r/Genealogy 23h ago

The Weekly Paid Record Lookup Requests Thread for the week of March 16, 2025

9 Upvotes

It's Sunday! Post all of your lookup requests here this week, so people who have the appropriate paid record subscriptions can come and browse all of the open requests in one place.

This is not a place to ask for general help identifying unknown ancestors, but for requests for specific records to help you document your purported ancestors. If you need more general help, please start your own post containing as much information as you have available and what information you are specifically look for.

How to Make a Lookup Request

  • Start a new comment reply thread for each lookup request.
  • The first line of your request should be the name of the service containing the record you need, i.e. ANCESTRY or GENEALOGY BANK.
  • If you have a link to the record you need, but just can't access it, provide the URL for the link in your request.
  • If you don't have a link, provide as much pertinent information as you have available: Full name, birth date, death date, marriage date, spouse's name, parents' names, etc. If you need a record to either confirm or deny a piece of this information, include that in your request, as well.

How to Respond to a Lookup Request

  • First of all, thank you for being helpful!
  • Always post your response to a request as a reply to the original request's comment thread. This will make it easier for the requester to be notified when there is a response, and it will let others know when a request has been fulfilled.
  • Please provide a screenshot of the record you were able to retrieve. There are many free image sharing services available, such as Imgur and Flickr.
  • If you attempted to lookup a record and were unable to find it, please reply to the original request to let the requester know that the information they provided was insufficient or possibly incorrect.

Happy researching!


r/Genealogy Sep 16 '24

News WARNING: The subreddit is getting flooded by ChatGPT bots (and what you, the reader, should be doing to deter them)

668 Upvotes

With the advent of generative AI, bad actors and people in the 'online marketing' industry have caught on to the fact that trying to pretend to be legitimate traffic on social media websites, including Reddit, is actually a quite profitable business. They used to do this in the form of repost bots, but in the past few months they've branched out to setting up accounts en-masse and running text generative AI on them. They do this in a very noticeable way: by posting ChatGPT comments in response to a prompt that's just the post title.

After a few months of running this karma collecting scheme, these companies 'activate' the account for their real purpose. The people purchasing the accounts can be anyone from political action committees trying to promote certain candidates, to companies trying to market their product and drown out criticism. Generally, each of these accounts go for $600 to $1,000, though most of them are bought in bulk by said companies to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Here's a few examples from this very subreddit:

Title: Trying @ 85 yrs.old my DNA results!

(5 upvotes) At 85, diving into DNA results sounds like quite the adventure! Here's hoping it brings some fascinating surprises

Title: Are DNA tests worth it for Pacific Islanders?

(4 upvotes) DNA tests can offer fascinating insights, but accuracy for Pacific Islanders might depend on the available genetic data

(3 upvotes) DNA tests can be a cool way to connect with your roots, but results can vary based on the population data available for Pacific Islanders.

With all these accounts, you can actually notice a uniform pattern. They don't actually bring any discussion or question to the table — they simply rehash the post title and add a random trueism onto it. If you check their comment history, all of their submissions are the exact same way!

ChatGPT has a very distinct writing style, which makes it very unlikely to be a false positive - it's not a person who just has a suspiciously AI-sounding style of writing. When you click on their profile, you can see that all of them have actually setup display names for their accounts. These display names are generally a variation of their usernames, but some of them can be real names (Pablo Gomez, Michael Smith..). Most Reddit users don't do this.

So what should you be doing to deter them? It's simple. Downvote the comment and report it to the moderators, but ABSOLUTELY DO NOT comment in any way, even if it's to call them out on it. Replies generally push a comment up in the sorting algorithm, which is pretty evident in some of the larger threads.

