Ancestors in the Attic: episode 2025

I enjoyed this episode which threw the spotlight on two out-of-the-ordinary genealogical sources.

For those with Icelandic ancestry most of the work seems to have been done, in large part because of the existence of good census records back 300 years. The story built up to justify the genealogical search, although a bit far fetched, did serve well to illustrate the sources available.

The second story illuminated a unique Canadian source, the Tweedmuir History Books. The web page here gives the background on these local histories compiled by Women's Institute branches. If you run into a genealogical roadblock, and the family is thought to have been in a community for some while, its often worth going after a local history, like a Tweedsmuir.

Finally the panel demonstrated tracing an ancestry back to establish Loyalist ancestry. I liked the fact that the search used a variety of sources. It demonstrated evaluating the likely reliability of conflicting records, so justifying ignoring data provided by an uninformed source.