Articles on genealogical and DNA-related topics.
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Marshall County, Mississippi Research and Discoveries
This month’s US Black Heritage 1880 Census Project focus on WikiTree is the state of Mississippi, specifically Alcorn, Lafayette, and Marshall counties. I suggested Lafayette and Marshall (as a member of the USBH Mississippi team) because I’ve previously focused on them (mostly Lafayette because a lot of my more recent paternal ancestors were from there),…
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My Lafayette County, Mississippi Web of Connections
Abbeville, Lafayette County, Mississippi is a very small rural town. The population (as of 2020) is only 372 people. It was originally founded by people who migrated there from Abbeville, South Carolina in the 1830s. I’m interested in Abbeville because my father and majority of his ancestors (at least back to 1870) were born either…
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Why you should prefer FamilySearch over Ancestry for records
(or over MyHeritage or over FindMyPast or over [insert other paid site here]) TL;DR: FamilySearch is free and accessible to everyone. FamilySearch is a “one global family tree” site (like WikiTree) while Ancestry is an personal family tree site. FamilySearch is designed for collaboration. That said, FamilySearch isn’t perfect. The search engine is inferior to…
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4th and 5th great-grandparent possibilities (update)
Ancestry updated my ThruLines again, but decided to use different tree sources for the incorrect suggestions in it (the names and photos are different but they’re the same people as before). Rachel Flood Logan is new, but she’s set in someone’s tree as the mother of Andrew Logan (who is the father of my 2nd-great-grandfather…
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The search for Henry Logan’s family
My paternal 2nd-great-grandfather Henry Logan (1837 – ~1920) was born into slavery in Mississippi. Two out of four of the US Census records I’ve found for him say that his parents were born in South Carolina (the 1870 Census doesn’t have columns for the birthplaces of parents unless they were born outside the US and…
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4th and 5th great-grandparent possibilities
I loaded Ancestry’s ThruLines page recently to see if a particular cousin showed up in it so that I could possibly figure out who her parents and grandparents are since their names are private in her tree. Her great-grandfather isn’t private, however, and I know where he fits in my tree (he’s the grandson of…