Genealogy Gems Book Club: More Recommended Reading

Looking for something good to read? The Genealogy Gems Book Club passes on four titles recommended by RootsTech attendees.

We met so many avid readers at the Genealogy Gems Book Club Open House at RootsTech 2016! Several of them recommended some of their favorite books they thought other genealogists would enjoy: books about family relationships, history, identity and similar themes. Here’s a short list I wanted to pass along to you:

genealogy gems book club reader recommendationThe Story We Carry in Our Bones: Irish History for Americans by Julienne Osborne-McKnight. This was recommended by Holly, who works in a library and had seen it cross her desk before the conference. According to the book description, this history begins in deep history with the Celts and Vikings. It explains the events that led up to the great potato famines, and follows the Irish exodus to the U.S., where she then traces Irish-American life. Sounds like the perfect read for any Irish-Americans out there!

genealogy gems book club Finding Samuel Lowe: China, Jamaica, Harlem, a memoir by Paula Williams Madison about the author’s journey into her family history, which resulted in a documentary by the same name. “Spanning four generations and moving between New York, Jamaica, and China, [this] is a universal story of one woman’s search for her maternal grandfather and the key to her self-identity.” The author was one of the keynote speakers at RootsTech. This was recommended by Alexis, who won our Genealogy Gems Book Club door prize (a free Genealogy Gems Premium website membership, so she can listen to the full author interviews!).

genealogy gems book club The Forgotten Garden, a novel by the international best-selling author Kate Morton. The premise of the story was apparently inspired by Kate’s own family history. It’s described as follows: “A tiny girl is abandoned on a ship headed for Australia in 1913. She arrives completely alone with nothing but a small suitcase containing a few clothes and a single book—a beautiful volume of fairy tales. She is taken in by the dockmaster and his wife and raised as their own. On her twenty-first birthday, they tell her the truth, and with her sense of self shattered and very little to go on, ‘Nell’ sets out to trace her real identity.”

 

genealogy gems book clubThe Last Midwife: A Novel by Sandra Dallas, the story of the only midwife in a small Colorado mining town on the Rocky Mountain frontier. Gracy has delivered hundreds of babies, but then a baby is found dead and Gracy is accused as murderer. She’s kept lots of people’s dark secrets over the years–and a few of her–and as the trial looms, she has to decide which of those secrets to give up in order to clear her name.

Orchard House Genealogy Gems Book ClubFinally, here’s one last reminder to savor Orchard House: How a Neglected Garden Taught One Family to Grow by Tara Austen Weaver, the current featured book of the Genealogy Gems Book Club. In the next episode of the free Genealogy Gems podcast, you’ll hear a snippet of our interview with Tara Weaver. Next month, Genealogy Gems Premium website members will be able to hear the entire interview with Tara on the Premium podcast.

 

Genealogy Gems Book Club Genealogy Family HistoryAre you a reader? Want some more great recommendations? Want to hear some fantastic interviews with the authors of books we’ve covered in the past? Click here to learn more about the Genealogy Gems Book Club.

Surname Research for Free: Guild of One-Name Studies at FamilySearch.org

Sometimes you find yourself sorting through tons of people with the same last name to see which ones belong on your family tree. This surname research collection at FamilySearch can help you see what other researchers may have spent years compiling about thousands of family groups.

surname research

There’s a valuable free but much-overlooked online collection for surname research at FamilySearch.org. These are the family trees of nearly 3000 members of the Guild of One-Name Studies, who are studying nearly 9,000 different surnames. Their resources are strongest for the United Kingdom, where the Guild was founded, but you’ll find members all over the world.

What makes these family trees unique?

There are a couple of things that make these family trees unique:

1. These trees don’t just focus on a mostly-vertical line of ancestors for a single person. Members of the Guild collect everything they can about a particular surname and all its variants (hence the name of the organization). These efforts help organize and connect people with the same surname. Sometimes they help trace the origin of a surname. They can help people explore the variety of spellings and locations associated with different names.

2. These trees are often more fully researched and cited than your average online tree. The Guild takes pride in supporting its members in doing accurate, cited research; keeping their online databases updated; and responding to questions from others about their surname research.

Of course, always use caution when consulting others’ trees. Consider their content to be hints or suggestions until you prove them otherwise yourself. Scrutinize the sources they cite, many of which, say the Guild, aren’t available online elsewhere.

Explore the Guild Surname Research Collections

To explore this helpful free resource, follow the step-by-step instructions below:

1. Go to FamilySearch.org and click Search, then click Genealogies— not Records. (You may also click here to reach that landing page directly.)

2. Enter the surname of interest.

3. Click where it says All next to the Search button.surname research with Guild of One-Name Studies

4. Select Guild of One-Name Studies.

5. Run the search. Click on search results to see:

A. The individual’s name, personal details and (scroll down) associated sources and citation details.
B. The individual’s place in a Guild family tree. Explore this family tree by clicking on someone’s name and seeing their information pop up to the left, where you can also click “View Tree” to see that person’s relatives.
C. Search for names within this tree.
D. This shows you what surname study the information comes from. In this case, you’re also given a link to a separate, associated website for that study.

6. Repeat to learn more about other surnames in your family.

More on Surname Research

If you are interested in learning even more about surnames research, read Social Network Your yDNA with Surname Projects by our own Diahan Southard, and learn how surname study organizations are taking their research into the 21st century with DNA surname projects.

Also, learn more about utilizing DNA in your genealogy research with these 10 DNA quick guides from Your DNA Guide, Diahan Southard. They can be purchased in a bundle in either print or digital format.

Pin It on Pinterest

MENU