Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective explores the history of toques and top hats, bowlers, and bonnets to add another dimension to understanding your family photographs. Fanciful, frilly, and fascinating, women’s hats made a fashion statement. There were hundreds of choices available each season. And they came with names like Leghorns, Gainsborough’s, poke bonnets, and wide-awakes. Home factories produced trim and hats for milliners, while enterprising women raised small birds destined to be stuffed for hat adornments. Men’s hats could be utilitarian.

Author: David Watson Kruger
Published: September 2012

Our military expert will show you how to use the 1890 Veterans Schedules and the 1910 and 1930 U.S. Censuses to determine on which side your ancestor fought. Then examine records for the U.S. Army, Confederate Army, and U.S. Navy and Marine Corps by using the Compiled Military Service Records (CMSRs) and the National Park Service’s Soldiers and Sailors Database.

From discovering their ethnicity to connecting with distant relatives, the largest DNA network in the world is helping more people find the singular story in their DNA. Yours is just as unique, revealing traces of your family history—who your ancestors were and where they came from.

- Winner of the 2023 Connecticut Society of Genealogists Literary Awards -

Author: David Allen Lambert
Published: July 2020 (print ed. 2018)

Print edition available here