Book Description
This major contribution to young adult genealogy studies helps create ethnic pride, self-esteem, and awareness of the extraordinary accomplishments each ethnic group has brought to the American experience. Designed for use in grades 6-12, this important new series explores the creation of the American people while promoting the use and understanding of solid research techniques. Oryx American Family Tree Series enhances the social studies curriculum--especially the thematic strands in the New Curriculum Standards for Social Studies--* culture, time, continuity, and change* people, places and environment* individual development and identity* individuals, groups, and institutions* power, authority, and governance* global connectionsWhile using the volumes in this series, young adults experience a uniquely personalized opportunity to practice the historians craft as they learn how to collect data, obtain and evaluate documents and sources, use the latest electronic tools for researching, and conduct and record eyewitness accounts of historical events in family life. The volumes carefully describe the challenges unique to researching each ethnic group or region. Also explained are the "why" and "how" of tracing their roots if users are adopted or come from nontraditional families. Also, each book in the series provides basic historical and cultural background information.As young adults explore their cultural heritage, they gain self-esteem, personal identity, and ethnic pride.Each volume in the Oryx American Family Tree Series is packed with hundreds of annotated bibliographic references for print, electronic, and media sources, as well as many helpful organizations. Every book is lavishly illustrated with 4-color and black and white photographs throughout and features a glossary and an index. The series is published in sturdy 6" x 9" casebound volumes of approximately 200 pages printed on acid-free paper. ... Read more

Book Description

You're no idiot, of course.You know your grandmother's maiden name and the story of how your great uncle decided to settle in Oklahoma.But when it comes fo digging up the rest of the facts and growing a family tree, you feel like you're looking at an impossible job.Stop trying to dig with your bare hands!The Complete Idiot's Guide to Genalogy provides you with the tools you need, from tracking down family records to locating long-lost relatives.Feel confident about interviewing family members, organizing photos, visiting courthouses to find information, and more!In this Complete Idiot's Guide, you get:

Customer Reviews (17)

The best guide available.
These authors have the credentials to and have written a superb handbook, especially for the genealogy "newbies".Even the experienced family historian will here find MUCH help.Paul Drake JD

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Genealogy
As a newbie to genealogy, I find this to be a very helpful book. It points you in the directions that you should go and gives a lot of ideas that I would not have thought of.

Great Guide

This is a great book for beginners and experienced researchers.I recommend it to my students.
Maria (Ree) Hopper, CG

updated tripe
This edition of the book is more up-to-date, so it's actually useful somewhat.Mostly, though, it's a book written by experts for experts.There is little thought given to the practical application of genealogy -- making friends with newly found relatives, for example, and family reunions.There is no mention of the politics that go into genealogy.You can easily destroy your family by writing the wrong date for a marriage on your descendant chart, but the book totally omits important facts like that!It has a small chapter on DNA, which is nice, but it leaves out critical information on that topic, too.The "Idiot's" title of this book is misleading; the authors fail to think like a layman.Beware.

I Needed a Complete Idiots Guide to Online Genealogy!
Christine Rose's "The Complete Idiots's Guide to Online Genealogy" made me finally move from, "I am going to do a genealogic study of my father's family", to "I have been working on this project for two years, and am truly enjoying the experience".

The book is well organized, and easy to read and understand. I have in the past 5 years developed a memory problem that will not get better. I had become so afraid failure, I did not want to attempt learning something new again. I used "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Computers" years ago, and found it a great way to quickly ground myself in the basics. When I saw Ms. Rose's book, I knew it was my best opportunity.

I now have numerous books concerning genealogy, but "Idiot's" is dog earred and still the first book on the shelf. I would recommend this to anyone who wants to learn family history and genealogy and how to put together a family tree. Especially those who do not have the inside lingo.

Shari Peavy ... Read more

Book Description
The latest book in our highly successful "Discovering Your Ancestors" series, this hands-on guide addresses virtually every aspect of tracing Germanic lineage.Written for beginners, Anderson and Thode cover the basics of genealogy, clearly explaining how to plan, organize and begin searching.

They also discuss the unique challenges associated with Germanic ancestral research and offer proven ways to overcome them - including how to locate and interpret vital and emigration records.In addition, this guide provides a history of Germanic countries and their changing boundaries to help researchers find their villages of origin and determine the events that led their ancestors to emigrate.

