Megan Smolenyak, ‘Unclaimed Persons’ & GenealogyBank in WSJ

Earlier this week the Wall Street Journal ran an interesting feature article about “Unclaimed Persons.” In 2008 Megan Smolenyak started “Unclaimed Persons” to help coroners track down the family details of persons who died without leaving information about their next of kin. She started this project assisting the coroner of Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, and... (Read More)

Top Genealogy Websites, Pt. 6: Search Cemeteries Online

A few weeks ago I wrote about online cemetery records (See: Top Genealogy Websites, Pt. 3: Burial & Cemetery Records). In that article I wrote about the U.S. Veterans Administration’s Nationwide Gravesite Locator, Find-A-Grave, and BillionGraves. Now I want to show how you can help your family history research by using information from these... (Read More)

Tips to Get the Most Out of Your GenealogyBank Subscription

Introduction: Gena Philibert-Ortega is a genealogist and author of the book “From the Family Kitchen.” In this guest blog post Gena provides some search tips, and shows some resources available on the GenealogyBank website, to help her readers better understand how to use GenealogyBank with their family history research. What are you doing this... (Read More)

Family History Saturates American Pop Culture & Advertising

You can find references to genealogy everywhere in America these days. In a current Capital One TV commercial, Alec Baldwin and “the boys” use their double miles to fly home for their family reunion. Family Reunion Capital One Venture Card Commercial So opens the familiar Capital One ad—this works because of the underpinning of... (Read More)

Take a Music Break & Listen to ‘I’m My Own Grandpa’

Take a break today and listen to this old country song performed by Dennis Warner. Click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7x1ETPkZsk. You’ll need a pad and pencil to work out all the genealogy connections in this funny ballad loaded with connections on the old family tree. The song lyrics to “I’m My Own Grandpa” are below for... (Read More)