Genealogy Research Tips and
Sahyun Library Updates

Below is an excerpt from an article by Rosemary Collins in the September 2025 issue of the Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine. There is also a danger that the more people wrongly accept a hint and claim an ancestor as their own, the more people wrongly accept a hint and claim an ancestor

The Fall edition of Ancestors West has been published and is available for your enjoyment on the Society Publications page of our website. Read tales shared by our members about their ancestors’ schooling and education in this issue. Don’t forget that every issue of Ancestors West includes an index of surnames referenced within the publication.

As of August 28th, the Full-Text Search feature at FamilySearch has left the Experimental Labs area. It’s now an official tool. It has two new homes, the second item on the Search dropdown menu, as well as on the menu bar. No more hunting around to find it! Submitted by Robin McCarthy

Newspapers.com has just expanded its collection with an impressive 482 new papers! This exciting addition includes publications from 32 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Canada, England, and Scotland. You can browse the complete list of new additions here. We invite you to visit the Sahyun Genealogical Library in Santa Barbara to take advantage of

Webtember 2025 is Legacy Family Tree Webinar’s annual online conference dedicated to family history and genealogy. For four Wednesdays in September, they will feature a new lineup of expert-led webinars, each with a unique theme. The best part? It’s completely free to attend live! A Family Tree Webinar subscription is required to watch the recordings

Courtesy of Brian Rhinehart’s CivilWarRecords.com monthly newsletter dated 22-Aug-2025. During the U.S. Civil War, the Confederate Army compelled enslavers to lease enslaved people to the military. Across the Confederacy, these individuals were forced into roles such as cooks, laundresses, nitrate miners for gunpowder, ordnance factory workers, and laborers digging defensive trenches around cities like Petersburg,

Courtesy of Michael John Neill’s Genealogy Tip of the Day post “Finding and Not Finding Negative Evidence” dated 9-Aug-2025. There’s confusion about negative evidence and negative findings. I see it in various postings and writings trying to differentiate the two. It can be easy to confuse them and frankly they are easy to confuse. I searched for

“Across the United States, more than 50,000 bodies remain unidentified—un-mourned and unnamed, but not forgotten. NAMING THE DEAD, a riveting new six-part investigative series from National Geographic, brings these untold stories to light. The series follows the groundbreaking work of the DNA Doe Project, a trailblazing nonprofit that uses genetic genealogy to help law enforcement

 Do you have an ancestor who served in the Civil War? Or, are you wanting some context about the war from someone who was there? Transcribed letters and diaries on Spared & Shared may have what you are looking for. These documents have been purchased on eBay or were user-submitted and transcribed by Will Griffing.

While it is still undergoing further improvements in FamilySearch Labs, full-text search is now also available in the all-collections search on the signed-in FamilySearch home page and in the FamilySearch Catalog.  Read how to find and use full-text search in each of these areas in this recent FamilySearch blog post. Submitted by Robin McCarthy

Most genealogists know the tragic story of the 1890 census, which was destroyed by fire and water damage in its Commerce Department storage facility. But here’s what many don’t realize: other federal censuses have significant gaps too, with entire states missing from various years. The following information is excerpted from this Family History Daily blog

“A group of Philadelphia-area historical organizations are pooling their archives into ‘The Revolutionary City: A Portal to the Nation’s Founding,’ a growing collection of original documents that has been digitized, catalogued and made searchable by the public. “More than 6,000 documents with more than 57,000 pages have already been uploaded into the publicly accessible website.

The Santa Clara County Historical and Genealogical Society is presenting the free webinar Dissecting a Civil War Pension Record: Union and Confederate by Jill Morelli. The webinar is on July 15th at 6:30 p.m. (PDT). A brief membership meeting precedes the presentation. Register here to receive a confirmation email with the Zoom link. Pension packets

Launched three years ago, the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland is now home to over 350,000 records and 250 million words of searchable Irish history. Led by Trinity College Dublin and supported by the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport, the project brings together historians, computer scientists, archivists, and librarians working to digitally recreate Ireland’s destroyed

Lost in a sea of digital files, family photos, and paper records? Can’t find the records you know you have? Scanning photos and records more than once? This archives-based system helps you organize ALL of your genealogy research and records in just six folders. No need for color codes, numbering systems, or other complicated schemes

I came across some old copies of the out-of-print publication Communes of Italy. Here’s a tip I picked up: Looking for photos of your ancestral commune? Try Flickr I found some great shots of Sciacca, Vizzini, and Carini, Sicily. Give it a try. No Italian Ancestry, try searching for your country, state or city, I’ll

Here is a very informative article from Framily Tree Magazine on the Freedmen’s Bureau and how to search for records. ” The collection is not new, though recent digitization efforts by FamilySearch and Ancestry.comhave made it more accessible. But it does combat the myth of African Americans not being able to locate information on their

Here’s how the National Archives are working with volunteers, AI, and FamilySearch to transcribe Revolutionary War Pension Files and make them available to researchers. Read about it:  The Great Transcription Challenge Posted by Rosa Avolio, Webmaster