Genealogy Research Tips and
Sahyun Library Updates

The following excerpt is from Steve Little’s blog post dated November 7, 2025. “As I noted in my June blog post: ‘The man on the left is my grandfather; the man on the right is not.’ “The AI didn’t repair or “restore” the original. It learned from the “seed” image and generated a new, convincing-but-fake

Fold3 is providing free access to more than 350 million select WW I and WW II records to honor the veterans whose service changed history.  Popular collections include:  Morning Reports 1912‑1939 Draft Registration Cards 1917‑1918 National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, 1866‑1938 WWII Enlistment Records, 1938‑1946  Missing Air Crew Reports, 1942‑1947 Search them here. Access

FindMyPast is granting free access to its military records in honor of Remembrance Day (Veterans’ Day in the U.S.). A free account is required if you want to download copies of the records you find. Free access to selected military records runs from 2:00 a.m. PST on Friday, November 7th, to 3:59 p.m. PST on

Do you know that Halloween’s origins began in ancient Ireland’s Celtic traditions? “The Halloween holiday has its roots in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (a Gaelic word pronounced “SAH-win”), a pagan religious celebration to welcome the harvest at the end of summer, when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts.”

Elephind is a free online newspaper search engine that indexes millions of digitized newspaper pages from libraries, archives, and institutions around the world. It allows genealogists to search across multiple newspaper collections at once — rather than visiting each archive separately. This YouTube video, posted by Family Tree Magazine,  gives a helpful introduction to how

Good news: help is on the way. The Santa Barbara County Genealogical Society (SBCGS) is pleased to announce the opportunity to attend two remote webinars featuring The Genealogy Do-Over, presented by renowned genealogist Thomas MacEntee. These are among the final presentations Thomas will give before his retirement. Join us in person only on: Tuesday, November

From Geneanet’s October 2, 2025 blog post:  “Geneanet is available in German and we have over 54 million birth, marriage, and death register records in our collections — 155 million indexed individuals! –, usually reserved for Premium members, available free during Geneanet’s Ahnenfest. Search them through our German vital records search engine or our portal for all German documents

Celebrate Family History Month with a day of genealogy fun-filled events brought to you by the Genealogy Network of Texas (GNT), a state-wide initiative to connect libraries/genealogical societies and provide educational and research opportunities!  SEVEN FREE programs will be live-streamed from genealogy speakers in Texas and throughout the U.S., available for both in-person and online attendees on Friday, October

Here’s a Family tree Magazine article on Researching your Hispanic roots. posted by Rosa Avolio

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