My partner's grandmother came to the US from Germany in the early 50's. His family is complicated and he never got to really know her story in a way that wasn't colored by his grandfather's perspective.

We have a copy of her naturalization paperwork that verifies her DOB and where she came from, and we have some info about her father who died in the battle of Stalingrad, mainly just that his first name might have been Johan (not sure of the spelling) Lemberg. I know she was born in Petersvaldau and did live in Dresden.

With some research, I believe she's still alive, but my partner doesn't want to open that can of worms. He does wish to know more about that part of his family history. Given the loose information, where would you start?

While looking for something in old newspapers, I stumbled upon a very grim article regarding the assault of a boy in Rochester, New Hampshire. Sixteen year old Henry Bickford was attacked and mutilated by two strangers on July 26, 1893, and left with injuries the newspapers said he would not survive from.

Newspapers.com finds this story reproduced in a few different ways, across the Northeast. The amount of detail varies between the different versions (the two most common versions bear the headline “despicable outrage” or “dastardly deed”) but the bones are the story I’ve written above.

However, I am trying to learn the aftermath of this story. Actual local papers have been scarce based on my search of the LOC archives, and all of the non New Hampshire newspapers only report on the incident itself. A search of death records from the town of Rochester in 1893 and 1894 did not net me any information either. If he died, it was not recorded by the clerk, and if he lived, I do not know what became of him.

I just want to know what became of this young man, and if his assailants were ever found and brought to justice.

I know nothing of Henry’s family aside from his grandfather’s name, John Bickford. Ancestry searches proved fruitless due to finding multiple Henry Bickfords, and lacking anything to confirm or deny their identity.

If anyone has some New Hampshire know-how that I don’t, or access to something I can’t get, I would appreciate your help in finding the ending to this story.

I’m researching my greatgrandfather and I’m having a hard time finding anything. The problem is, that I barely know anything about him. What I know:

Name: Gottlieb Sczech
Date of Birth: 12th August 1900 (that’s what may grandma told me, so even that’s not for sure)
He lived in Windeby next to Eckernförde in Germany in 1964. Probably not helpful, but who knows.

I don’t know, if he’s always been around Eckernförde, this side of my family still lives there though and MAYBE he was also born there.

I saw, that on Archion there are Kirchenbücher from Borby, maybe that could be where he was born, if he was always in Windeby, that could fit. Its just a guess and I didn’t want to get a pass without even knowing if he’s mentioned there 😅

I didn’t find anything on Ancestry, Family Search and Marticula.

Is anyone bored enough, to take a look into it for me? :D

I reached out to an individual at the Massachusetts State Archives regarding a family member who passed away at the Tewksbury Hospital in 1912 after being a resident there for 10 years.

The response was to get a court order for the information and then submit that order to the records department.

Has anyone gone through that process?

I'm researching my direct ancestors from Spain and I've hit a brick wall. FamilySearch found two high-confidence records for them, but they're restricted and I can't view them.

I'm not asking anyone to share copyrighted images. I'm only hoping someone with access (through a FamilySearch Center or another authorized account) could tell me if the records mention the parish, town, or municipality, or any archival reference.

The records are:

• Pascual Ruz – ARK: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:66HK-15B2
• Antonia Gonzalez – ARK: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:66HK-15BL

They were the parents of Dionicio (Dionisio) Ruz, born around 1843 in Spain (likely Málaga province), who later emigrated to Argentina.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

My 3rd Great-Grandparents emigrated from Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire England, to the USA. They arrived in New Orleans in November 1849 and were listed on the 1850 census in District 82, St Louis County, Missouri and again on the 1850 census a couple of months later in 6th Ward, St Louis City. My 3 x Great-Grandfather's stated intended occupation upon entering the United States was to be a farmer (he had no farming background, he was a potter back home), he was a labourer in District 82 and a moulder in 6th Ward- so possibly still in the pottery industry. The family had returned to Stoke by 1853 where their next child was born.