From naturalization to name changes, actual case studies of both typical and atypical Germanic genealogies demonstrate how to "solve" a research mystery, and comprehensive listings of Germanic archives, research forms, letter-writing examples and maps will save genealogists hours of additional work. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Immediately helpful and practical
I've barely begun reading this book and already have found so much practical information to use right now, without even leaving the house.The word lists are great and the info on the problems to be aware of are what I've been able to use right off the bat.The tips will come in handy at the library and research center.The contact and form letters will be useful when I have enough info to take that step.A definite "must have" for researchers with German ancestors. ... Read more

Book Description
In 1962, Alexander McQueen Quattlebaum first visited the Isle of Skye, off the west coast of Scotland. After surveying the land and finding it a stark contrast to the fertile fields of South Carolina's lowcountry, he understood why, after generations, his forebears had chosen to leave the Scottish isle and cross the Atlantic. However, over the next two decades he made annual visits to Scotland and slowly uncovered the rich history of the MacQueen and Macfarlane families.

In researching this history and chronology of two families, Quattlebaum gets to know his ancestors—some very average men and women and some colorful characters. Quattlebaum wandered the hills and valleys of Skye and walked through the churches and homes of the MacQueens. He learned that the Macfarlane clan, descendants of the earls of Lennox lived in Dumbarton and Loch Lomond. The author then traced the Macfarlanes to Glasgow and Greenock, where they established themselves as merchants in the early seventeenth century. From Greenock, the family migrated to the Carolinas, where Major Alexander McQueen married Marjory Macfarlane.

In this historical study, Quattlebaum records almost five hundred years of MacQueen genealogy and traces the Macfarlanes back nearly a thousand years. ... Read more

Book Description
In the ten years since the publication of Do People Grow on Family

Trees? (121,000 copies in print), the Internet has completely transformed genealogy, making family history the second most popular hobby in the U.S. after gardening and genealogy the second most searched for subject on the Web.

Now completely revised, updated, retitled, and filled with detailed guidance on utilizing the Internet, Climbing Your Family Tree is the comprehensive, kid-friendly genealogical primer for the 21st century, and a dramatic story of how and why our ancestors undertook the arduous voyages of immigration to this nation. It teaches kids to track down important family documents, including ships' manifests, naturalization papers, and birth, marriage, and death certificates; create oral histories; make scrapbooks of photos, sayings, and legends; and compile a family tree. A full chapter is devoted to the online search, and relevant Internet information has been incorporated into all the other chapters. Also new are more kids' genealogical stories and a reworked, easier-to-use design, and supporting the book will be a Web site that will include record-keeping pages, links to sites in the book, and more.

... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Packed with tips on how to become an ancestor detective
Kids are invited to become sleuths into family history with Climbing Your Family Tree: Online And Off-Line Genealogy For Kids, a lively title, packed with tips on how to become an ancestor detective. From conducting interviews with family members to tracking down naturalization records, birth certificates, and regional history, Climbing Your Family Tree will appeal to all young readers who become fascinated with the fine art of genealogy. ... Read more

Book Description
" [This work] will be useful to librarians, to genealogists, and to persons searching American Indian, Asian-American, black American, and Hispanic-American ancestries. . . . Family researchers or librarians will find this comprehensive, user-friendly work invaluable." Reference Books Bulletin ... Read more

Book Description
Psychic Roots is all about the influence of coincidence and serendipity ongenealogical research, the chance combination of events over which the researcher has nocontrol but which nevertheless guides him to a fortuitous discovery. Certainly chance or dumbluck sometimes leads us straight to a record kept in an improbable place, to an ancestor's secondwife we didn't know anything about, and so on. Is it luck? Coincidence? In this book, esteemedgenealogist Hank Jones tells us about his own brushes with preternatural experiences, and he hasinvited other genealogists to share their experiences as well; thus in these pages we have theinsights of well over a hundred respected ancestor hunters who discuss their experiences in lightof synchronicity, intuition, genetic memory, and serendipity. Their stories fairly crackle withillumination and make a plausible case for the importance of the sixth sense in genealogicalresearch. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Psychic Roots - A Genealogy Librarian's Review
Has an ancestor ever just 'fallen' into your lap? Have you ever found what you were not looking for? Have you ever pulled the `wrong' book off the shelf and found an answer in it? Have you chased ancestors until they found you?

If you can answer 'yes' to any of these questions as they pertain to genealogy - and even if you can't - you can certainly appreciate unexpected surprises. I would venture to say that most of us have experienced things like this even in non-genealogical situations.

