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

out on a limb

TREE TALK • We asked about your favorite find in a historical newspaper. Here’s how you responded.

5 QUESTIONS with:

JOIN OUR COMMUNITY!

NARA Launches New Catalog

RUMSEY MAPS ON TRACKUBACK

23ANDME AND FSAs/HSAs

MYHERITAGE DNA: NAME TRANSLATION

New Name for Family History Library

Clean Sweeps

Cousins, Cousins Everywhere • One researcher identifies DNA matches, then turns them into Facebook friends.

The NEWSPAPERS Issue

TITANS of INDUSTRY • Looking for digitized newspapers? We’ve got the scoop on five newspaper giants: Newspapers.com, GenealogyBank, Newspaper-Archive, Chronicling America and Fulton History. Here’s how they compare.

HEADLINING SEARCH TIPS • Regardless of which site you choose to search on, here are some tips for finding your ancestors among the digitized volumes.

CLIP TIPS: Make Clippings of Digital Newspapers

EXTRA, EXTRA! • Don’t stop at the megawebsites—these smaller newspaper databases might cover your ancestral hometown’s beat.

UTAH

TIMELINE

TOOLKIT

WEST VIRGINIA

TIMELINE

TOOLKIT

Find Your U.S. Ancestors

In the News • Learn what newspapers can do for your research in this case study, in which they help reconstruct a long-forgotten ancestral history.

THE BASICS of NEWSPAPERS

Ladies-in-Waiting • Find long-lost female ancestors with these 12 resources for discovering maiden names.

Nicknames: Not a Given

MIND THE GAP • The UK National Archives’ website might not be exhaustive. But it still serves as a finding aid to British records, both there and elsewhere. Here’s what to expect.

treetips

Mistaken Identity? • Face comparisons cast a handwritten caption into doubt.

US Censuses

Searching Land Patents from the Bureau of Land Management • The Bureau of Land Management’s General Land Office website <glorecords.blm.gov> hosts over 5 million title records for US public-land sales. Through the 1862 Homestead Act, the federal government distributed 270 million acres of land across 30 states. About half of the recipient “homesteaders” successfully proved their claims, meaning they qualified to keep parcels of 160 acres each. Was your family part of this history? What records tell their stories?

Preserving Coins and Paper Money

NOW WHAT?

Places to Connect with Genealogists • Family Tree Magazine is on many of the platforms below. See page 5 for account information.

Testing at Multiple Companies

YOUR TURN

4 Things You’ll Find in Old Newspapers

NEWSPAPER RESEARCH TIPS

American Newspaper History • Benjamin Franklin became publisher of The Pennsylvania Gazette in 1729.

Searching Newspapers.com

OPTICAL CHARACTER RECOGNITION SEARCH PROBLEMS

Searching GenealogyBank

RESOURCES

FINDING OFFLINE NEWSPAPERS

TYPES OF NEWSPAPER RECORDS • Responding to young letter-writer Virginia O’Hanlon, New York’s Sun editor Francis Pharcellus Church confirmed the existence of Santa Claus in 1897.