Today's #genealogy work was doing some background work for the next #genchat .

JD Vance says he's "a Scots-Irish hillbilly at heart," but Irish people won't claim him. According to Defector, The Times of London uncovered private emails from Northern Irish government officials "admitting the fact-checking expedition they'd commissioned into Vance's ethnic identity had 'run into the proverbial brick wall' trying to prove the veep's actual ethnicity was as he'd said." Here's more.

https://flip.it/zgBp85

#977 M. E. Cash (ed) - Devon & Cornwall Notes & Queries, Vol XXX - Parts XI & XII. The Devonshire Press, Torquay, July & October 1967.

Background: I was raised Mormon, with its fixation on family history and genealogy (and ALL its baggage).

I can find information for three of my grandparents' biological families. My paternal grandmother was adopted by a Mormon family around 1920, and her biological familial information has pretty much been wiped out. We've been able to find very little, and interviews with my grandmother don't reveal very much (except racism - "my mother always said that I looked like a little Jewess").

We've gone back and forth about her ancestry - Scottish, French, God knows what else. No records seem to exist.

I've done genetic tests to try to figure it out, and those, too, have been shockingly uninformative. We've had NO hits on Ancestry (yet have cousins to the nth degree on my grandfather's side).

It's like her mother appeared out of nowhere. Was she a young WWI widow, as supposed by Grandma? An unwed mother who fled to escape the shame, and the church facilitated the adoption to "save" the child?

I uploaded my DNA info to GenomeLink, and have found some fascinating stuff - though none of it is more recent than the Middle Ages. It seems that I have Southern European and Middle Eastern links.

I need to get serious about digging into her adoption and try to figure things out. I wonder what it'd cost to get help.

#FamilyHistory
#Genealogy

New blog post with an 1834 letter from John Hankins to his brother-in-law Chauncey Thomas. John was going to be delayed returning from Philadelphia - he'd been exposed to smallpox and didn't want to bring it home.

https://hankinsnewyork.blogspot.com/2025/06/1834-letter-from-john-hankins-to.html

How do you keep your interest going with #genealogy? Is the spark still alive? Or is the magic gone?

This is something that I've been struggling with. Recently, I had to make a few decisions on where to spend my #time.

I would love to hear from others on their thoughts about gen #research, #brickwalls, and #burnout

I wrote down a few of my thoughts and issues:

https://ancestryroads.blogspot.com/2025/06/the-magic-is-gone.html

Next set of photos is on my blog at

https://pattyhankins.blogspot.com/2025/06/sometime-in-about-1904-someone-in-my.html

Photos are from 1910-1911 - when my grandmother was ages 15-16 - I loving seeing what school girls wore in those days.

Exploring WikiTree browser extension
https://open.substack.com/pub/missiongenealogy/p/exploring-wikitree-browser-extension @genealogy @geneadons #genealogy #familyhistory @projectkin.bsky.social

"Some notes on Medieval English genealogy" regular updates at:
http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/updates/update.shtml Not just for genealogists but for anyone at all interested in 'broadly' the medieval period in England. #Medieval #genealogy #histodons @geneadons @histodons

#Georgia #genealogy #newspapers

'The Georgia Public Library Service is pleased to announce the addition of new content to the Digital Library of Georgia and the Georgia Historic Newspaper Project.'

https://georgialibraries.org/expanding-digitized-collections/

Georgia Public Library Service: Georgia Public Library Service Expands Digitized Collections and Historical Newspaper Access. “The Georgia Public Library Service is pleased to announce the addition of new content to the Digital Library of Georgia and the Georgia Historic Newspaper Project, making more of Georgia’s rich history accessible to the public from anywhere with an internet […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/30/georgia-public-library-service-georgia-public-library-service-expands-digitized-collections-and-historical-newspaper-access/

More hidden gems for researchers focused on Ireland! #genealogy https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/30/pioneering-project-releases-more-lost-irish-records-spanning-700-years

Cousin: How did this stranger on FindAGrave know about the error on great-grandmother's death certificate?

Me: Uhhhhh. Because I submitted an update to the holder of the page?
#genealogy

Came across this photo the other day. I believe it’s the last photo taken of my grandmother. If my calculations are correct, it would’ve been spring of 1946. She passed October 1 of that same year. She was 46 years old. She had 14 children- 10 girls and 4 boys.
Maybe it’s a combination of my love for #photography and #genealogy, but old photos are a treasure. Capturing that moment in time is priceless.
My dad is the boy in the photo.

Rachel wants to find her birth mother. But someone is trying to stop her from discovering the truth. Who is it and why?

Amazon - http://mybook.to/MyNameIsRachel
Other retailers - https://books2read.com/MyNameIsRachel

#MyNameIsRachelByLornaPeel #BooksByLornaPeel #Mystery #Suspense #Romance #MysteryRomance #Paperback #KindleUnlimited #Genealogy @bookstodon

Since I live pretty close to a lot of my ancestors, most of my #genealogy road trips have been day trips: visits to cemeteries (of course), libraries, museums or even just looking at the plots of land where my people lived. Very fulfilling & inexpensive! #genchat @genchat@a.gup.pe

Good morning from CT, #genchat ! Coffee in hand, I'm ready for our Open Mic about #Genealogy Road Trips! Last night, folks shared about where they hoped to get to, places they've already gone, virtual trips & tips for the trip. How about you? @genchat@a.gup.pe