Top Tips

Author and instructor Lisa Alzo answers the question “How do I know when it’s time to hire a genealogy expert?”

Read Lisa’s Premium article “Go With a Pro” for five strategies for working with a professional genealogist.

101 Best Websites

Family Tree University Crash Course

1. From James M. Beidler in : Look for your German ancestral village in passenger lists and census records. The census can give clues for what year they immigrated, and the passenger lists may contain the city or village they came from. German Genealogy 101
2. From Kerry Scott: Use Tags in Evernote to do better research. You can tag by name, date, location, record type, occupation… all on the same document. Every record note I have has the type of record tagged (such as “1920 census”) and all of the names of the people in that record. That way, when I need to see which records I have for a person, I can click on the name tag, and all the records will come up. And then, I don’t have to duplicate my work on several notes for the same census. Organize And Tag Your Data in Evernote
3. From Sunny Morton/Shannon Combs-Bennett: Evaluate Your Source. One of the big questions to ask is, who provided the information, and how long after the event was it provided? The closer the source is to the event, the fresher and more reliable it is. Did the person who recorded it see it with their own eyes? Do we know who is reporting the source? Become a Family History Detective