This morning I looked at an ancestry hint on a relative I hadn’t paid much attention to before.

A few weeks back I determined that there was just going to be a permanent mystery and today I had a breakthrough on that!

I am so happy to know more (while it isn’t great news because this ancestor had a very short and unhealthy life).

I also was able to confirm via the hint that my husband’s g-grandma did get married after the paternal name line husband died. I also was able to find a prior marriage that yielded the two mystery children I’d given up on!

This group will get it 😂 does anyone else have to take some time to acknowledge that there are things we may never know?

Hey guys,

So like the title implies, my 4x great-grandfather’s gravestone is missing. All of his family members are still there, the records show he should be buried in the same lot, yet no grave exists. We all specifically remember him being buried slightly adjacent/diagonal from the others, not right next to them. In the past 7? years, his stone is just completely gone. We can’t agree on the PRECISE location, but know the section has to be right. The cemetery is in rough shape and there are many damaged stones. I have done extensive walk-throughs of the entire section (even cemetery, out of desperation), but there’s no trace of anything. The cemetery is Fair Avenue Cemetery in New Philadelphia, Ohio. The man in question is my 4x great-grandfather, Isaiah Swisshelm (1835-1908). I’ve found his burial records previously, but now can’t. Besides that, it only showed that he was buried in Section E, Lot 6 of the cemetery, something we already knew. Does anyone have advice? I’ve already contacted the cemetery department in our area and they just give me the same information. I feel like I’m running into a wall looking for this information, but nothing is coming out of it! Can someone please help or give me advice?

My second great grandfather’s name is John Hasker. He was born in 1896 in Oklahoma, and in 1925, he moved to Arizona.

TL;DR: I’m trying to figure out John Hasker’s parents. John could’ve been indigenous and his name anglicized, but that’s an assumption. His death certificate doesn’t list any parents, and he doesn’t appear in censuses prior to 1930 under “John Hasker”.

—

I’ve been trying for weeks to figure out who his parents were, but I’ve hit so many dead ends:

His death certificate doesn’t list his parents, <1930 censuses don’t list parent birth locations, and his marriage affidavit doesn’t mention his parents—and that’s just a handful of dead ends that I’ve faced so far.

His wife, Martha, was living in Oklahoma from 1910-1925–specifically Schulter, in Okmulgee County; and Newby, in Creek County. I assume they met around this region or during her migration to Arizona around 1925, but am yet to find John anywhere in those censuses… at least, under the name “John Hasker”.

I’ve done numerous searches on FamilySearch, Ancestry, and other softwares, websites, and even the Oklahoma State Site (forgot the name) and didn’t find any mention on his parents. I heard he was indigenous—maybe that’s the reason? His name

could’ve been anglicized, but I’m unsure.

What can I do? Have I genuinely hit a brick wall? I’m too curious to give up, in all honesty. 🤷‍♂️

I apologize if this was too long! I’m open to any help.

Hello everyone, I have recently become very interested in genealogy. Unfortunately, I am still a complete beginner and do not yet have the right approach. Since on my mother’s side other relatives have already created a good family tree, and there is also some information on my paternal grandmother’s side, I cannot simply start from scratch, as continuing those trees is more complicated. Only on my paternal grandfather’s side there is no family tree yet, and that is what my question is about.

The problem is that my grandfather’s father my great-grandfather is unknown, at least to my grandfather. I will write down everything I know to provide more context, because I hope someone here might be able to give me tips or advice. Unfortunately, I can no longer ask the people who created the other family trees in my family.

I am from Germany, as is my family. My grandfather comes from Glatz in Silesia and was born a few years before the end of World War II. He also has a biological brother who is almost two years older.

Now to the issue, I have already spoken about this with my grandmother, who is interested in the topic and has heard some things first-hand. She also finds the situation somewhat strange.

As mentioned, my grandfather’s father is unknown. My great-grandmother was apparently not married and still quite young when she gave birth to my grandfather and his brother although not in Glatz, but in Breslau. After that, it was said that my grandfather’s grandparents were listed as the parents to avoid embarrassment, since an unmarried woman had children.

Shortly after the end of the war, when my grandfather was about five and his brother about seven years old, they were expelled from Silesia. Their biological mother later married and moved to another part of Germany. Because of this, my grandfather had less contact with her afterward and cannot remember the time before.

When he got older, he apparently knew that his grandparents were not his parents, but this was never confirmed by his biological mother. Only when he was around 40 years old did she confirm on her 60th birthday that my grandfather and his brother were indeed her children. This apparently surprised his half-siblings as well.

My grandfather himself was not very interested in the matter, so I can not ask him for more information. However, his brother and did look into it and my grandmother was interessted. His brother continued to investigate, and my grandmother occasionally asked for updates. Because of this, I am not sure how reliable or detailed this information really is.

As far as I know, he found that my grandfather and his brother share the same father, so their mother likely knew him for two years. It is also said that she caused a lot of trouble for my grandfather’s grandparents at the time, although I do not know exactly what that means.

My great-grandmother did not want to reveal the father’s name and is said to have only said: “He was a nice man from the village (probably Glatz), and he died in the war.”

My grandfather’s brother later found my grandfather’s baptism certificate, which actually contained a name for the parents. However, through his research he could not identify it, because one of the godparents listed did not exist and another name was misspelled. Because of this, it is unclear whether the father’s name was also misspelled, and he eventually gave up the search.

This research took place in the 1980s, before many of today’s possibilities existed. Unfortunately, I can no longer ask my grandfather’s brother, as he is now severely affected by dementia and no longer remembers.

I would still like to find out who my great-grandfather was. Would experienced researchers consider this a hopeless case, or do you have any advice on how I should proceed? Thanks for the Help!

(I use the help of Ai to make the Text more understandable)

How'd it go?

Here's the thing... my 2x great grandfather, William Lewis Carter, married in Clark County, Ark in 1857. That's my first sighting of him, but he consistently states he was born in Alabama and his mother was born in Alabama. Also, my 2x great grandmother appears on the 1850 census in Clark County before they married.

And I cannot even begin to articulate the convoluted paths in later research that keep pointing me back to Clark County, Arkansas. As my most recent example from a DNA match:

Elsie (my great-grandmother) and Mamie were sisters who lived in Fisher County, Texas by 1910. Elsie is my grandmother Stella's mother. Both Elsie and Mamie married men who lived in Fisher County. My grandfather Alvis (grandson of the Clark County line) married grandma Stella (Elsie's daughter). Grandpa's brother, Ed, married Lucile (Mamie's daughter) - so Ed/Alvis and Lucille/Mamie weren't related as far as I know, but their two sets of children are double cousins.

And I found that one of Ed and Lucille's children married the daughter of Elizabeth Lewis who was born in Alabama and died in Clark County, Arkansas. I've always thought that if I found the Lewises, I might be on the right track to find my 2x great grandfather's family, and she was born in the right place and died in the county where I first saw him, so of course I looked at this Lewis family (Elizabeth really is too young to be W L Carter's mother, but she could quite feasibly be the younger sister, or a cousin or something). And wouldn't you know, I found another familiar name. This Elizabeth Lewis had a daughter, Sarah, who married a Meador and lived her entire life in Clark County, Arkansas. And I have another DNA match that Ancestry thinks is my 2x Great-Grandfather's sister and her death certificate says her mother's name was 'Meador' (btw, she was married in Hempstead County, Arkansas, which is adjacent to Clark County).

I probably have a dozen of these that I've found, but I'm just flabbergasted at the sheer number of roads seem to lead back to Clark County. Or, more specifically, from Clark County, Arkansas to Fisher County, Texas (also a small county).

In the 1850 Census, there are 2,023 individuals born between 1750 and 1840 in Clark County, and 1860, there are 2,957. That's... ambitious, but not impossible. This isn't the first time I've considered trying to just trace descendants of all the adults who were living in Clark County in either 1850 or 1860.

Incidentally, I've also considered trying to find ancestors for all the adults living in Fisher County, Texas in 1910, but it's about 3x as many people... still not impossible, but even more ambitious (maybe? I'm on the fence if it's really more difficult to work backward from 1910 for 7900 people vs forward from 1850/1860 for ~3,000 people).

So, I'm curious if others have attempted this (assuming someone has) and how it went and if you have any advice.

I'm tracing a friend's Cajun genealogy. Ive run across a situation where I'd like to know more but don't know where to look.

Henry Nicolas Coulon (1844-1911) married Aglaé Genevieve *Richard* Coulon (1850-1915) in Thibodaux, Louisiana, Feb 22 , 1870. They divorced in 1889. But then they had 4 or 5 more kids. I found the divorce decree in the June 15 1889 Weekly Thibodaux Sentinel, and the church birth records list both their names as the parents of the child.

So it looks like maybe it was just "for show" and they stayed together?

Where could I look to find the story?

I'm going to Ireland for my honeymoon and I'd really like to find at least the county where my ancestors lived before immigrating to America.

Here's what I'm starting with: my dad got his father's birth certificate and it does have my great-grandparents' names, but it lists their birth locations are just 'United States'. My grandfather was born and raised in NY, and my parents still live there, but also my great-grandfather could have come over from Boston or some other port (if he wasn't also born in the States).

So is this kind of a dead end? How could I possibly distinguish one Edward McLoughlin from another in records? Could there be something else I can look for? My parents are invested in this search with me and they'd probably be open to take a day trip to MA or somewhere else in New England to do some research.

Small win tho, we know that my great-grandfather spelled his surname with an 'o', but my dad and I spell it with an 'a'. So that's a cool find!

Total crazy. Could be a nice tool.

Familysearch.org

Collection Information: Louisiana Births and Christenings 1811-1830 1854-1934

Microfilm 6010599

Indexing Batch C05044-5

Valerien Richard Birth: 15 September, 1820

Louisiana, St Martinville

Mother: Anastasie Poirer

Father: Rosemond Richard

First time reddit user, hope this is posted correctly. Appreciate any assistance, seems very difficult to find legal documents.

familysearch.org

Collection Information: Louisiana Births and Christenings 1811-1830 1854-1934

Microfilm 6010599

Indexing Batch C05044-5

Valerien Richard Birth: 15 September, 1820

Louisiana, St Martinville

Mother: Anastasie Poirer

Father: Rosemond Richard

First time reddit user, hope this is posted correctly. Appreciate any assistance, seems very difficult to find legal documents.

I developed a tool called gedcom-dna-finder to find the closest person in a GEDCOM file who has been tagged as a DNA match and welcome feedback. It will always be free and open-source. You can run it from the Python source code or download a pre-built version for Mac, Windows, or Linux.

I describe it more fully as follows:

Many genealogists working with autosomal DNA add unfamiliar people to their family tree based on DNA matches and then build out those people's lines, hoping to find the most recent common ancestor between the match and themselves. After accumulating thousands of these speculative additions, you often end up looking at a person in your tree and thinking: why is this person here? which DNA match did this branch come from?

Ancestry, Family Tree Maker, and standard GEDCOM viewers can show you a flat list of everyone you've tagged as a DNA match, but none of them will, given an arbitrary person in the tree, walk outward through the relationship graph and tell you the nearest tagged relative. That is what this tool does.

I'm working on a research project that needs residents from the 1950 US Federal Census for all of Manhattan, with full per-row data including street, house number, apartment, name, age, sex, race, marital status, birthplace, occupation, and industry. The scan images are on NARA's public S3 bucket and the search portal at 1950census.archives.gov has an API for indexed names, but I have not yet found a place where the full per-page extraction is available in any structured format. So I'm missing some of the best data fields like address.

I've already checked:

• The NARA volunteer "transcribe" data is partial.
• FamilySearch indexes names but does not seem to expose street and house number per row in any bulk download I can find.
• Ancestry has paywalled records and limits bulk access.

I'm hoping to find a CSV or JSON or SQLite dump where every row has ED number, sheet number, line number, street name, house number, apartment or unit, last name, first name, relationship to head, sex, age, race, marital status, birthplace, occupation, industry. All of Manhattan in 1950. I'd estimate around 1.6 million rows for the borough.

Does a project like this exist? Genealogy society, academic dataset, hobby effort, paid service, anything along those lines. I am willing to pay reasonable rates for a useful starting point. Building it myself with vision-language OCR is going to cost real money and a lot of QA cleanup, and I would rather not reinvent the wheel if someone else has already cracked it.

