Genlighten is a blog run by Dean Richardson and its attached to his website that deals in helping with Illinois genealogy documents and their goal is to help with documents all over the US and Canada and beyond. Genlighten connects genealogists looking for source documents with local researchers who can retrieve them -- quickly and conveniently. If you need marriage licenses, probate records or cemetery transcriptions, and don't want to travel hundreds of miles to get them, they are eager to help!

Gena-Musings by Randy Seaver, He includes everything from product reviews, book reports, tips and tricks to benefit us all and thoughts and happenings on his own research. Thanks to him I have found a new fiction author that I love!!!

Next up is The Genealogue. Where Chris comes up with some of the things he posts on here I will never know, but if you have a sense of humor that is definitely a blog to have bookmarked.

Now we have Janice Brown's Cow Hampshire. Her blog is centered around research and happenings in New Hampshire, and while the research bits dont apply to me, she has a great wit and her humorous entries make it will worth the visit for me.

And last (but not least and there will be more to come in the future) we have Stephanie Linecum's Southern Graves Blog
In her words "SouthernGraves.i-found-it.net is your online guide to the history, the research, and the preservation of cemeteries in the Southern United States. Genealogists,
Historians, and the Curious are most welcome! It is an ambitious undertaking (no pun intended), but one I am eager to tackle. This companion blog will keep you updated on the
progress and findings of my southern cemetery research". She is great about keeping up with endangered cemeteries.

WEBSITES

Most any of us that research know about the "big" sites so I am not going to bother listing their benefits here. This is for smaller sites that you might
not know about.

First is my own site (I hope you will forgive my indulgence) I run both a blog Ancestrally Challenged and as a companion to that, I run a Genealogy Forum because my passion for research is so great I cannot get enough just working on my own families.
We have a great group of members with LOTS of resources and ideas that love to help other people. You do not have to register to read the board, but in order
to post you do (all that is required is setting up a username and password).

We have many interesting stories such as a write up on the Spanish Flu, the great potato famine, the kentucky blue people, the "real" story of Cold Mountain, my cousin
wrote the book and WP Inman was my 3rd great grandfathers brother, and a great interview I did with Joe Mullins from the National Center of Missing and Exploited
Children, who was the facial reconstructionist on the William White case (known as the "boy in the iron coffin".

Random Acts of Genealogy Kindness is a site I have been involved with for quite awhile. Its a site where you can, by state, find volunteers that do all sorts of look ups for other people in the areas they live in..only asking in return in some cases, reimbursments for fees they may incur (copying, postage, parking fees etc). So, if you're needing some assistance in another state make sure to check them out!!

Penn People Genealogy Group This is a yahoo group run by our AS member P.A. This site is YOUR site!...created for all genealogists, from the novice to the expert...where many walls have been knocked down, new cousins meet, and friendships are made. They host members from all over the world: almost every U.S. state, Australia, Canada, China, Japan, Kosovo, South Korea, and United Kingdom. We have many members who volunteer to look up info in the resources they have, or where they live.

They currently have over 1,700 FREE links from many U.S. states and from other countries, including but not limited to: cemeteries, funeral homes, historical societies, libraries, military, newspapers. Almost all of these links were submitted by members themselves that they found useful for their own research.

New links are being submitted all the time. Any useful info or links you submit may be added to our site and you will be given the credit.

Feel free to ask for help, jump in the hunt helping others, offer advice and suggestions...post any info you think would be helpful to others...any and all help will be greatly appreciated. Post the surnames you are looking for...your surnames will be added to the database for all to view.

We currently have over 900 surnames in our database. The home page picture is changed every Wednesday, and are usually pictures from members themselves. If you would like to see a picture of your rellie posted for the week (then later added to our "Members" photo album), all you need to do is send your picture(s) to me, once you become a member.

When sending a request to join this group, P.A. will send a follow-up e-mail for you to answer a few questions, so be sure to answer it and send it back to me, otherwise you will not be approved for membership. At times, they get somewhat busy, and if you do not want 30 or more e-mails from this group every day, you can opt for the digest mode, special notices, or no e-mail. Spamming will not be tolerated and will be cause for removal.

Genealogy Today is an interesting site run by Illya D'Addezio called, and while I have not found any information about my own family (which is par for the course, my families do not show up anywhere!) They DO have a lot of interesting things. Over 4,090 sources including Masonic lodge rosters, funeral notices, school catalogues, yearbooks, telephone directories, church member lists and more. One thing to note, this is a subscription fee site

GenDisasters is a really cool site that genealogy site that compiles information on the historic disasters, events, and tragic accidents our ancestors endured, as well as, information about their life and death.

Dead Fred is a great site to look it. Its a a free, fun photo genealogy research web site devoted to helping you visualize your heritage! MANY MANY MANY photos on there to look at and help identify.

Surname Suggestor List is a free program you can download that is really pretty cool. I dont know how many of us have sat using the search on Heritage Quest or Ancestry only to get frustrated because the name doesn't come up in searches, and then eventually we find that its because of how it was transcribed. This program gives you some different ways of spelling the name to try in a search.

I hope if you didnt know about some of these (and yes I will add to the list as I find interesting sites I want to pass along) that you will check them out!

If you know of an interesting blog/or site that deserves a shout out on AncestralSpace send me a message and let me know!!!

Shannon