Guernsey County Genealogical Society

09/05/2026

Don't forget your local genealogy society if you have documents, books or photos from an estate that may have value to researchers.

09/04/2026

09/04/2026

Oof. On August 11, I posted a video that contained 2 completely AI created obituaries. They both looked like real newspaper clippings, which is terrifying and I made the video as a warning.

I predict these fictional obits are going to start showing up in online trees and people will start copying the fake obits and assuming they’re real since they are indistinguishable from real newspaper images.

This commenter confirmed my fears. I’m right about this, right? Isn’t this a terrible idea to create fake obits that look like real newspapers?

09/01/2026

Upcoming genealogy seminar in Defiance, Ohio

09/01/2026

No chart or lookup table needed. Just enter the old occupation term and the modern equivalent is returned automatically.

Try the free Old Occupation Converter: https://theancestorhunt.com/old-occupation-to-modern-equivalent-converter.html

09/01/2026

Do you have a century farm-or older? If you hurry you can get your farm recognized.

The Guernsey County Farm Bureau wants to showcase Century Farms in our county. If you have a farm that has been in your family for 100 years or more and you would like to be recognized, reach out to Courtney Gray at 740-510-0560 and/or send your info to [email protected]

08/31/2026

Sometimes a Civil War pension file gives you the family Bible without actually giving you the family Bible.

When Benjamin White’s mother applied for a pension based on his Civil War service in Company A of the West Virginia Cavalry, the family didn’t send in their Bible. Instead, sworn statements were accepted as evidence of the information recorded inside it.

Those statements provided the birth dates of Benjamin’s parents, his mother’s address, the names and birth dates of all the children, and even an assessment of the family’s land and personal property in Bald K**b, Boone County, West Virginia.

That’s the thing about Civil War pension files. You might order one looking for a soldier and end up finding his entire family.

Ready to see what’s in your ancestor’s file? Order your Civil War records today. https://civilwarrecords.com/pages/getstarted

08/31/2026

LINK IN COMMENTS: I spent the last few days thinking about Dolly Parton. Like a lot of us, I was crushed when we lost her. Then my brain did what it always does. It turned her life into a genealogy lesson.

Take her song "Coat of Many Colors." Her mother stitched fabric scraps together while telling her the story of Joseph. Decades later, the Library of Congress put that recording in the National Recording Registry.

That is exactly how a documented family story gets built.

Nobody hands you an ancestor's life wrapped in a bow. You get a scrap here and a scrap there, then you sit down and stitch.

I was chasing a woman named Hattie Verplanck once. She was in the 1900 census in Liberty, New York as a boarder. Then she vanished. No marriage record in the county clerk's index. No death certificate in the state index. Nothing on Find a Grave. Brick wall.

The scrap that saved the case was four tiny lines in a local newspaper column, noting that Miss Verplanck went down to Paterson, New Jersey with the family she worked for. That single scrap led to city directories and a 1908 marriage under a botched spelling of her surname. Three junk records became a complete coat.

Dolly showed up and did the work. She wrote roughly 3,000 songs by treating her craft like a job. Most of us do genealogy in the margins. We sneak twenty minutes before bed or a stolen half hour on Sunday, then wonder why our tree has been stuck since 2019.

Treat your family history like a Dolly project. Cite every single scrap. Block ninety minutes a week on your calendar. Write down the story behind the photo in that decaying shoebox before it is gone.

I wrote a deep look into what happens when you bring Dolly's business smarts, generosity, and work ethic to your family history.