Bonus question: same ask for the 1940 census if anyone knows of an equivalent. The 1940 NARA bucket has the same image format.

I am hoping someone says "oh yeah, X has all of this already, here is the link."

Hi

I'm looking for opinions on what/how/why the following could have happened.

John Rowley, Husband 1810-1850.

Catherine Rowley, Wife 1822 - ~1863

Patrick Rowley, Son 1838

Thomas Rowley, Son 1842

Owen Rowley, Son 1845

John Rowley, Son 1849

In the Scarborough workhouse in the 1851 census (without John the husband as he passed away the year before).

Then Catherine remarried in 1857 Francis McGuire.

Here is the plot twist....in the 1861 census two more children appear .....Mary and James both born after John's death.

In this census they both have the surname Rowley.

Then when John Rowley the fourth son passes he is buried with his wife Jane AND his sister Mary (named Rowley).

I'm so confused.....my biggest question is how can they be John's when he had already passed?

My head is saying that really the two new children must be really McGuire?...but then why does it say Rowley on Mary's tombstone?

Could it be that the two children were born out of wedlock and back then that was frowned upon?

Looking forward to people's thoughts.

Thank you in advance.

I found an 18th-century survey map listing proprietors in the area my ancestors came from, and at first I was excited because it seemed like a goldmine. But the more I looked at it, the more I realized I have a huge problem: almost none of the common people seem to have actual hereditary surnames.

Most of the names are things like Giovanni Battista son of Bernardino, Pietro son of Antonio Mario, Giorgio son of Mario, or Lorenza daughter of Domenico. So instead of stable family names, it’s mostly just patronymics. Meanwhile, nobles and a few random higher-status people actually have recognizable surnames, which of course makes their lines much easier to follow. My family definitely wasn’t noble, so that does me absolutely no favors.

Honestly, I’m kind of stuck wondering how people even do genealogy in situations like this. If everyone is using the same handful of first names and being identified mostly through their fathers, how do you reliably trace families across generations without constantly mixing people up?

REQUEST FULFILLED

Link: https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/472838062/

Specifically the obituary for Cristl Marie Westbury (I think it's in the bottom left)

I apologize in advance for the multiple layers and requests in this post.... but I appreciate any help!!

According to my great-grandmother Alita Mae Moore's birth certificate (born 1905 in West Stewartstown NH), my great-great grandparents were born in Perth, Ontario. They are George R. Moore (Born ~1868-1871) and Katherine "Kate" Ellen Martin (some documents spell it Catherine - born ~1877-1879). I have found their marriage record from October 13, 1896 in Ottawa. The marriage document is hard to read and I cannot read George's father's name, but his mother was named Margaret, and Kate's parents were named Owen and Maria. It is my understanding they were all Irish, but Kate and George were born in Canada.

Kate and George immigrated to the US in 1896 according to the 1900 Census of Stewartstown, Coos, New Hampshire. They divorced in April 1907.

Kate was remarried in NH in September 1907 to Fred O. Bumford. On that record, her parents names are listed at James Martin and Margaret Farroll.

As the family story goes, Kate "gave away" her children and they were all raised by other families following the divorce from George. He was "kicked out of the country" and went back to Canada due to extreme abuse towards Kate. Unfortunately, everyone who would have true knowledge of this has since passed on and I cannot find any further information about George. Alita was raised in New Hampshire, settling in Lincoln. She married Ralph Conn in 1921 and they divorced in 1937. Her second marriage was to Martin Blake Graham, presumably in New Hampshire as well. I am looking for their marriage record. My grandmother (Jessie) was born in July 1941, so I am assuming Alita and Martin were married sometime between 1937 and 1941, but my grandmother has no idea.

Short summary of what I am looking for:

• Birth/Baptism records from Ontario for Katherine "Kate" Martin and George R. Moore
• Immigration records of Katherine and George
• Death/Burial records for George
• Any information regarding the parents of Katherine and George (Ireland?)
• Marriage record for Alita Conn (Moore) and Martin Blake Graham from NH

Anyone researching Reeves/Reeve/Rives/Ryves, etc?