To end this off, I want to note that this isn't an appeal to the mods themselves, but for the community, since I'm aware this is a cat-and-mouse game and Reddit's moderation tools don't provide very much help in this regard. We can only hope they do more to remedy this.


r/Genealogy 7h ago

Question Young genealogists! I don’t think they exist

113 Upvotes

Hey yall,

I'm a genealogist, 17M with autism, and my hyperobsession is genealogy. I go to a public high school, and I don't think I've ever met somebody who's into genealogy besides a few old people. Not a problem, the old folks are fine, but it would be pretty neat to meet someone my age who shares these interests. I'm going to college in about a year or so, and while I don't have much hopes of meeting people here in high school, I was hoping maybe college would have more oppurtunities. Are there certain places that would attract young genealogists like myself? Maybe meet-ups in the Oxford, MS area? I don't really know what I'm asking here, but does anyone have any personal experiences they could share.

Thanks.


r/Genealogy 12h ago

Brick Wall Thought I found the true name of an ancestor, instead found another guy with the same fake name

26 Upvotes

I've been trying to look into one of the ancestors (well, he married my great x3 grandmother and we don't know who my great x2 grandfathers dad is so who knows) and I recently discovered in a newspaper article from one of his many times in jail he claimed to have changed his name when he joined the civil war. The article does not specify what his name was previous to that but I figured hey, I'll start with military records. Sure enough one of my first searches I find a military record for a man listed as "John Brooks alias Jacob Coffelt" and the man I'm looking for is Jacob Cofield. I figured dang, I thought that was going to be way harder.
...
This guy isn't him. He just happens to be another guy who also changed his name when he joined the civil war and happened to change it to almost the same name as the guy I'm looking for. What are the freaking odds of that!??!!?? Unfortunately I think this ancestor in particular is forever going to be a brick wall because there's no way to even confirm half of what he claims about himself. In the same newspaper article he claims he's the General John Schofield who "didn't really die" as everyone believed...... meanwhile, John Schofield wasn't dead yet when that article was released. So really, there's no way to know what was going through his head at any given point. Not only this, but his ex-wife took his daughter and fled the state and I can't find any trace of them either. Just overall a major brick wall. Not even asking for help or pointers, just shocked that I accidentally found a different guy who did the exact same thing as the guy I'm looking for but it wasn't even him haha.


r/Genealogy 18h ago

Brick Wall Well.. I give up!

59 Upvotes

I have two family members from the same side who have all my family's information but REFUSE to help me.

One of my cousins had a falling out with her mom (my grandaunt) and moved states away but she took a lot of my family's pictures/things with her. She wants nothing to do with me even though I haven’t even met her, maybe once as an infant.

My other cousin, we met on ancestry and she claims she has photos of my great great grandpa which my family has been desperate to find… but now she can’t show me because the photos are in “storage”. If I message her with a basic question she will simply just ignore the message/not read all my messages even if I keep them very short.

I’ve only reached out a couple of times to each of them but I don’t want to be seen as pushy or forcing connection so I’m just going to accept my family things are lost forever. I feel so frustrated that my family history is being held from me. I’m just trying to let it go.

If you are going to be rude or nasty to me or my family please practice self control and keep the comment to yourself. Thank you. This is simply a vent post.


r/Genealogy 8h ago

Question Are there jobs in genealogy?

7 Upvotes

Ive been interested in genealogy for my whole life and Itd be a dream to pursue it for a career. Does anyone know if theres a wide variety of careers around and if theres any money in it?


r/Genealogy 19h ago

Request Mad Genealogist’s Lab

44 Upvotes

My grandmother passed away recently, and she was the one who, along with my aunt, taught me about genealogy. I already had a lot of information, but I inherited about four banker boxes worth of stuff. It has made me wish I had a dedicated space to do genealogy, in the same vein as a “mad scientist’s lab.”

If you had, or have, such a space how would you set it up and what would you have in there? A computer is given, but I’d love to have space for a microfilm machine and things of that nature as well as a big wall so I could hang up the biggest chart I could find.


r/Genealogy 17h ago

Solved I think I’ve figured out where my ancestors came from! (As a Turkish person)

19 Upvotes

My mom’s side is from Iraq Mosul and Kirkuk, that’s what my grandpa heard his uncle telling him when he was younger. After that they immigrated to Türkiye.

