I am looking to buy an analysis of my mtDNA, but my search engine seems to be only giving me foreign companies. (This is why I hate tailored searches because they pigeonhole you.)
Can anyone help me?
posted by squirbel
on Mar 24, 2013 -
7 answers
My brother shares his name with one other person in the world (as far as we can tell from Google anyway). This man is probably related to us. Should we write to him? If so, what should we say?
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posted by hoyland
on Mar 20, 2013 -
30 answers
My father passed away when I was a kid. I want to contact some of his friends to learn more about him, which is awkward enough, but more so when some of his close friends are public figures. Looking for advice on how to go about this.
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posted by INTPLibrarian
on Mar 4, 2013 -
13 answers
I have a good scan of the group photo from my grandparents wedding. I know who several of the people are in the photo, and I know that all my grandmother's eight brothers are in the group, but I do not know which brother is which. My Dad has made his best guesses, but he's not sure about many of them. I have recently made contact with several second cousins in the family while doing my genealogical research, so I thought I could get each of them to give me their best guesses in some sort of online survey, and compile the answers to get a sort of family crowd-sourced opinion. But how best to do this?
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posted by Joh
on Feb 3, 2013 -
8 answers
How do I get information about a turn-of-the-century criminal? He was my great-grandfather.
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posted by anonymous
on Jan 12, 2013 -
6 answers
Genealogy Software - can't decide between Family Tree Maker and Ancestry Quest.
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posted by Kevin S
on Dec 2, 2012 -
7 answers
Genealogy question! What does the bolded mean in this record of marriage taken from a 1911 genealogy:
Margaret Harris, b. Dec. 12, 1810; m. (1st) Abraham Mitchell. (Barrow, Ind.) [more inside]
posted by the young rope-rider
on Nov 22, 2012 -
7 answers
ThanksgivingFamilyTimeFilter: Let's talk about family tree-building! I'm looking for genealogy solutions that prioritize narrative as much (if not more) as data. Help me sift through the options?
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posted by greggish
on Nov 22, 2012 -
4 answers
My father's grandfather was adopted with very little paperwork or evidence trail as to his biological origins. Earlier this year, my father's uncle got his DNA tested. Unfortunately, the closest Y-DNA relative we've isolated from the tests is 13 generations back. But, I have a related question: All of the matches, through multiple services (having manually entered the data into other services) have a wide variety of non-repeating last names. Given that Y-DNA matches father-to-son, wouldn't there be at least
some names repeating?
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posted by thanotopsis
on Aug 30, 2012 -
25 answers
I found a link to an old court case involving a relative of mine. Google Books won't show me the whole thing - can anyone find it elsewhere or suggest how I can get a copy? I don't have access to legal databases. This is
the link, and my relative referred to is Erno Scheiner.
posted by Joe in Australia
on Aug 15, 2012 -
11 answers
Can I and should I request court records from a 1942 manslaughter case in Tucson, AZ?
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posted by anonymous
on May 7, 2012 -
4 answers
My great aunt was murdered somewhere in the USA around 1970 by her husband. I only know her first name. How do I find out the details?
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posted by pandini
on Mar 20, 2012 -
28 answers
I'm a reference librarian trying to help a patron find some information. The father of her children claimed to be Native American, but she is no longer in contact with him. She does have his first and last name and social security number, but no other information. She would like to find out whether he was telling the truth and what tribe he was part of, and share that information with her kids. I've told her that her best bet is to check the tribal rolls in the area that he lived, but she hasn't had any luck there. Any other suggestions?
posted by crowyhead
on Jan 25, 2012 -
8 answers
Does anyone know anything about the Irish trade unionist and politician William X. O'Brien (23 January 1981 - 31 October 1968)? I read that he was born in Clonakilty and, descending from the O'Brien family in that area, I'm curious if he's a relative. I would think it'd be easy to get a little family information on him given his relative prominence, but I haven't turn up much.
posted by Enneking
on Jan 21, 2012 -
1 answer
Genealogy question: I have a lot of information on my (maternal) ancestors going back about 250 years. It's a huge long list of names, dates, places, and relationships, emailed to me years ago by my mother's cousin. The difficulty I'm having is that the information is organized in a linear fashion, and I'd love to see it in a family-tree type of format so I can better understand (visually) how these people are connected to me. I'm looking for software (free if available) that will allow me to plug in names, dates, and relationships, and will display it in a tree format. Can you recommend a website or service that would allow me to do this?