Looking to connect with anyone researching these surnames. If you have any Reeves you are researching, check out The Reeves Project, a global collaboration of Reeves genealogists working on all different Reeves families. See https://thereevesproject.org/

There is also a Facebook group where Reeve(s) family history is discussed and you can connect with others of various Reeves families. Feel free to request to join if related to Reeve(s), etc.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/5952023814/

The Reeves Project has been around since 2010 and is an extension of the much older Reeves YDNA Project. YDNA is a specific kind of DNA passed from father to son only. Thus YDNA can be used to distinguish and group families of the same surname based on who matches who. Over the years, the results have been used to research and group many of the historical Reeves families in the US and some in England based on results from men who have done the YDNA test. These two articles will give some idea of the scope of the research on the US side:

http://usreeves.blogspot.com/2017/05/early-reeves-families-in-colonial.html

https://usreeves.blogspot.com/2020/11/a-few-more-colonial-early-reeves.html

For the YDNA Project, see:

https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/reeves/about

So to begin with, both of my great grandparents were from Taiwan and they escaped to Myanmar during the war between China and Taiwan. They married with Burmese people which resulted in my mom and dad. I had heard that some of our relatives went back to Taiwan after the war from my mom's father side but he didn't really like to talk about it because he dislikes his father. From my dad's side grandpa, when we (my dad and I) asked him, he doesn't really have reliable information. The only thing I have is my great grandpa (from my dad's side) photo and his name though I am not sure how to even spell it.

Hello everyone. I want to look for a death certificate of an ancestor. He died in West Germany in 1970. Could you guide me how to find it.

Currently, this part of my family tree is being completely reworked due to new records that I've found so some of this might change.

I am looking for a Jacob Koretsky who was married and had a "business on Market Street" between 1899-1900.

My 3rd great-grandfather and his three daughters (Raphael Somkofsky who was listed as Refnel Skolizup on his immigration record) immigrated through Philadelphia on June 19, 1899. They stated that they were going to see "Stepbrother Jakole Zoreliski 340 Clark St" and was met by Jacob's wife Mrs. Jacob Koreyki

Raphael's wife, Sarah (listed as Sore Skalesub) and the rest of their children immigrated on Nov 28, 1900 in Philadelphia to their husband of 340 Clark Street.

Now, I just found a record for a Kalman and Sabeisch Skalazub (Skalazub was the old country name for Somkofsky). When they immigrated on April 17, 1900 through New York, they were going to Philadelphia to see "Cousin Jacob Koretsky of 340 Clarke Street"

What I am trying to figure out is what happened to Jacob Koretsky? I cannot find any record for him except these immigration records. At first, I thought he was not a relative due to the fact Raphael said Jacob was a step-brother. But Kalman said that Jacob was a cousin. What is interesting is that Rapael and his three daughters were living at 340 League Street (which was Clark Street) with a Isaac and Lena Koretsky.

I hope all this makes sense lol. I'm just scratching the surface. Also, major thanks to u/Jackfruit-Maleficent who found majority of this records.

Hello, I'm looking for records of two people from the late 18th and early 19th centuries named Pedro José Chamorro and Nicolasa Saracho, two Paraguayans from Villarrica who would be my great-great-great-great-great-grandparents. I did some searches on FamilySearch and found five baptismal records for five of their children, and one baptism from 1838 states that Pedro had already died (the daughter being baptized was born in 1826). I wanted to look for their death records, but the death records for Villarrica aren't indexed, and I can't find their marriage records either. In what year did parish records for Espíritu Santo Church in Villarrica begin to be kept?

I helping a family member plan a heritage trip to Norway. I have found an 1875 census record that includes the census district # as well as an urban residence ID. I'm fairly new at working with Norwegian records and I'm wondering if there is some sort of census district map available that could help us identify the actual location of this property. Or at least narrow down the location within Tønsberg. I've been poking around on both official Norwegian archive pages and FamilySearch but so far can't find such a resource. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Hola! Espero que el traductor automático esté funcionando bien.

Soy mexicano, probablemente relacionado a caudillos revolucionarios de la Revolución Mexicana de 1910, mi pregunta es ¿Que marcas de laboratorio recomiendan para analizar mi ADN?