Archives

Write What You Know: Research What You Don’t & Beware of Artificial Intelligence Generated Answers.

If you are a follower you know I encourage you to turn your family trees into stories. But sometimes it is hard to know how to do that. Well you start with what you know about an ancestor or family. That is where tools like Family Group Sheets, Individual Research Checklists and Timelines come in […]

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MOSER BIBLIOGRAPHY

This is a living blog post: new sources will be added. This regards the series of blog posts on German Immigration and the MOSER family. Please feel free to email me with additions or corrections. Hotlinks are included as available. BOOKS Barber, Edwin Atlee; Tulip War: Pennsylvania- German Potters 1903 Basset, John Spencer; The Regulators […]

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BAVARIAN Hans MOSER c1623-1696 was from Austria, not Switzerland

Please excuse my rant. You can’t do proper genealogy without historical context. You shouldn’t go connecting people to your tree willy-nilly without evidence. A few years back my friend Paul Chiddwicks had a blog post Are you a Genealogist or Family Historian? As I go about teaching genealogy and writing about family history I would […]

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German Migration to America: Johan Martin MOSER 1693-c.1743 Part Two

If you haven’t read Part one you can read it here. In this chapter we will explore the beginnings of Martin MOSER’S family life and what led him and tens of thousands of others to leave Germany behind. In the year 1677 William Penn toured Germany where he spread the message that religious freedom could […]

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Patterns & Intersections in Genealogy

We all have patterns and intersections in our ancestry—but we don’t always know about them. Sometimes we just stumble upon them. One of the greatest joys of genealogy is finding those connections. Below you will read a collection of such things in my research. I encourage you to be on the look-out for your own. […]

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A Love Letter to Young Genealogists

Dear Young Genealogist, Once upon a time I was you. I always had an interest in the past and unlike many of my peers I enjoyed hanging out with old people (gray haired retirees). I liked their stories and their points of view. I tried to imagine living through life without cars and planes and […]

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2022 Genealogy New Year: The Anti-Resolution Resolution

It must be my contrarian nature, as I am not one to make promises  I won’t keep. I get things done but not usually in a systematic, “finish this before starting that” fashion. Remember I am a firm believer in gophering. And gophering is all about going for one thing and ended up somewhere else. […]

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Who Should Own Historical Documents?

My Genealogy cousin and I briefly discussed this question during a weekly Zoom we have for SHELDON Genealogy. Both of us have purchased old documents on Ebay. Apparently there has been a market for British Documents in America for quite some time as one American seller was auctioning off their grandmother’s collection and several had […]

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Location, Location, Location: Finding Records Look EVERYWHERE Part 2

In my last post on locations I failed to mention a few things that caused me some frustration today. I only had a couple of hours to photograph records when I was in South Kingstown RI. While I was there the clerk mentioned the earliest records were actually in North Kingstown which I did not […]

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Evidence Can’t Be Trusted Either: The Case of Changing Attributes

I suppose I delight– just a bit– in saying that, as a sometimes contrarian genealogist or family historian, I do enjoy pointing out the flaws in Professionals commendable but often flawed insistence on “facts” and their proper citation. Yesterday I gave myself a task—I decided to see how many of my recent ancestors that I […]

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