Hank Jones's "Psychic Roots: Serendipity and Intuition in Genealogy" and his follow-up book, "More Psychic Roots: Further Adventures in Serendipity and Intuition in Genealogy" demonstrate the reasons for his venture into the `less scientific' methods of finding ancestors. He begins with the premise that our ancestors want to be found. For him, it all started when he was a young boy peeking into a forbidden trunk in an attic. In writing this book, he is, as far as I know, the first professional genealogist to mention out loud and in print, the possibility that our ancestors want us to find them and will use various ways to get us to do that which are not always based solely on solid, scholarly research methods.

As a genealogy librarian, I've heard stories like those in Hank's books many times. Hank says initially he was concerned about taking some flack for his theory, which some professionals would criticize as undermining years of attempts to make genealogy a more solid, respectable field of research, based on sound reasoning, solid research methods, and hard evidence. His call for examples of `psychic roots' experiences brought stories even from some of the most respected names in the field. He was surprised that even the genealogical scholars had moments like this that they were willing to share, that they also wondered if something unexplainable was at work all along but were reluctant to share it.

Hank's books provided a `safe place' to share stories of strange coincidence and serendipity. He had so many responses to his invitation to genealogists to share their own stories that he wrote the second book. I think Hank's theory has been more than validated. I suspect that any qualms he may have had about being taken seriously diminished as the stories rolled in.

Hank does not for a moment lessen the importance of sound, solid research methods. He himself is a distinguished Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists. But neither does he discount or dismiss the less-scholarly methods that bring us many of the answers we seek. He's seen, heard, and read far too many examples to brush them off simply as stories of just dumb luck, although even dumb luck can sometimes be a factor in a fortuitous find.

Another concept Hank discusses in conjunction with serendipity and intuition is psychologist Carl Jung's theory of synchronicity, which is the occurrence of two seemingly unrelated events that come together in a meaningful way that cannot be explained to the person experiencing them. In short, synchronicity is "meaningful coincidence." It might even be called `being in the right place at the right time.'

So what's actually responsible for `strange' successes in genealogy? Serendipity? Preparation? Accident? Solid research? Educated guesses? Intuition? Being in the right place at the right time? I think it's probably a mixture of these and other things. How would we know we were having a Eureka moment if we hadn't laid some kind of groundwork already? We may not have been prepared to find the answer this way, so we may think it simply jumped out at us. Maybe we'd filed something years ago that didn't really connect with what we knew at the time, but couldn't just toss it out. Down the road, we find something that makes us rifle through that file for that seemingly unconnected piece of evidence, and our puzzle - or maybe just a part of it - is solved. I believe in what Louis Pasteur said: "Chance favors the prepared mind."But I also believe what Jules Henri Poincaré said, that "It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover."

Not "hard-core" genealogy but fun and interesting
Hank Jones spent twenty years in movies, especially Disney films, and that freed him up later on to pursue his genealogical interests, both as an author and as a well-known national conference speaker, for both of which he received the NGS Award of Merit. He's best known as the expert on the Palatine German immigrants, but also for this volume about the influence of coincidence, intuition, and serendipity in family research -- and we've all experienced it: The nagging feeling that you really need to venture up into a strange courthouse attic, no matter how dark it is; the discovery that the person sitting next to you on your flight to Salt Lake is your fourth cousin; the search through a cemetery for a particular grave that unexpectedly turns up a branch of the family you had no idea was there. (All three of those examples have occurred in my own immediate family, by the way.) The author relates his own brushes with the preternatural and brings together the similar experiences of several dozen other researchers, including such well known figures as Carl Boyer, William Filby, Charles Hansen, Helen Leary, Joan Kirchman Mitchell, Marsha Hoffman Rising, Christine Rose, Eugene Stratton, Neil Thompson -- and Winston De Ville.

