Family Tree

Family Tree Magazine will help point the way toward the best research tools and practices to trace your family's history. Each issue includes tips on locating, collecting, and preserving photos, letters, diaries, church and government records, and other documentation, plus fun articles about creating scrapbooks, organizing family reunions, and vacation ideas that combine history with leisure!

Family Tree • SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2023 / VOLUME 24, ISSUE 5

out on a limb

TREE TALK • We asked for tips on working with online trees. Here’s how you responded.

JOIN OUR COMMUNITY!

New Partnerships for NGS

1931 CENSUS OF CANADA

LOOSE THREADS

Reimagine: A New Photo App

NOW ONLINE: ENGLISH AND WELSH VITAL RECORDS

Family Oktoberfest

Dear Diary • A woman seeks to reunite a memory-filled diary with the writer’s descendants.

The Billion-Acre Wood • Join the millions of users who have planted their family tree at Ancestry.com with this guide.

Importing a GEDCOM

AT A GLANCE: An Ancestry.com Tree Profile

Tips for Building Family Trees

3 Ancestry.com Tree Displays • View your family tree in different formats. To demonstrate, the trees here display the well-known British royal family: King Charles III and his mother, Queen Elizabeth II.

Middle Management • Don’t stop at first and last names—your ancestor’s middle name (if they had one) can provide valuable clues. Learn what to look for.

CASE STUDY: Presidential Middle Names • Observe how middle names descend from ancestral maiden names in the family trees of three recent presidents: Joe Biden, George W. Bush, and George H.W. Bush. Note: The trees below include only enough detail to illustrate each naming pattern; they don’t include other relatives.

The Most Common U.S. Middle Names

Between the Lines • Despite its importance, the US census can come riddled with genealogical errors. Here’s how to avoid them.

READING DIRECTIONS

HAWAII

TIMELINE

TOOLKIT

MASSACHUSETTS

TIMELINE

TOOLKIT

Find Your U.S. Ancestors

REFORMATION • Huge collections of German church records are now online and expanding. Find, interpret and use them in your research with these tips.

Finding Your Ancestor’s Hometown

Church Record Search Strategies

A Nation of Immigrants • US immigration law has changed considerably over the centuries. This recap shares what (if any) legal restrictions your immigrant ancestors faced when coming to the United States.

Waves of the “Tempest-Tost”

TIMELINE: IMMIGRATION LAWS

Push and Pull Factors

Naturalization Laws

treetips

Subject: UnidenTINfied • Period clothing in a tintype casts the subject’s identity into doubt.

Church Records

At a Glance: Catholic Baptismal Register

Browsing Records in FamilySearch Historical Images • Do you want to know about newly digitized records as soon as they’re available? Of course you do! FamilySearch’s Historical Images portal <www.familysearch.org/records/images/beta> provides access to record images as they’re uploaded by scanning teams around the world, almost in real time. Here’s how to use the portal.

Saving Watches and Timepieces

NOW WHAT?

Cloud Backup Services

Shared Segments

Germanic Alphabet Chart • Compare three styles of German script: Fraktur, Sütterlin and Kurrent.

FINDMYPAST

BUILDING FAMILY TREES

SEARCHING FINDMYPAST RECORDS

VIEWING RECORDS

KEY RECORD COLLECTIONS • View a full list of the site’s record collections at <www.findmypast.com/search/historical-records>.

Crash Course: The U.K. and Great...