My Trails into the Past

Because I teach beginning genealogy classes at local genealogical societies and adult school, I was very interested in Drew Smith’s new book on basic genealogy research called Generation by Generation: a Modern Approach to the Basics of Genealogy (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 2023). [1] This slim letter-sized volume of 170 pages will not overwhelm a beginning genealogist. Smith’s approach to the subject is novel. Instead of dividing the book by different genealogical record groups, he instead covered records by those that help most in different time periods. The book is divided by two parts: part I covers basics about genealogical research and part II covers different time periods: after 1950 1980-1950 1850-1880 1776-1850 Colonial America and then records found outside of the U.S., and those foreign language records. The first part of the book helps build a solid foundation in research practices. Many of the topics in chapters 1, 2, 4, and 7 are covered in early cha...