FHF

Many people have varying degrees of photography skills. Some are point and shoot photographers. Others are very skilled. In the age when we're able to take photos of gravestones, the question arises, when should we post a second photo on a Find A Grave profile (or other websites)? When I go to a cemetery I attempt to follow a few rules: Make it Tidy Get Close Capture the Lot When I do that, I generally have good results when capturing a gravestone. I may be an amateur photographer, but I can capture fairly decent photographs that do more than just document the stone, but feature and highlight it. Stephen P. Mayer Dec. 16, 1857 - Oct. 23, 1922 Adaline Mayer 1861 - Jun. 30, 1932 Once in a while, I come across a memorial on  FindAGrave.com for which I have taken a photo, like the one above, with a decent photo already published. My approach in cemetery photography is this: Go to a plot that you know a few photos need to be taken and then snap pictures of the section around the s...

After creating numerous heritage scrapbooks, writing the first draft of 120+ ancestor's lives and turning two into published books, I've learned a few things about storytelling. First, scrapbooks have condensed stories from an ancestor's life. Narratives written in a novella format can have more depth. Register style family histories lack the depth of a narrative and the graphic appeal of scrapbooks. That discovery aside, sometimes we have an ancestor for which we have mountains of content that could be compiled into a 7-volume biography. But should we write that much about one individual? In short, should I include every detail in a family history? When writing a narrative history about an ancestor, the goal is to introduce your reader to the individual's life including the familial, community, and world events of the time and place they lived. And it's surprising that having too much information to draw from is often more challenging than too little. You might fac...

I'll admit, DNA confused me. Even though my husband recently found my biological 2nd great-grandfather and we have a YouTube Channel with 40+ videos about DNA, I still don't understand it as well as I should. I have questions like these: How to use AncestryDNA tools now that I have taken a test (and sweet talked my relatives into it as well).  How to solve DNA mysteries for adoption and unknown parents situations . My grandmother was adopted and Andy (the Nerdy Family History Fanatic) just puzzled out who her bio dad is. How did he do it? How do I tell others to take a DNA test when they know all of their ancestors?  Is it enough to say, "Hey, then you can help me, or others like me, find our kin by being tested"? Finally, how do we triangulate? I thought I was doing that with MyHeritage DNA, but apparently not. Do you have similar questions?  If so, then join me as we learn at the feet of some amazing educators on August 4, 2018 - entirely online!!! And if you'...