In genealogical research, there are multiple methods you can employ to go deeper into the record sets and find missing links. One useful way to do this is the FAN method. FAN stands for Friends, Associates & Neighbours. It’s basically anyone within your ancestors' lives who wasn’t a family member. Although not relatives, these people can still offer invaluable insight into the lives of our research subjects. I have been researching my 2x-great-grandmother Ada Williams for som

It seems to me to be a most cruel and monstrous custom to dig up a dead man’s bones and stock them up under a tree just because his friends are too poverty stricken to pay the rent on a pitiful two by six plot of ground.

If I could hop in a time machine and travel back to my first year of family history research, I’d do things VERY differently! Today, I’m going to be sharing the things I wish I’d done differently when I began researching my genealogy.

They are able-bodied men here who work from early morning until late at night, in the ice-cold cellars with a quarter inch of water on the floor -- men who for six or seven months in the year never see sunlight from Sunday afternoon till the next Sunday morning -- and who cannot earn three hundred dollars in a year. There are little children here, scarce in their teens, who can hardly see the tops of work benches -- whose parents have lied to get them their places -- and who

Anna Amanda Knowlton, known as Annie, was born on 9 March 1824 in rural Quebec. She was the only child of Samuel Willard Knowlton, a farmer, and his wife, Amanda Lewis. Life in Shefford County during Annie’s childhood would have been simple and work-focused, centred around family and farming. When her mother died in 1840, Annie was just sixteen, and it’s likely she took on adult responsibilities early.