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Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links.  I have been doing a TON of Amazon shopping thanks to the pandemic and I thought I'd share some of the things I've found for genealogy. I feel like we all have our copy of Evidence Explained and our favorite photo scanner but there are a lot of other things offered on Amazon that would make your family history journey a little easier (or just more fun!).    1. Magnifying Glass with Antique Wooden Handle ($18.95, Amazon.com) I'm a very visual person and I love using beautiful things in my office. I have a...

Mother's Day is just a week away!  Gifting a family tree notebook is a touching way to put a lot of thought into your Mother's Day gift without needing a ton of time or money. You can either build pages for your own notebook and then send a handful of those pages with a Family Tree Notebooks gift card (so they can start building their own notebooks) or you can use the pages in the Mother's Day Bundle to build a special mini-notebook focused on the mom or mother figure you're celebrating.  In these crazy times, you might have to social-distance...

We're coming up on Mother's Day! If you haven't seen it already, I put together an incredible Mother's Day bundle with 21 brand new pages and it's available for a limited time in my shop.  As a lead up to Mother's Day, I wanted to focus on some of the amazing mothers in my family, starting with my great-grandmother.  Only once has America officially shut her borders to an entire race of people for no other reason than that race was determined to be too dangerous, damaged, infectious, and inferior to be given citizenship. In 1882, President Arthur signed the...

I fixed a photo! This cabinet card came to me in a lot in sad condition with remnants of paste and paper glued right over the woman’s face. I was sad that this photo was basically garbage so I put a shoutout on Instagram to see if anyone had any ideas and two people came back with the suggestion to use water and a paintbrush to gently lift the paper with the idea that the water wouldn’t damage the cabinet card. I was nervous to try it but it worked like a charm! The result wasn’t perfect but it’s so much better...

To keep yourself from feeling overwhelmed, it’s a good idea to have a battle plan if you’re just starting on your genealogy for the first time. Most people start with their parents and grandparents, but after that they find that the pedigree fans out pretty quickly and soon you may be looking for people all over the country. Here’s the process I would follow if I was just beginning: 1. Pick one person that you’re interested in learning more about (like your great-great-grandmother) or a time that you’re interested in (like the Civil War era). This will give you some parameters...