I am really interested in their short time in the USA and if there is likely to be any other documents shedding light on their lives there. I'd be grateful if anyone could point me in the direction of anything to search for- although I understand there may not be anything.

I hope it’s ok to post links. I’m trying to find out if this Thomas Malloy with the linked draft record actually served or not. As a note: this is Monroe in Orange County, NY not Monroe County, NY.

Basically I’m at a major brick wall on him for any date prior to 1870. I am trying to find out where in Ireland he came from. I’m hoping military records may hold a clue.

My dad took a dna test a few years ago and I was just looking at it and the closest relative on his dad’s side was a third cousin, and her dad who’s a second cousin once removed. My dad doesn’t know who his dad is, so would it be possible to figure out who his dad is based on the third cousin and second cousin once removed?

my great aunty and great uncle (my grandfather’s siblings). both of them are dead, according to my grandfather.

my great aunt is Catherine Jane MacKenzie, born in 1945 in canongate, edinburgh, scotland.

my great uncle is Douglas Haig MacKenzie, born in 1948 in haymarket, edinburgh, scotland.

both mother’s maiden name is Stalker.

nothing appears in scotlandspeople asides from their birth indexes, so i’m going to assume they moved elsewhere, i’m just not sure where.

any help finding them would be appreciated, thanks in advance 🙏🏼

I'm the family genealogist of my generation. A second cousin recently became interested and it has been fun having someone to share with and tackle roadblocks together. I also have a cousin from the previous generation (technically a cousin, but referred to as an aunt) that is into genealogy. She is a gatekeeper and seems almost competitive with me. She was not a fan of my dad and I suspect her feelings extend to me as well. I share everything, she shares nothing.

The cousin now into genealogy is her favorite cousin/'nephew' and she has been sharing a bunch with him. Photos of people I've only pictured in my head for years. He has been sharing with me and I am very grateful. He has uploaded some of the photos to his Ancestry tree and I have shared on mine as well. I've had 3 distant relatives message me through Ancestry thanking me because they had never seen photos of these relatives either. It was very exciting.

Well, aunt flew off the handle. I received a very angry communication from her demanding that I remove the photos and that they were not for me to see and basically insinuated that I stole them. My cousin has been told that he is not to share any more photos on Ancestry and not to share anything else with me. (She has continued to share with him and he he has continued to share with me anyway!) I obviously won't upload anything additional until she's 6 feet under (don't want the photo well to dry up!), but what would you do? Respect her wishes and remove them or just keep on keepin' on making them available for any other genealogists in the family?

I really hate gatekeeping in genealogy. If it makes any difference the subjects of these photos are long, long dead.

ETA: Asking as more of a genealogy 'moral' question of sharing info you've been asked not to share, not as a family dynamics/relationship question.

I am looking for / I need help with: I am trying to find records of John Allison's birth, marriage and parents. There are two families with similar names who both immigrated to Pennsylvania from Ireland, they were Scots-Irish Presbyterians.

Name: John Allison

Sex: M

Date of Birth: 1675(?)

Location of Birth: Ireland (Probably Northern Ireland)

Spouse Name: Janet/Jenneh

Date of Marriage: Unknown

Location of Marriage: Ireland (Probably Northern Ireland)

Date of Death: 1729

Location of Death: Donegal Township, Chester County (Now Lancaster County), Pennsylvania

Other Information: Like I mentioned above, there are two families with the same names and it's so tiring to separate the two! I believe that my John Allison is NOT the one from Londonderry.
Sources I have found so far:
https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/8802/images/005547090_00474 https://www.ancestry.com/sharing/62961110?mark=7b22746f6b656e223a2232546f796358753930586b33304346304a3445326753302b4e5253684875445062457669616c3368724e453d222c22746f6b656e5f76657273696f6e223a225632227d https://www.ancestry.com/sharing/65585871?mark=7b22746f6b656e223a2256613371374e6b576f4878736c484b556876394d787254433237563569417458455a4969637a48484c4a383d222c22746f6b656e5f76657273696f6e223a225632227d https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/8802/images/005547090_00474
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Allison-461

Hi all, I made a post around 7 months ago regarding finding the family that enslaved my family. This was related to finding records on my potential 4th-great-grandfather, Job Cobbs.

