McDonald Genealogy

11/04/2021

Happy Birthday Jake, can’t wait to get you home!!!

10/31/2019

https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/worlds-largest-holocaust-archive-available-on-the-internet/?fbclid=IwAR14sbRg-uluxVevfB76W9xbt8z4NhV_i46oAVheKKbE4Z_lSFC-49V2csQ #.XbnaLKWIkJF.facebook

More than 30 million documents on the victims of N**i persecution are now available for free on Ancestry.com for all generations to come.

09/13/2019

Announcing....my 5 favorite books for deciphering German records! Do you have any of these? Any books you would add? https://buff.ly/2Naw2KO

09/10/2019

As a genealogy translator, I’ve translated my share of old letters. While many of these letters simply speak of family matters, farming information, financial issues, etc., every once in a while, sage words of wisdom seem to jump out at me from across the page. Of course, these words of wisdom are...

09/03/2019

Got asked to share my favorite genealogy books for the fall issue of APG Quarterly! If you want a personalized and signed copy of my own - either for yourself or for a gift - you can place an order on my site here: https://buff.ly/2JNdCdw. Just let me know in the e-mail who I should dedicate the book to!

08/09/2019

So you’ve discovered your family is from Germany…now what? If you’re anything like my family, you will want to go see the country for yourself. My family is from Germany and Austria. Like many families, we can trace our ancestry to varying degrees. My mom’s side is relatively well-documented...

07/29/2019

Congratulations to Renae H. for being the 100th (!) student of Reading the German Handwriting Online Course - you have won a month totally free of the Gold Premium membership! I also wanted to take a moment and thank you all for your support of my business and my course - I truly couldn't do it without you!

07/24/2019

For your German research!

Church records are a vital source of genealogical information, and this is certainly true for German family history research. Once you discover your ancestor’s place of origin, the local parish registers can take your as far back as the mid-16th century. Such research has challenges. Besides the l...

07/11/2019

Genius

The Census will have a “time capsule” blank box on the form, where citizens can leave their mark, to be revealed in 100 years’ time.

07/11/2019

Come learn from professional German genealogy translator Katherine Schober how you can easily recognize certain letters in the old German handwriting, what those pesky abbreviations mean in historical documents, the spelling variations you need to know to decipher the words of your ancestors, and mu...

07/08/2019

I recently translated a diary from the early 20th century, in which a German man, visiting his homeland after years in America, wrote "Germany in general is terrible regarding the drinking habits of the young and old, tall and short, rich and poor, everyone is yearning for beer, can’t live without beer, and is completely undone by beer." He was especially bothered by the quotes on tavern walls that encouraged people to drink. I had to laugh when I was at a restaurant in Austria this weekend, and the walls were filled with exactly those kind of quotes! Here, it reads, "Humans learn drinking first; they don't learn to eat until much later. Therefore, one shouldn't forget about drinking - for reasons of gratitude."

07/07/2019

https://apple.news/A83gEqMJfSnqWhmDJsLCGTg

EVERETT, Wash. (AP) — A jury convicted a Washington state man Friday in the killings of a young Canadian couple more than three decades ago — a case that was finally solved when investigators turned to powerful genealogy software to build a family tree of the then-unknown suspect.