Category Archives: How To’s, Hints & Tips

What Alabama Data is on Ancestry.com

Did you know that you can access Ancestry.com at Nichols Library?

People tend to think that Ancestry is all about Family Trees or finding an ancestor in a census. Both of those are there & the census access is valuable. Ancestry has upgraded their view of the census several times and if you have not looked at one in several years, you might well be surprised at the improvement. Family Trees — well, those are put on by “just folks” and I’ll address using those with care in a separate post.

You will be astonished to see the number of read data records, collections, books, etc. on Alabama. PLUS, there is an easy way to obtain all the records related to a specific Alabama county.

Do You *Really* Know How To Use Ancestry’s Interactive Viewer?

Interactive Viewer has changed considerably if you are a long-time Ancestry.com user. Are you taking advantage of the new features? Or *assuming* you know what you need to about it?

Do you know there are Settings for the Interactive Viewer?

Did you handle the Settings ages ago and haven’t looked at them since?

I had to answer YES to the last question. … BUT I found something neat that I had been missing: RELATED CONTENT. Read the full article on how to FIND that in addition to a great tip article.

A MUCH Faster Search Using Green Leaf Hints on Ancestry.Com

The first in a “Using Ancestry.com” Series.

Search One Database for All Green Leaf Hints in Your Tree

Did you know that you can filter your Ancestry.com green leaf Hints by record collection? ~ Source: Randall J. Seaver on Geneamusings.com

Instead of searching an all “green leaf” hints for an ancestor by going through all the hints provided, learn to utilize the power of computing to search only ONE database for anyone with a hint for THAT database in your tree.

Talk about a research time saver!

This is a MUST READ post if you have an Ancestry.com tree.

Free Chart: Census Comparison Information, 1790-1940

A good chart from Ancestry.com [free] displays a comparison of census information, 1790-1940. The chart is on the 1940 Census Wiki page. Very helpful when trying to determine what census asked questions such as “Month of birth” (don’t we wish that was asked on ALL of them!) Link: Comparison of Census Information, 1790-1940. Photo by… Read More »