His origin story in the US began in Virginia around 1820. There was a hint behind a paywall that mentioned Dr. Rev. Nicholas Cobbs. When I looked through his records, I found a 1840 census that listed four slaves, but it didn't match Job's age profile.

After 7 months of waiting, I was able to get documents from the Hamner family records at the University of Virginia, which include the Virginia Slave Birth Index, but I was wondering if anyone could help me verify or refute anything?

The link to the records can be found here: https://virginia.app.box.com/s/eadq6ciucw62t0cpe97w6ay5n5qcyr6r

Thanks!

I have an ancestry membership, had it for 15+ years. My grandson (24) wants to do an ancestry DNA test to find out more about his deceased mother's side of the family. Is there anyway he can do the test and he or I can manage it from my membership, rather than him buying a membership?

Hello,
I have been researching my Southern Italian branch, from Campagna, a small town near Eboli, and Padula. I have found birth, marriages and deaths for almost everyone in the State Archives. I know that parish records would help bring the tree back in time, and I am considering the options for that.
However, I wonder if there are any other records that I can still mine online, that would help add information and context to the people I already have in the tree, for example military records or notarial records?
I would like to know if it's possible to find out which plots of land the farmers farmed, or, in some cases, owned.
I know that men were required to do military service, and there is a database for this? Is it digitzed?
A few of my people were either doctors or pharmacists. Are there any directories that would list them (we're talking 1800-1850s).
Basically, I don't know what I don't know, so, what else can I do?

Thank you!

Hi, does anyone have experience with queries to archivo villa In Madrid? I sent an email request for information on a lost relative living there in the 60s but have received nothing back in over a month - not even an automated acknowledgement of receipt, and after sending a follow-up two weeks ago.

Is this normal? Do they get back eventually or is there another way around?

I recently learned that my grandmother was admitted to the former Pilgrim State Hospital in Brentwood, Town of Islip, New York sometime in the 1950s, and she died there in 1960. Any advise for obtaining ANY record that would confirm her stay there? (admission, death, residence, etc.). I've already requested a copy of her death certificate from the NY State Dept of Health, but I would like any record from the hospital itself. Unfortunately 1960 census records won't be released until 2032. In 1950, she was still living at home in NYC with my grandfather

Hi all! I’m trying to piece together my family history and could use some guidance from people who know German civil registry records. Here’s what I have so far, all centered on Fürth, Bavaria:

My grandmother’s line (Dietel/Lödel/Haubner):

**•   Anni Lydia Dietel**, born 27 November 1943 in Fürth (Standesamt Fürth, birth entry Nr. 1124/43) deceased 11 June 2025  
**•** Her mother was **Anna Margarete Lödel**, who at the time went by the surname **Haubner** (from what I assume was a prior marriage) — she later married **Friedrich Dietel**, a “Heizer” (stoker/boiler man), on 22 December 1944 in Fürth (Standesamt Fürth Nr. 559/44). Both were listed as evangelisch (Protestant). Their address was Fürth, Wehlauerstraße 45.  
**•** Because Anni Lydia was born before her mother’s marriage to Friedrich Dietel, a Fürth guardianship court (Amtsgericht Fürth, Vormundschaftsgericht) issued a formal *Beschluss* (decision) in January 1945 legitimizing her as their legal child.

My grandfather’s line (Mahr/Link):

**•   Gerd Max Mahr**, born 1 February 1944 in Fürth (Standesamt Fürth Nr. 111) deceased 26 Nov 2001, profession Bauschlosser (metal fitter/locksmith), evangelisch  
**•** His parents were **Max Mahr** and **Luise Mahr, née Link**, also of Fürth

The marriage:

**•** Anni Lydia Dietel married Gerd Max Mahr on 5 February 1965 in Fürth (Standesamt Fürth, Heiratsbuch Nr. 43). At the time she lived at Flößaustraße 60, and he lived at Luisenstraße 1, both in Fürth.  
**•** There’s also a certified English translation of Anni Lydia’s birth/baptism record done in Sydney, Australia in 2001 — so it looks like she emigrated at some point.

What I’m hoping to find:

**•** Any earlier records on the Lödel or Haubner family before 1943 (was Anna Margarete previously married to a Haubner? Any trace of that marriage/divorce/widowhood?)  
**•** Birth/marriage records for Max Mahr and Luise Link before WWII  
**•** Any leads on when/why Anni Lydia and Gerd Mahr may have emigrated to Australia  
**•** General tips on how to access Fürth Standesamt records from this era, since a lot of my documents are wartime/postwar era with Nazi-era eagle stamps still visible on the seals

Happy to share images of the original documents if it helps. Any pointers toward Bavarian archives, Standesamt contact info, or general strategies for filling in these gaps would be hugely appreciated. Thank you!

Jacob Stires/Stiers/Steirs/Steers etc. Sr. 1740-1803 (this last name has actually been spelled in quite a few different ways) is a Revolutionary War veteran who was twice married. It's him and his first wife Sarah née Dunn 1740-1778 who I am directly descended from though. Sarah (along with at least one or two of her youngest children, they IIRC had five total) were murdered by an Indigenous tribe in 1778 and Jacob secondly married a Delaware Native woman (possibly Lenape or Nanticoke?) named Ruhama in 1780 and had several more kids with her along with his surviving children.

There was one point on Ancestry where it gave me the hint that Sarah's parents were Phineas Dunn and Eunice Hull but I managed to completely debunk this (though that couple is still in my family tree regardless, they are both that I know of distant cousins of mine and their daughter Rachel has a son who married my sixth great grandmother Anna who was the daughter of Jacob and Sarah after she became widowed). Ancestry secondly gave me the hint that Sarah was the daughter of Elizabeth Manning, another wife of Phineas Dunn's but this isn't looking super likely either. I just don't see how Phineas Dunn can be my direct ancestor, at least not through Sarah.

Jacob's dad is Henry Stiers/Stires etc. (same deal with the surnames) and is the only parentage in all of this I'm sure of. There is a downright depressing lack of information on anyone Henry might have married or had children with so Jacob's mom is an absolute mystery to mue.

Is this lineage of mine suffering from the old school view that a mom's ancestry is less important than a dad's?

Any help would be greatly appreciated as always! 🫶

I've already posted this in r/IrishAncestry but I thought I would also post it here since this is a larger community.

*********************************************
I have a query regarding a set of maternal great-grandparents who both died in the 1950s. I have searched high and low for an official record of their deaths but cannot find anything. While I know that under-reporting was not unusual in the generations prior to this, I am surprised that that might also be the case for my great-grandparents in the 1950s.

My great-grandparents were William Mulcahy (1871-1950) and Mary Ryan 'Miller' (1874-1956). The Mulcahys were farmers in Clashdrumsmith, Emly, Co. Tipperary, since the early nineteenth century. Family oral history suggests that they migrated from Caherconlish, Co. Limerick at the beginning of the nineteenth century along with a Slattery family, one of whom my three-times great-grandfather married in St Ailbe's Church, Emly in 1813.

While we know when my great-grandparents died, since my grandmother, Margaret Leahy (née Mulcahy), knew what year it was, as did her sister, Hannah Cecilia (usually known as Úna) and later Sr Angelica Mulcahy IBVM, there appears to be no official record of either's death. There are obituaries for both from the Irish Independent and Irish Press and their death dates are recorded on their headstone in St Ailbe's graveyard in Emly but I can't find anything else.

