When searching for your ancestors, you can only go back a few generations until you run into the immigration question. All of our ancestors, unless we are Native American, came from across the ocean, whether across the Atlantic or around the Cape of Good Hope and up to the Pacific coast. Many people came in through Ellis Island, during the years o...

One way to expand your knowledge of your ancestors is to use occupational records. By so doing you can often distinguish between people with very similar or same names and discern to which you’re related. You can also discover family traditions that were passed down from generation to generation through occupational “secrets” or techniques. ...