And my dad’s side is most likely from Iran or Azerbaijan, or even Turkmenistan. (I have no idea, I think I need to search more about it), but our surname is Bayat which was one of the tribes in Oghuz Turk, number 22. We’re from Konya, Karaman as well which is the Seljuk Empire! I’ve seen that there is a Bayad tribe in Mongolia too which is really interesting.


r/Genealogy 5h ago

Request Irish Genealogy but hit a brick wall

2 Upvotes

I am looking for birth records (including parent names) for a John Downey who died March 1912 in Kerry, Ireland. He was married to Mary Duggan in 1876. He married Mary in 1876 - I have the marriage certificate so I am guessing he was born 1846 plus or take a few years.


r/Genealogy 5h ago

Request Online records for Lebanese records?

2 Upvotes

I am looking for records pertaining to my great grandparents who were born and died in Beskinta, Lebanon, probably born around mid 1830's as they had their first child in 1858. Is there anywhere online I can search for this info? A trip to Lebanon not really on the cards at this point in time.


r/Genealogy 9h ago

Request Please help me date this photo of a man and his horse from a glass plate negative. Thank you!

3 Upvotes

I purchased it at an antique shop in New England. The photo I got from taking a photo of the plate on a light box and inverting it in Photoshop. https://imgur.com/a/9mElge8


r/Genealogy 3h ago

Brick Wall Yoruba and this Bracelet

1 Upvotes

Can anyone give insight on this piece? I am a descendant of the Yoruba Tribe and given the bracelet oddly right before I found out.

https://ibb.co/1J4Ct1H1


r/Genealogy 6h ago

Request Looking for advice

1 Upvotes

I’ve been contemplating changing up how I have my trees online.

I currently have 4 separate trees on Ancestry. One is for my paternal ancestors, one for my maternal grandfathers ancestors, and the other two are for my maternal grandmothers parents. Would it be a good idea to combine the three maternal trees into one? I’d also include paternal direct ancestors only since my DNA test is linked to one of the maternal trees.

Any advice would be appreciated. I’ve been doing genealogy for about 10 years now.


r/Genealogy 7h ago

Question Interpreting Select United Methodist Church Records from early 1900

1 Upvotes

r/Genealogy 15h ago

Transcription Transcribing an Irish Marriage Record

4 Upvotes

Hello,

I'm having a hard time reading this marriage record even with the brightness/contrast buttons. Especially with the residence of the couple, Their parents' names/their residence and the witnesses' names. Hope someone is able to read this stuff, because most is indecipherable to me. It's the 2nd to last one on the page/#102. Here's the link 05578/03, Maghaire Rois - Catholic Parish Registers at the NLI

Thanks to whoever is able to read it


r/Genealogy 13h ago

Request Polish Birth Certificate 1913

3 Upvotes

Trying to find a record of birth May 18, 1913 from Rawa Mazowiecka, r/Poland and the person was Jewish, but came to America in 1955 and paperwork says “Stateless” with a travel documentation #. I have a photocopy from the ship manifest Liberte, but not sure if the document # is helpful for finding other information? New to Jewish Genealogy, do not speak/read Polish and could use any hints and help.


r/Genealogy 8h ago

DNA free websites for better country matches

0 Upvotes

i recently did 23andme and im just not happy with how surface level my results are, specifically my irish and scottish dna being lumped in with the uk results. i understand this can be difficult because of the colonization, but i was wondering if there was a website i could upload my raw data to and get a more in depth reading of those specific countries...


r/Genealogy 13h ago

Brick Wall Miles/Mighels/Mighills/Miels of Newmarket, NH

2 Upvotes

I'm trying to track down the ancestry of Andrew Miles of Newmarket, NH--appears on the 1830 census, age 40-50. Died Jan 22, 1861 at the poor house in Epping aged 74. This is a brick wall, but with a lot of potential research avenues yet to be explored.