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posted by JenMarie
on Aug 22, 2011 -
12 answers
The Mormons have put images of a whole lot of family records online (e.g.,
here) and people can view and download them for free via a web app. This is super nice of them. But their app is so slow and buggy that doing this page-by-page is driving me crazy. How can I download a whole lot of images at once, or at least automate the process?
posted by Joe in Australia
on Aug 10, 2011 -
1 answer
I just saw a commercial for ancestry.com that sold me on finding out interesting things about my family that I wouldn't even think to look for or ask about. What are my options in terms of services (are there better genealogy sites than ancestry.com?), and what will this cost me? Have you had a good experience with a genealogy service?
posted by rastapasta
on Jun 12, 2011 -
19 answers
At our upcoming family reunion (the first in a good seven years), my mother wants to run an audio "story booth" where family members can come and tell stories to be preserved for posterity. Can y'all think of any tips -- before, during and after -- to help this run smoothly and get the most interesting stories?
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posted by Madamina
on Jun 3, 2011 -
10 answers
Dear HiveMind, please help me think of a name for a new web project I'm building. It's essentially a "genealogy search engine in a box", based on a customized build of
Apache Solr. It will allow moderately tech savvy genealogy geeks, whether individual genealogists or small genealogy organizations, an easy way to index and search datasets of names and any related data, with a nice front end UI for doing searches. Notable features include faceted search (by record year, record town(s), record source, etc.), soundalike surname searching, customizable given name synonyms (i.e. searching for "Becky" also finds Rebecca), and pop-up Google Maps linked to record locations. And the entire project will be open source. The project is already about 90% completed, but I need something snappy to call it before I can release it. Ideas welcome!
posted by Asparagirl
on May 17, 2011 -
16 answers
I have lots and lots of photos of tombstones and I want to get the information into a machine-readable format - ideally a spreadsheet. I think I can find volunteers to transcribe them, but I need a way to do it efficiently. Can anyone suggest a way to do this online, perhaps using some sort of blogging or Wiki-like software?
posted by Joe in Australia
on May 9, 2011 -
12 answers
Do people really trace their family trees back that far? I'm pretty much dead-ended in the 1850s.
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posted by smackfu
on Apr 28, 2011 -
52 answers
I need an English-speaking genealogist in Austria with experience searching Austro-Hungarian military records. I haven't had much luck using search engines. Any suggestions?
posted by Joe in Australia
on Mar 30, 2011 -
2 answers
[biogeography filter] Both of my parents are adopted. How can I find out more about my ethnic heritage? Complicating factors inside.
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posted by easy, lucky, free
on Feb 17, 2011 -
11 answers
I'm tracking down my grandparents' backgrounds in Germany.
Point me in the right direction?
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posted by cgs
on Feb 9, 2011 -
10 answers
Etymological/genealogical question--tips or tricks for finding the origin of a very elusive family name when Googlefu, Ancestryfu and all other manner of -fus fail?
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posted by nonmerci
on Feb 7, 2011 -
19 answers
Are there any good, preferably free, widgets that I can use to build a family tree and put it on my blog? Ideally I would like a widget that has some sort of database behind it, and I would link to a database record for a specific ancestor when I write about them . It would also be cool to show an attractive family tree as a navigational tool to go to old blog posts about specific ancestors. You could click links in the genealogy widget to posts about all of the stories that are tagged "great grandpa Joe," for example.
posted by tnygard
on Nov 27, 2010 -
3 answers
What are some resources I can look at describing the conditions of northern Germany during the 19th century, and why people may have wanted to emigrate from there?
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posted by sanka
on Nov 20, 2010 -
4 answers
Are there any published works that attempt to trace the descendants of famous historical figures, especially those we read about in ancient history?
For example, Cleopatra had children by Julius Ceasar and Marc Antony. One of her daughters was married off to Jubal, king of Numidia and Mauretania. What became of their children?
Looked at another way, who among those alive today can trace their lineage to the most distant dates? Royal families would seem to have the advantage here, but not necessarily.
posted by justcorbly
on Aug 3, 2010 -
31 answers
I need help visually and clearly showing/analyzing surname data retrieved from 23andme.com's Relative Finder feature.
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posted by angelaas525
on Jul 9, 2010 -
4 answers
Help me find a (reputable) person or agency who can procure genealogical records from Italy (specifically Sicily) -- preferably who can communicate in English
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posted by frmrpreztaft
on Jun 24, 2010 -
8 answers
I'm currently working on my family tree and managed to track down a marriage certificate for my great grandfather. The problem is I can't decipher the handwriting. Can anyone help identify these addresses?
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posted by gfrobe
on May 26, 2010 -
2 answers
Need help converting very old Family Tree Maker .ftm file to gedcom.
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posted by cgk
on Apr 11, 2010 -
4 answers
Is it legal for a random genealogy website to display my full name, birthdate and mother's maiden name without asking my permission?
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posted by anonymous
on Mar 31, 2010 -
15 answers
