At a recent Genealogy Networking Group meeting several people responded to the challenge of writing up an ancestor’s profile on one particular day or year. They agreed to share them on the blog. Today we read about Pam’s grandmother in 1918. Clara Smolen Krull This year a century ago This year a century ago, my…
Erica’s Pick of The Week has family drama, derelict houses, and elegant descriptions of spiders. (No, really.)
Do you have ancestors who were adopted but don’t know how to go about researching them? Having an adopted ancestor can often be one of the most frustrating and challenging aspects of genealogy research. In times past, records of adoptions weren’t as well kept as they are today, making searching for the link between birth parents…
At the beginning of 2018, we started profiling World War I veterans with a Libertyville connection – those who were born in Libertyville, were residents at the time of enlistment, or those that settled in town after the war. We profiled eight of the around 200 veterans that have been identified through newspaper articles, Ancestry.com,…
Jennifer Segal is the classically trained chef and busy mom behind Once Upon A Chef, a popular cooking blog where she uses tips and tricks learned in culinary school to create tested and perfected recipes for the often hectic family life. This year Jenn made the transition from cooking blogger to cookbook author with the Once…
I hope you don’t have anything planned for this weekend, because we’ve got a genealogy bonanza on our hands. No less than three membership databases are opening their records for free, for a limited time only: AmericanAncestors, run by the New England Historic and Genealogical Society, is offering free access to 1.4 billion names from…
Whenever someone learns that I work in a library, this question inevitably follows: what’s your favorite book? It’s like Sophie’s Choice, impossible to answer. So when it came time for me to review a recently published memoir, I couldn’t pick just one. Following are a few of my favorites from this year. Written by four…
“Marsh is not swamp. Marsh is a space of light, where grass grows in water, and water flows into the sky.” These are the first lines of Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, one of the best books I’ve read this year. The marshes and swamps of coastal North Carolina are the beating heart…
What better way to spend a chilly, blustery day than with a good read (and maybe a warm drink)? Andrea stops by to share five titles that she recommends for this fall. Titles mentioned: Dracul by Dacre Stoker and J.D. Barker Night of Miracles by Elizabeth Berg November Road by Lou Berney (read Jo’s review here) Washington Black by…
Lou Berney’s new novel, November Road, is going to be one of my favorite books of 2018. The Oklahoma native weaves a spine-tingling story set in the weeks after the John F. Kennedy assassination that is both thriller and love story. His two main characters, Frank and Charlotte, are wonderfully complex, likeable and courageous. Both…