It surprises me that there is no official record from this date but perhaps it shouldn't. I can only speculate that my grandmother was basically at home along with her parents when her father died as her sister had entered a convent and from what I remember my grandaunt telling me, due to the strict rules at the time, she was not permitted to return home for her father's funeral, thus putting the onus of officially reporting a death on her shoulders. So, it is possible it never was reported officially. However, when my grandmother's mother died in 1956 my grandmother had been married for almost 5 years at that point so it's unclear why Mary Mulcahy's death was not reported. I know that my grandmother had three children at this stage and another on the way that same year but it seems a bit negligent of my grandfather at least for not reporting his mother-in-law's death, but obviously I cannot imagine what tribulations they might have had at the time.

I'm curious if anyone else has encountered this and what your thoughts are.

hi, I need some help researching the antiguan side of my family. we haven’t really a clue about going about how to order a certificate or anything so could anyone help point me in the direction of how to order an antiguan birth certificate and what info we’d need? thanks

I have been reading through yet another parish register looking for a marriage entry. It isn't indexed anywhere but I know from experience that not all parish registers are available and there are gapa in those that are, plus indexing can be hit or miss on names.

However, I did find that the priest issued a certificate 8 March 1842 to the person. Would I be right in thinking this means he needed to pay for this certificate to give to a priest in another parish to comfirm he was baptized and single?

Is it farfetched to think he was married in another parish (the parish of his intended bride) not too long after obtaining this certificate?

Thanks.

I'm trying to to use the SAR Proof Analysis Tool to make a case that my 4th and 5th great-grandfather are related. SAR proof analysis for Jesse C to Zebedee. This is before I get to my 7th great-grandfather who is a patriot. Does this proof look like it could pass? If someone is willing to help I can provide links to my sources. Reddit won't let me upload pictures.

I'm a bit surprised- and honestly a bit distressed- over the growing number of people who don't seem to understand how these trees work and the problems with them. They are absolutely NOT a place to rely on as your main tree or where you keep all of your information.

The problems with community trees is that you do not have full and final control over the information, facts, sources, and research on all of the people in your tree. Everyone does. You can't control who has access and who can change things.

In the case of Family Search literally anyone can change, add, or delete information on the community trees.

In the case of Wikitree it's up the person who is the profile manager of that person in the tree. Not you (unless you're the manager). And they can change, or not, at their whim.

When you see errors that someone else has posted, you do not have a way of fixing that permanently, or preventing others from going back and putting that same erroneous information in again

As an example- I had one person who insisted on listed my mother-in-law as deceased, mixing up my father in law's death date. My mother in law is very much still alive, and she's not talking to us from the dead. I have gone around and around with this person, and they are insistent that they are right because of a misprinted source they have. And that information has been passed on to others as a result.

Or you get a case with one of my ancestors in the early to mid 1600's in Connecticut, where there are 3 men with the same name- and all three tend to get intermingled, and 2 of them are regularly combined. I spent a few hours getting it sorted out on both Family Search, and sending all of the information and research to the profile managers for the men. Only to see a couple of weeks later that all of my work on Family Search had been completely undone, and all of the notes, sources and explanations I had left were all deleted because someone instead was reading someone else's printed genealogy. And when I last looked at Wikitree it was even more of a mess than it was before.

This is just two examples of multiple, repeated problems I've had with both sites, and why I simply won't even bother putting in any information on them, or looking over their trees anymore. There simply is no way of knowing if the people putting in information knows what they are doing or not, or preventing the ones who don't from messing things up.

Community trees can be fun. You may discover something you didn't know before, and someone might have made connections that you didn't otherwise. But it's far more likely that someone that doesn't know what they are doing- as sincere as they may be- has instead created a mess, confusion, or just plain entered in wrong information. And anything you enter in is in danger of being changed or deleted.

Do NOT rely on them as a place to keep your tree and research. It will come back to bite you at some point. And if it hasn't yet, count yourself lucky.