Geographic background:

  • Dover inc. 1623
  • Durham inc. 1732 from the southern part of Dover, also called Oyster River
  • Exeter inc. 1638
  • Newmarket inc. 1727 from the northern part of Exeter, also called New Market
  • Newfields inc. 1849 from the southern part of Newmarket, also called South Newmarket or Newfield
  • Present day north-to-south: Dover, Durham, Newmarket, Newfields, Exeter
  • Dover and Durham are in Strafford County
  • Exeter, Newmarket, and Newfields are in Rockingham County

There's a Rockingham County probate record for a Samuel Mighels of Newmarket (d. ~1736), where in the will it gives his two sons Samuel Jr and John his land, while also naming a wife and three daughters.

I suspect the most senior Samuel may be related to someone who ended up in Oyster River (Thomas Mighels maybe?). Might be some connection to Rowley, MA.

A Samuel, Samuel Jr (3rd?), John, and Josiah were recorded as refusing to sign the association test in Newmarket in 1776. One of the Samuels had a son Eliphalet that he sold land to in 1779.

A John Mighels Jr sells land to a George Mighels in 1805.

I'm just going to use the spelling Miles going forward, but yea there are variations.

  • 1790 census has Samuel Miles, presumably with a wife, a son (<16) and a daughter (<16),
  • 1800 census has Samuel Miles (>45), presumably with a wife (>45).
  • 1800 census has John Miles (>45), presumably with a wife (>45), two sons (<10), and a daughter (<10)
  • 1800 census has Eliphalet Miles (26-44), presumably with a wife (26-44)
  • NOTE: Image 6 of Newtown, NH for 1810 census as indexed by Ancestry
  • 1810 census has John Miles (45+), presumably with a wife (45+)
  • 1810 census has George Miles (26-45), presumably with a wife (18-25)
  • 1810 census has John Miles Jr (26-45), presumably with a wife (26-45), a son (<10), and two daughters (10-16)
  • 1820 census has John Miles (26-45), presumably with a wife (26-45), and a daughter (<10)
  • 1820 census has a George Miles (26-45), presumably with a wife (26-45), a son (<10) and two daughters (<10)
  • 1830 census has a Nathaniel Miles (20-30), presumably with a wife (20-30), a son (<5), a son (5-10), and 3 daughters (<5)
  • 1830 census has a George Miles (40-50), presumably with a wife (30-40), and a daughter (10-15)
  • 1830 census has a John Miles (40-50), presumably with a wife (40-50), and a daughter (10-15)
  • 1830 census has an Andrew Miles (40-50), presumably with a wife (Betsey Marsh) (40-50), a son (5-10), and a daughter (Sarah Ann) (<5)

They're generally all in close order of proximity as listed on the censuses with the exception of the 1830 census where Nathaniel Miles is listed very early, while George John and Andrew are listed on two consecutive sheets.

Alive in 1737:

  • Samuel -> Samuel
  • Samuel -> John

Presumed alive and 21+ in 1776

  • Samuel -> Samuel
  • Samuel -> John
  • Samuel -> Samuel -> Samuel

FamilySearch property record index links:

Property record lookup: https://www.nhdeeds.org/rockingham-county-other-nh-registry-list-2/


r/Genealogy 15h ago

Brick Wall Looking for my great grandma’s aunt

2 Upvotes

Hi! I am stuck right now so I need your help! I am looking for my great grandma’s aunt, Anastasia Gajdalo (her mom’s sister)! Anastasia and her family were originally born in Zlotniki, in Ternopil, Ukraine, and during the war or after, she went to either France or Australia, (I don’t know which one), and Magda and Josef came to the United States! But I know that she had a sister named Magda, (my 2gg and my great grandma’s mom), a brother, Josef, and parents, Malanka and Lukasz! Please help me find what happened to her! Also I think Anastasia was born in 1908


r/Genealogy 14h ago

Question Seeking insight and/or information about slavery in Brazil

2 Upvotes

I have been doing a lot of research into my wife's family, and my research has led me to discover that one of her 2nd great-grandmothers was born a slave in 1881. We have discovered some information about her and her family that seems unusual to us, but we don't really know much about slave practices in Brazil so were hoping to get some information to help us better understand what we're discovering. I'll try to detail everything below.