Waking up to invisible around us
I had always avoided the subject of genealogy as being completely boring. It conjured up visions of people sitting in libraries for hours and hours going over ancient records trying to find names of their long-deadancestors. What a weary way to waste one's days! However, a friend recentlyput into my hand Henry Z. Jones' PSYCHIC ROOTS, Serendipity & Intuitionin Genealogy. It has totally changed my views. I was amazed to find successin genealogy often comes from intuition, searching not with just the mind,but also an open heart, enjoying warm feelings with the desceased. Againand again in his book, Jones describes how helpful hints, items seeminglydroppped from nowhere, somehow unite the living with the thoughts and deedsof the departed. As the author concludes:"I do believe that ourancestors have no wish to be forgotten: they want to be found." And Iwould add, our ancestors have been over and about us since we were born,seeking to lead us into ever greater dimensions. Genealogy can open thedoors to deeper understanding of our larger family "in thebeyond," but still close in influence and love. Don't miss this book.It will open your heart to ancestors who are as close as breathing. ... Read more

Book Description
This book tells of a voyage of discovery by the author, a retired Bechtel chief process engineer and chemical engineering society director, whose previous writings concerned Methane Valorization and Fischer-Tropsch Reactor Design.Trying to explain why a thirteen year old boy would join a Quaker expedition to Philadelphia in 1686 he devises a fictionalized account that is eventually supported by genetic testing.Along the way he discovers, among his ancestors, a master carpenter turned politician, America's first golf club owner and a doctor of whom it was written, "There was a popular notion that he cured his patients."He finds a "Young Squire" who taunts the British with school pamphlets during the Revolutionary War and several Quakers who were sent off to Virginia during that war - much as we locked up the Japanese during World War II.

While written as a family history, the reader will find tie-ins to Benjamin Franklin's papers, to Shakespeare's The Tempest, to a British diarist who wrote about William Wordsworth and to an anti-slavery tract by Fanny Kemble.The book sheds light on family's papers kept under wraps at historical libraries but leaves the final answers up to future generations.

In the author´s own words, "I became interested in Fox family genealogy as a result of a business trip to Bechtel's London Office in 1974.While there as the process design manager for an Algerian Liquified Natural Gas project, I took the opportunity to visit the Friends' Library on Euston Road.There I found a family tree called Descendants of Francis Fox of St. German's, by Joseph Foster and also Anne Cresson's biography of my own ancestor, Joseph Fox, who had been Speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly during the Stamp Act uproar.I also located several books that seemed of immediate interest: The Journals of Caroline Fox 1835-1871, edited by Wendy Monk, and a biography, Caroline Fox, by Wilson Harris.These gave the approximate locations of several family estates out in Cornwall near Falmouth.There had been many famous visitors to these estates; men such as Wordsworth, Tennyson, Mill and Carlyle, and Caroline Fox had described their conversations in her Journals.

"I then convinced a fellow process design engineer, Bob Chu, to drive with me out to Falmouth over a weekend.There we found the closed offices of G. C. Fox & Company, shipbrokers, and the Fox Rosehill Gardens but no other sign of Fox activity.I was a little discouraged.Bob was intrigued, however, and insisted we investigate further.So on Sunday morning we drove further west and found the Glendurgan estate, with foxes on the gateposts and Mrs. Philip Hamilton (Rona) Fox about to start up a lawnmower in the garage.She immediately dropped what she was doing and led us into her house where notes were compared on family connections.One of Francis Fox's sons had sailed to Philadelphia in 1686 on the same ship as Justinian Fox, my own ancestor.

"Bob and I then had a chance to tour the fabulous Glendurgan Gardens, just recently added to the National Trust.We also stopped off at Catchfrench, an estate in St. German's, near Plymouth, where I sat in the ruins of the house where Francis Fox had lived in the mid-1600s.This was enough to send a chill up my spine and got me to thinking about recording all of this history.Back in London, Rona's second son, Charles Lloyd Fox, introduced me to more relatives.As is described in this book, our families have maintained this relationship ever since then.

"Work on this book actually started in 1992 after I retired from Bechtel and my wife, Betty, died of Lupus, both in rapid succession.I joined a Creative Writing Extension Class run by U. C. Berkeley and, for my project, started the fictionalized account recorded in the first two chapters of this book.I had learned that Justinian had only been 13 years old when he joined the Plymouth F ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Its a wise child who knows his own father.
The Fox's are for the most part from England in the 16th an 17th century. There were two loosely connected families who were yoemen but of the middle class. My part of the clan settled in Virginia, not as immigrants, but as land owners, land that had granted to them perhaps by Charles II. My part of the family moved about as land became farmed out, first to South Carolina, thence to Tennessee, and finally to the Mississppi delta. The "other" Fox's went to Philadelphia and a different destiny and religious orientation, largely the topic of the book. My family were slave owners until the War and destitute thereafter. A DNA mapping project, in part aided by Joseph M. Fox has found that the male heirs (including me) have a funny little SNP on their Y chromosome. There are some black members of the family for what ever reason. I rudely suggest that I have brothers that are also cousins.
So who cares? If for no other reason, large scale mapping will introduce genetic disease tendencies. Creepy, Huh? But get into this with your family. It's cheap enough and it may be handy some day. ... Read more

