appears to be 1839. It also has a major section on Maori newspapers. Although it is not yet possible to correct any OCR text errors, the National Library of New Zealand has created an uncluttered and easy to use we