"Your Family Tree in 20 Minutes"

One of the genealogical magazines that I regularly subscribe to arrived yesterday with an article on finding your family tree in "20 minutes" on the cover. I had to laugh out loud before I even opened up to read the "tips" there because I believe that it is misleading to the "newbie" to think for even 20 seconds that they can successfully find their family tree in such a short amount of time, even with all of the fabulous online databases.

As it turns out, there were a variety of tasks that you could accomplish on individual tasks on your family history research in 20 minutes or less, according to the author. Be careful what you promise........

Happy New Year and Success in the Search!

Multimap as an online tool

Another online research tool is www.multimap.com

I used the website to check an area that I have searched through with traditional records extensively, Richland Center, Wisconsin, for ancestors on my maternal branch. The scale ran from 1:500,000 to 1:1,000,000. The map showed me the surrounding towns that I knew well from hours of census record research, where the siblings and families that married into my line had resided, such as Boaz, Rockbridge, Hickory Grove, Gays Mill and Boscobel. The larger scale showed me how far Richland Center was from the Iowa border and the capital city of Madison.

Again, as more and more records, maps, books and microfilms get digitized, we will be able to focus entirely on accurate online sources for our genealogical research.

Actual Death Certificate Entry

While researching the Stearns County, Minnesota death certificates that I needed last weekend, I ran across this actual entry for 1918: "Occupation: Senile, (retired)" while the actual cause of death had another chronic illness listed. This example brings several questions to mind, such as, is she retired from senility because of her death? Was that a type of job at the turn of the last century that I've never heard about before? Or how many years had she been retired from senility before she actually died?