Book Description
The second volume of the great Encyclopedia is complete in itself for the NewJersey and Pennsylvania monthly meetings which were part of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.It includes all records of genealogical value, both Orthodox and Hicksite, known to be inexistence for the meetings from the last quarter of the seventeenth century down to the time thework was originally published in 1938. The records are of two principal classes: (1) births anddeaths and (2) minutes and marriages, and they are arranged in alphabetical order, by familyname, under their corresponding monthly meeting. The marriages are arranged by the names ofboth brides and grooms. Also provided are abstracts of Quaker certificates of removal, whichenable genealogists to trace Quaker ancestors from one monthly meeting to another. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Essential for Quaker Research
INDEX to the Encyclopedia of Quaker Genealogy 1750-1930 by William Wade Hinshaw.

DearREADERS, "Totally thrilled" describes my feelings as I received my copy of the index to our library's copy of William Wade Hinshaw's Encyclopedia of Quaker Genealogy 1750-1930. This past summer I discovered I have Welsh and English Quaker ancestry in Chester County, PA. (Merion on the Welsh Tract.) Prior to this I'd had no personal experience doing Quaker Research.

When I asked others about Quaker Research, they raved about Mr. Hinshaw's six volume compilation of Friend's Monthly Meeting records listing births, deaths, marriages and removals. That last term refers to entries in the church books when Society of Friends members moved from one area to another. They were removed from the old Monthly Meeting membership in order to join the new group.

We're fortunate to have Mr. Hinshaw's complete set of Encyclopedia of Quaker Genealogy at our local public library. As I uncover new names to research, I'll be turning again and again to Henshaw's Encyclopedia of Quaker Genealogy.

From the publisher: "William Wade Hinshaw's renowned Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy, originally published between 1936 and 1950. Containing approximately 500,000 entries.. each volume ha[s] a separate surname index..."

"Almost no class of records, religious or secular, has been kept as meticulously as the monthly meeting records of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). The oldest such records span three centuries of American history and testify to a general movement of population that extended from New England and the Middle Atlantic states southward to Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia; then west to Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The importance of these records cannot be overstated. Not until recently have the vital statistics of Quakers been recorded in civil record offices.

Thus, for more than two centuries, the only vital records identifying these people are to be met with in the Quaker records themselves. Fortunately, the monthly meeting records contain extensive lists of births, marriages, and deaths, as well as details of the removal of members from one meeting to another. (The monthly meeting, during which vital statistics are recorded, is in fact, a business meeting.)"

Painstakingly developed from these monthly meeting records, Hinshaw's Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy is the magnum opus of Quaker genealogy.In its production, thousands of records were located and abstracted into a uniform and intelligible system of notation. The data gathered in these volumes of the Encyclopedia are arranged by meeting, then alphabetically by family name, and chronologically thereunder. Volume 1: NORTH CAROLINA Volume II: NEW JERSEY AND PENNSYLVANIA Volume III: NEW YORK Volume IV: OHIO Volume V: OHIO Volume VI: VIRGINIA"

If as the publisher suggests, 50% of our pre-1850 US ancestors were Quaker, than every researcher needs a personal copy of the index, and every genealogy library needs the six volumeEncyclopedia! ... Read more

Book Description

Here are 102+ ways to use training in family history and genealogy when applied to real-world careers in education, business, or government,including creative entrepreneurial start-ups.

Book Description
First published in 1921, this is a record of a dynasty which arose in Ashanti in 1695, lasting until 1895, when it fell under the extension of British rule. ... Read more

Book Description
In this work will be found all of the family history articles published in The Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine from its founding in 1895 (as Publications of the Pennsylvania Genealogical Society) through 1980 . Here, too, will be found every Bible record and genealogical fragment known to have been published in this authoritative periodical. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Bummed!
This book was not what I expected at all. I was hoping it used the names of the more commonly used surnames. ie; "Moore, Smith" etc.,etc., If you're looking for a book that has more of the English, Celtic,European suranmes, this book is for you! ... Read more