ROOTS & BRANCHES

Michael John Neill and I met some years ago when we were both serving on the board of the now-defunct Federation of Genealogical Societies, the defunctness of which should be a reflection of neither of us.

We became Facebook Friends and seem to have a similar sense of humor and I guess because I hit the Like button so often on his posts—Facebook often sees fit to place his “Genealogy Tip of the Day” posts at the top of my feed.

Which brings us to Neill’s “Genealogy Tip of the Day” posts.

Simply put: They are gems.

As he writes in his new compilation of tips first posted between 2008 and 2012, cleverly titled Genealogy Tip of the Day (self-published, 276 pages, $25), the tips were “never meant to provide comprehensive coverage of a topic and each day’s tip is meant to be short and readable in no more than a few minutes.”

Neill went through the originally posted tips before publication and pulled out ones that were dated.

A few of the tips are purely entertaining but nearly all are thought provoking. Some examples from the book:

• “Do You Need to Insert Some ‘Sicness’ in Your Transcriptions?” Remember when transcribing any document, items should be copied as they are written—wrong or not. If you seen an obvious error, you may wish to insert [sic] after it to indicate that the mistake was not yours.
• “Remember the Lines” Do you know where the lines are? The county line, the property line, the village line? If you aren’t aware of where the various lines are located, are you certain you are looking in the right place? And remember that the lines can change, especially when in a region newly settled.
• “Never Stop Learning” The day you decide your genealogical skills don’t need tweaking is the day you probably should take up a new hobby. All of us involved in genealogy should be learning something every day. Becoming a better genealogist is a daily process of growth.

I’ll admit that once Neill’s book arrived, I couldn’t stop reading it. Some tips had me nodding along with similar experiences I’ve had personally while others made a light bulb go on for the first time!

But I’d really recommend that Genealogy Tip of the Day be savored instead of devoured. Read one as part of your wake up drill every morning—kind of like a “Word a Day” calendar!

 To order Neill’s book, readers may use this URL:

And if you like what you read, you can sign up to have the tips delivered to your e-mail by going to this URL: