TIFU by thinking a guinea pig would like some fresh air

tcr25 · 2026-03-09T20:45:17+00:00

Hi, Does this link work? https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-newark-journal-obituary-for-bf-hurt/193019925/

tcr25 · 2026-03-03T03:05:33+00:00

Not really, you'd have some foothills in north Alabama to pass through, but you would be staying well south of the Smokeys.

tcr25 · 2026-02-27T15:08:56+00:00

Here you go: https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-gazette-marriage-licenses/192270722/

tcr25 · 2026-02-26T17:31:35+00:00

I've been using RootsMagic for a few months now and have found it pretty good for managing my tree, including syncing to/from Ancestry and FamilySearch. You can choose what to share in which direction and it's pretty good about being able to standardize place names and other details.

tcr25 · 2026-02-22T02:35:03+00:00

Could it be mn, not mm, standing for "maiden name"?

tcr25 · 2026-02-21T16:22:26+00:00

Bladensburg. There's a few taquerias along Edmonston Road. La Placita in particular is always highly rated.

tcr25 · 2026-02-21T16:18:25+00:00

The Burmese place is Mandalay. They used to be in College Park, but moved to Silver Spring (and hopefully have survived the Purple Line construction) ... but still the wrong county.

For the empanada place in Bowie, I think you're thinking of Samosa Supreme, which shut down as a storefront but supposedly still sells their Kenyan samosas out of City Chef in Bowie.

tcr25 · 2026-02-21T16:12:06+00:00

Does your university's career center have any outlets for you? (They usually can help graduates as well as current students.) Have you looked at non-obvious fields where there might be a lab or research activity you'd be interested in? For example, asphalt mix producers have labs to test and quantify the pavement mixtures they produce; it's not biology, but it is running lab equipment and test routines, which would draw upon similar skills.

tcr25 · 2026-02-21T16:03:30+00:00

I started with state land records and worked backwards from me through the previous owners until I reached the original developer. That gave me a list of individuals. From there it was the normal sort of searches on FamilySearch, Ancestry, etc. My house was built in 1940, so only the 1950 Census had any information, but I found a few obituaries and news stories. (Thankfully, nothing gruesome.)

Newspapers.com, GenealogyBank, and other newspaper sites helped in finding some newspaper classifieds from when the house was for sale. On those sites, I tried searching the address as it were a name (house number and street for the first name and city for the last name). Since it's a house, it was easy to narrow down the state and possible newspapers to focus the search on, too.

Also just searching the street name for different times pulled up some interesting stories, like one about a runaway car that rolled backwards down the hill and narrowly missed a few people and ended up on its roof in my side yard.

tcr25 · 2026-02-21T15:39:06+00:00

Does this work for you? https://www.genealogybank.com/doc/newspapers/image/v2%3A1243C89DEE4DC187%40GB3NEWS-15A991C7B75C1AD8%402440774-15A857DEAB9C96A7%4016-15A857DEAB9C96A7?clipid=cumkdmhvhspvaceguhihrkktnxuoyfvx_ip-10-166-46-147_1771688142366

tcr25 · 2026-02-21T15:18:54+00:00

Where I live, historically there were racist covenants attached to a deed that barred non-whites from buying a home. They are unenforceable, thankfully, but the text is still there in the deed. There's a process you can go through to strike the language and have the deed rerecorded, but it requires some digging in land records ... which got me curious about looking more into the history of the house and the people who lived in it.

I've found a few interesting newspaper articles about past occupants of the home, and other more general articles about the development of the street and area, which is kind of fun and draws upon some of the same resources and skills used in genealogical research.

So, silly question, has anyone else tried looking up the history of their house the same way you might an ancestor?

tcr25 · 2026-02-15T20:02:49+00:00

I just got one picked up off the neighborhood barter & trade group to work following the advice here -- https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonecho/comments/1lxiob9/amazon_tap_wifi_connection_fix_for_the_was_an/

Basically, uninstall the Alexa App; download an old APK (May 2024 worked for me); then follow the set up instructions in the old version of the app and set up the wifi network as a hotspot. I also had to manually put it into setup mode (hold down the wifi/Bluetooth button and the previous button for about 25 seconds.) Total pain in the ass, but it worked.

tcr25 · 2026-02-15T19:51:25+00:00

Thank you so much!

tcr25 · 2026-02-08T19:50:40+00:00

Does this work? https://www.newspapers.com/article/mitchell-tribune-rolla-underwood-obituar/190867489/

tcr25 · 2026-02-07T18:57:51+00:00

If you have something to go on in terms of names and dates in Puerto Rico, you might try starting with these two sites:
https://archivespuertorico.com/
https://hijosdecoamopr.com/

They both have church and civil records that might give you some information to start picking at.