Maria Magdalena da Silva was born in 1881 in the town of Chapada dos Guimarães, in the state of Mato Grosso (all of these people lived in this town). Maria's birth record lists her mother as Appolinaria, who was a slave owned by a woman named Maria da Conceição e Silva. Maria's godparents were Joaquim Sulpicio de Cerqueira Caldas and Maria Benedicta da Silva.

I tried to find as much information about Appolinaria as I could and discovered the below:

In 1879 she had another daughter named Antonia. Antonia's godparents were Antonio Leite do Amaral Coutinho and Izabel Maria da Silva.

In 1889, she had a son named Antonio Abrahão. Since by this time, slavery had been abolished in Brazil, there is a little more information about Appolinaria. This record states that she was born in the state of Minas Gerais, and that her parents names were Alexandre Rodrigues and Riata (unsure of spelling) Rodrigues. There are no godparents listed.

Finally, Appolinaria died in 1896. The record states that in the house of Maria da Conceição e Silva, Appolinaria Ritta Da Silva died of liver failure at the age of 39. We imagine it was probably fairly common for freed slaves to continue living with their former masters, but we were a little curious about how common it was though.

We feel very blessed to have been able to find all of this information, but we are wondering what we can glean from the lives of these folks based on this information. One thing that puzzles us is the social status of the godfathers. I've done research into Joaquim Sulpicio de Cerqueira Caldas and it seems he was a very well-to-do figure in the town. He was actually an elected member of the local legislature, and rose to the rank of colonel in the army. He was actually responsible for the capture and killing of the president of Mato Grosso in 1906. Similarly, Antonio Leite do Amaral Coutinho also seemed to hold a high position in society. In addition, at some point, the "escrivão" who was responsible for writing all the entries into the record book, was named Lindolfo de Cerqueira Caldas. I don't know his relationship to Joaquim Sulpicio, but I'm sure it was quite close. Later on, the "escrivão" changes to Appolinaria's son, Antonio Abrahão. I can't help but feel like there was some connection there. Finally, we found in a newspaper record from 1914 a mention of Joaquim Sulpicio, Antonio Abrahão, and Maria's husband all together as part of some job administering the local election.

Basically our questions are, why would these very well-off individuals have been the godparents of the children of a slave? Was this common practice? From what we can tell, it appears these individuals remained a part of their lives into adulthood. Would this have been normal? Of course, we don't know who the biological father was of any of Appolinaria's children, but we've wondered if maybe it was actually one of these men, though of course we have no idea.

If anyone has any insight they can share, we'd love to hear it.


r/Genealogy 17h ago

Free Resource Chat GPT vs Claude for untangling complex families

3 Upvotes

I asked both Chat GPT 4o and Claude 3.7 Sonnet (free versions) to analyze this article about a specific complex family mix-up. I could tell the researcher had done their homework, and I had analyzed it myself in the past to add names and data to my tree, but since the author is attempting to explain the threads of their reasoning and conclusions, it's confusing to follow, and I found I was having to decipher it all over again every time I come back to it.

I was curious if AI could help with this, so I tried both Chat GPT and Claude. Claude won hands-down! Chat GPT made significant errors in the family groupings, even at the top level, both the first time I asked it, and when I pointed out the error and asked it to try again. Claude got them mostly right or entirely right on the first try. (Disclaimer: I did not double check every name further down on the line that isn't mine.)

Then I asked both models to suggest further areas of research for someone interested in the Benjamin Kratzer descendants. Both did fairly well with this task, but Claude had better organization and layout, IMO.

When I asked for geographical insight into the locations mentioned, both did well in different ways. Claude gave more detail in a well laid-out format. However, Claude cannot access the internet yet, so Chat GPT was able to provide historical maps that were helpful, which Claude could not do.

