How many Genealogy or Family History magazines do you subscribe to? I like Family Tree Magazine. It advertises that it is "America's # 1 Family History Magazine!" and I believe it. There is so many helpful articles in one issue that it takes a while to try them all out. The best feature at the moment is the "state research guides" that they are putting in that you can take out and put in a binder. They do two states per issue and will have Ohio, Florida, Maryland, Ohlahoma, Mississippi, and New Jersey in the coming months.
One of the articles has to do with Surnames. Now you might not think you could write much about "surnames" because, you know, everyone has them. But WOW! wait till you read the article. Or wait till you start researching your own Surname and see just how many you will come across that also has your given name. Talk about confusing!! And when you start looking for that ancestor that you just know is going to be the one that gets you into the SAR or DAR and find out there are 20 or 30 with the same exact name, and possibly the same birthplace, and even the same birth month and you don't know the exact birthdate of your own ancestor - well, it is frustrating to say the least. But take heart, there are ways to find your one true ancestor. The article lists seven (7) ways to look at your Surname and find out all about it. And you could find a lot more relatives than you thought possible to boot.
There's always good articles in The Family Tree magazine and I recommend everyone to subscribe to it.
Another good resource to have are the RSS feeds for blogs, articles etc that are published on the Internet. I subscribe to Arlene E'akle's Virginia blog and Genealogy Insider and even the Midwestern Roots 2008: Family History Conference to keep up on the news. I am going to be adding more as I come across those that interest me.
And how about Genealogical Societies! Right now I am a member of the National Genealogical Society (NGS) which is holding its annual conference in Kansas City, Missouri this year and in Raleigh, North Carolina next year. I plan on going to both as they are very informative and you meet lots of Professional Genealogists that offer tips and other information that can be very useful in your own research. It is also a very good idea to join those societies that are located in the area of your ancestral research. Mine is in New York mostly, so joining the Central New York Genealogical Society is my next project. They have "Tree Talks", their publication of genealogical records from around the State of New York. Each one covers portions of records from different counties within New York and you have to receive them all in order to have the complete record so a continuing subscription/membership is vital. You can purchase back issues of Tree Talks if you happen to miss one for one reason or another. Tree Talks publishes abstracts, bible records, has book reviews, and queries and articles on genealogy and research, military records, births, deaths, will records, marriages, tax lists, cemeterys and so much more. It is a good idea to have a lot of binders to put these in as they come as loose leaf pages so that you can someday have complete volumes in one binder. They have been around since 1961 so there are plenty of volumes to collect.
Next time I will be talking about more genealogical resources and scrapbooking. Scrapbooking is a creative way to do your family tree with pictures, anecdotes, articles that belonged to great- great grandma, special events that occurred in your ancestors or your own life. Till next time.
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