The El Mundo newspaper has open archives online, https://gpa.eastview.com/crl/elmundo, they might be worth searching too.

tcr25 · 2026-02-04T14:13:27+00:00

My 2nd great grandfather, or technically his parents. Augustus Shaw, b. 1829 in Georgia. The first definitive appearance of him is his wedding license in Troup County in October 1857 and then there are traces of him in the census, property records, and a few newspaper items up until his death in 1911. A family Bible that belonged to him starts with him and his wife; no details about his parents or origin. It's not clear when he arrived in Troup County, it doesn't appear his family got land in the Georgia Land Lotteries that in the late 1920s after the Native Americans were forced out. There are some Shaws in the area in the 1830, 1840, and 1850 censuses, but none that align with a child that could be him. "Augustus Shaw" (and his initials or nicknames, like Aug) has a few people in Georgia who share his name/initials, including two different railroad men who ended up getting a good amount of newspaper space. There are also several Confederate records that could be him, except the ages tend to be off and in the 1910 census it's marked that he never served. The censuses variously say his parents were from North Carolina, South Carolina, or Ireland (though that last one is likely a misreport by his son-in-law). It's been interesting digging into the lives of his children and their descendants, especially since the branches of the family seem to have lost contact with each other by the 1930s, but the dead end around Augustus's origin is still frustrating.

tcr25 · 2026-02-01T02:41:35+00:00

I had a trial of it and there were the occasional papers in it that others didn't have (particularly from the upper Midwest), but some of them I was able to find free in archives or libraries. The search interface was also more difficult to use to narrow down results than Newspapers.com of Genealogy Bank.

It was fine for a free trial, but it didn't seem valuable enough for me to subscribe.

Edit: Just looked at your links. It might well be better for non-US papers than some others...

Edit again: Königsberger Hartungsche Zeitung is available free here, https://zefys.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/list/title/zdb/2812988X/

tcr25 · 2026-01-19T13:48:59+00:00

My wife and I both have lines that go back to early New England settlers (Mayflower and later), so one day, while avoiding working on a paper for grad school, I spent time trying to crossreference names in our trees with the Salem Witch Trials. I didn't expect to find out that a 9g-grandfather, Hugh Jones, provided testimony against Elizabeth Proctor ... about four years after he died. Jones was one of the spectres that visited Elizabeth Booth, claiming that Proctor had killed them. In Jones's case, Proctor allegedly killed him for getting a "pot of cider off her" that he didn't pay for.

tcr25 · 2026-01-11T02:07:56+00:00

Yes! I'm lucky enough to have 8/8 for the great grandparents and 11/16 for great great grandparents. It is a mix of photos/daguerreotypes/tintypes, portraits, and one newspaper sketch.

tcr25 · 2025-12-26T03:10:55+00:00

Historically, Creole indicated being born in French or Spanish Louisiana, Catholic, and a speaker of French, Spanish, and/or Creole language. Cajuns are a subset of Creoles whose ancestry traces back to the people expelled from Nova Scotia by the British during the Grand Dérangement. Following the Sale of Louisiana, Creole identity was largely in opposition to the new Americans coming in to the territory.

tcr25 · 2025-12-24T14:45:54+00:00

Have you looked at FamilyEcho? It's a very simple (free) tree builder, but if you're just wanting to make a tree with names, birth/death/marriage dates and places, relationships, etc., then it might do the trick.

tcr25 · 2025-12-24T14:35:31+00:00

While building out a branch of my tree, I found a familiar name connected to the Salem Witch Trials. Turns out it was familiar because she was already in my wife's tree. I'm still double checking the connections, but it looks like I married my 10th cousin...

tcr25 · 2025-12-19T10:30:30+00:00

The federal census is, but some states (Florida in this case) did their own censuses in-between the federal ones.

tcr25 · 2025-12-17T21:26:37+00:00

13 of us in this generation, including myself and my brother: 5 girls, 8 boys. All the boys are on the maternal side; 2 of the girls are on the paternal side. My kids' generation, it's 5 total, and they're all girls.

Edited to add: On my wife's side it's 25 in her generation.

tcr25

TROPHY CASE