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Meet the Author
I'm Jennifer, and I'm an Occasional Genealogist... sort of. For over ten years I've been a professional genealogist. I started researching my own family nearly 30 years ago. Like many of you, I started as an Occasional Genealogist. I had to squeeze research in while in school and while working full-time. Then I got my first genealogy job and for awhile, it was genealogy all the time. Now I have two kids. I do other people's genealogy constantly but my own? Coming up with ways to do great genealogy, despite all the interruptions, is now mandatory.

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Showing posts from April, 2016

Posts contain affiliate links. See my disclosures page for details.

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Genealogy Goal Setting Worksheet

I have a project that needs some serious research planning. It's your typical genealogy "project." It involves an entire family which means many branches over many generations. The problem is being in the midst of research and needing to start thinking about this project as several smaller projects---wi…
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Evernote for Genealogy Handouts

Lecture handouts may be one of your greatest at-home resources. They are pretty much useless if you can't find them, though. I was never able to keep up with my paper handouts. It's hard enough to file your research documents (we all just LOVE filing, right?) so there's certainly little time left to file …
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3 Tips to Reduce Paper When You Have to Print

Friday is Earth Day so this week's posts have a digital theme even if they aren't just for Occasional Genealogists. Yesterday, I posted about eBooks which may or may not help you save the Earth (not driving to a library, having a book mailed to you, or moving physical books could reduce your carbon footpri…
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Digital Genealogy: Ebooks for Genealogy

Update! This post originally contained a long introduction about using books as sources. That's been moved to its own post, here . Information specific to ebooks has been left in this post and I've added links to some shops where you can purchase genealogy ebooks. There are lots of ebooks for gene…
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Your Ancestors Had to Pay Taxes, Too

Heads up! I'm restructuring some things related to the blog so this tax list abstracting form is not currently available. The general information about using the form still applies. Your taxes aren't due today so let's celebrate with another free form! Historic tax lists come in a variety of types, …
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10 Easy to Search, FREE U.S. Record Collections

Here are 10 record collections (or record types) you can search online for free and with minimal time needed. In the sister post are free online genealogy records that take longer to use (like newspaper records). That means all of these links are to databases. Some are just indexes. With those, you will need to…
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Census Comparisons Continued

Previously, I posted a free census comparison (or correlation) form you could use in Evernote. In that post I said I assumed you had identified the correct family. This is the follow-up about adjusting the form if you want to use census comparison to determine if several census records are the same family. If you…
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Evernote Form for Census Correlation

This post is a follow-up to my post about using enumerator instructions for census research . Check it out to learn about all the great information you might be missing in census records. A great thing for Occasional Genealogists to do when they don't have a lot of time is correlate or compare census data across…