Discover Your Family History

Interviewing relatives as one of the foundations of genealogy; strategies and 10 vital tips to help one get the most out of sitting down with family members; transforming pleasant conversations into solid foundations for future detective work.

Practicing genealogy with the help of the Internet; not all online sources being reliable; a look at the benefits and drawbacks of government, nonprofit and commercial online sites; how to make sense of U.S. population censuses.

How to tap into the wealth of library material to get solid answers about events in the past; touring genealogies and family histories; the histories of states, counties, cities and towns; the Periodical Source Index; the several types of maps.

The experience of holding a document once held by an ancestor; how this intimate link to one's forebears is more readily accessible than ever; training oneself to navigate through both military records and homestead files.

How to step away from research and use historical content to transform facts into engaging life stories; seven steps for building effective historical context, which include examining sources in light of local history.

How to make sense of passenger arrival records, the single most precious document for reconstructing an ancestor's voyage to North America; using key guideposts and sources to uncover facts about arrivals from colonial days through the 1950s.