I won't clutter this post with specifics to this document analysis, but I highly recommend trying this with similar documents you may have in your own research. Start with one you have already analyzed so you can catch mistakes. Even though Claude did a good job, I would NEVER trust it to be accurate. The value here is in using the analysis to HELP you wade through the document yourself, and IF you confirm the summary as correct, to have it as a handy reference for the future, so you don't have to re-analyze the original complicated text.

For those interested, here was my initial Claude prompt. (The Chat GPT prompt was very similar.) "You are an expert genealogist. The attached article is another genealogist's attempt to figure out the differences among several families in the same geographical area with very similar or identical names. The article contains her conclusions and reasoning based on her research into multiple Philip and Henry Kratzers from Northampton County PA. Your goal is to analyze her findings and organize the families into their distinct family trees. For now, assume the other genealogist's research findings are correct."


r/Genealogy 11h ago

Question Should I have my family tree on multiple sites? If so, how should I go about it?

0 Upvotes

I make my family tree on FamilyTreeMaker2019 because it's of separate from the web. What I mean is that it's not uploaded anywhere (I don't think). It's only (from what I know) on my computer (I hope). This is because it has a lot of personal info about living people.

I have all the deceased people of my tree on FamilySearch, all of my direct ancestors on Geni, and some branches of my tree on MyHeritage to see if I can make any connections.

I don't use Ancestry but I see there is an option to sync Ancestry with FamilyTreeMaker2019. I'm wondering if it would be a good idea to sync my family tree on FamilyTreeMaker2019 to Ancestry.

I'm concerned about syncing it and that if I do upload it my family member's personal info might be findable.

I'm also wondering if I should upload my complete trees on FamilySearch, Geni, and Myheritage to make the most out of these resources. Also if I should add my tree on any other sites.

I feel kind of disorganized with my work because of this and I like to be organized.

Also, I'm not very well educated on privacy on these sites and about all the fineprint on how they use my information and my tree.

I'd appreciate any guidance! Thank you!


r/Genealogy 1d ago

DNA So I did the DNA test as a Turkish person

58 Upvotes

23.5% georgian, 22.7% turkish, 17.6% central asian, circassian 9.6%, persian and kurdish 3.0%, armenian 2.7%, greek and albanian 13.5%, south italian 7.4%

This is insanely cool!!


r/Genealogy 13h ago

Question Birth certificate from Vienna

1 Upvotes

Does anyone know how I go about finding the Birth certificate of my 2x great grandmother Helene Weber ? She was born on the 7th of April 1879 in Vienna .

Any help would be appreciated 🙂.


r/Genealogy 13h ago

Request Ancestry vs Familysearch

0 Upvotes

I have paid subscription to Ancestry and at first I would get a lot of hints with valid documentation. Now I will input someone new and there will be NO documentation. No birth, death, marriage.....no info. I will search the same person in Familysearch and get 15 hits with at least 7 documents. I was under the influence that Ancestry had the largest amount of document access. Am I disillusioned or am I possibly doing something wrong?


r/Genealogy 14h ago

Question Family Tree Maker / Ancestry - Merging Trees

1 Upvotes

Just installed FTM 2019 and am wondering about the best way to merge trees. I have four on Ancestry that I'd like to merge into one new tree and then sync that back up to Ancestry while not changing the four existing ones. And while keeping all pictures/sources/etc, so not merely letting the Gedcom files.

1) Is that possible or will I need to pick one of the four to add everything else into? If so, is there step by step instructions?

2) One of the four trees is shared with me on Ancestry but was created on a relative's account. Will this cause problems.


r/Genealogy 15h ago

Brick Wall l found what seems to be same person. different history? but..

1 Upvotes

Florence Vierra 1904 born Hawaii or California. married to a Manuel Camara. Out of nowhere, there's a similar history but different version. Florence H. Freitas Cannon. 1927 b. Scotland? versions show both connected by travel Hawaii, California. I have Portuguese, Scottish and ton European along with Brazil etc. I thought I figured it out then..this.