Digging in the Roots Digging in the Roots | by Dawn Watson,

I’m very pleased to announce that my first full-length publication, Rabun County, Georgia, Newspapers, 1894 – 1899, will be ready for purchase and delivery early next week. I’m so excited about this publication. Newspapers are an underutilized source of historical and genealogical information, prima

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to visit the Bell Research Center, a wonderful resource for Northwest Georgia researchers. Established in 2004, the Bell Research Center is located in the Historic Cumming School at 100 School Street in Cumming, Forsyth County, GA, in a room adjoining the Historical

A while back, someone asked me about the estate records of Benjamin Odell. I’ve made partial indexes of many of the early probate books for Rabun County, so I was able to quickly go to the right pages in two of those books to find information recorded on Benjamin’s estate. I’m not going to post [...

Oh, the dreaded brick wall ancestor, the bane of every genealogist’s life! We all have them, those ancestors who refuse to cooperate and instead prefer to lurk just out of reach of our inquisitive minds. Luckily for us (not so much for the lurking ancestors), there are plenty of tricks to help resea

My son and I have been looking for ideas for a research project he can complete by the end of this school year. I suggested doing a one to three page biography of a family member who lived during a time period he enjoys studying. After a bit of thinking, he decided on a Revolutionary [...]

James R. Roberts (1828 – 1891) was my great-great-great-grandfather. His ancestry is a brick wall I’ve been chipping away at for several years. So far, I’ve identified at least two and possibly three siblings, but I still don’t know who his parents were. One of the first records sets used to researc

You might be a genealogist if… …the only t-shirt you own is related to genealogy. …you think the phrase “related to genealogy” is funny. …your significant other has threatened you with bodily harm if you utter the words “It’s all relative” one more time. …you go by three names because they’re all im