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My Alsatian Ancestors Crossed the Atlantic in 1827

Oh my goodness ... when it rains it pours.  Without really expecting to, I found the ship passenger record for Lawrence & Rose Whaley when they immigrated from France! As the previous two blog posts have discussed here and here, I've…

1823 Alsatian Marriage Record Is Translated

In my previous post, I revealed a major discovery about my Whaley-Rist ancestry, which is up-line from my Miller ancestors.  I found the marriage record for 4GGs Lawrence Whaley (1796-1870) and Rose Whaley (1801-1890) in the French civil registration…
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Discovery: Alsatian Marriage Record for Whaley Ancestors

In prepping for the Europe trip we're probably not going on, I started reviewing the information I had collected in the past about my Alsatian ancestors.  In doing so, I made a major discovery!  I found the original French marriage record…

Covid-19 Jeopardizes Trip to Europe

I'm sure we're not the first victims or the last, but it appears that the Covid-19 coronavirus situation is finally impacting our planned trip to Europe this year. Our 3-week trip is supposed to happen 16 April - 7 May.  It includes stays…

Photo Colorization Tool Makes Big Splash

MyHeritage launched a new feature on 11 February called MyHeritage In Color™.  It became popular so fast that within 5 days over 1 million photographs had been colorized, according to their website.  I noticed a lot of comment about it right…

Marit Tredahl Redux

In December, I posted about the Norwegian roots of a friend's great-grandmother.  See it here.  In the post, I was able to identify my classmate's ancestor as Marit Andersdatter Tredahl (1864-1928), born at the Skrøen under Trædal Farm…

SLIG 2021 Courses Unveiled

I just completed another week of intense instruction at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy (SLIG).  This was my second year.  (See last year's blog post here.)  I attended Introduction to Genetic Genealogy taught by Paul Woodbury , who…
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John K. Vermilyea was neither Danish nor Lutheran

I've always been saddened by the way John Knickerbocker Vermilyea (1851-1925) died.  He is a 2nd great-grandfather (2GG) and one of very few direct ancestors who died in an accident. I happened to be looking at him again recently and was…

Another Ethnicity Update from AncestryDNA

AncestryDNA recently rolled out another ethnicity estimate upgrade.  The 2019 upgrade is based on over 40,000 reference samples, a jump from 16,000 when the last revision occurred in 2018 (and from 3,000 prior to that).  They also fine-tuned…
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The Mystery of an Antique Immigrant Trunk from Nordmøre

I recently helped a high school classmate with her Norwegian ancestry.  We both graduated from Stillwater High School in Minnesota and, although I didn't know it at the time, she has a Norwegian first name: Maret.  I always liked the name,…