This web site is a place to learn about researching your family roots, particularly Jewish family roots. While many of the articles on this web site apply equally to people of all origins, almost all posts will focus on the issues applicable to those researching Jewish family members. The goal of this site is to educate those interested in finding out about their family history about the resources available and the techniques that are useful in doing research.
If you're new to the site, I highly recommend checking out older articles which can help you get started.
If you would like to stay informed of new articles and resources here at B&F, there are a number of ways to follow the site. You can always go to the Follow This Blog tab at the top of the page to find out about the different ways to follow this blog, including Facebook, Twitter, E-mail, Google Friend Connect and RSS feeds.
Many articles are intended to introduce you to resources available online, and explain how to best use them. Some popular articles of this type include:
Jewish Genealogy Basics: The JewishGen Family Finder (JGFF)
Jewish Genealogy Basics: Mailing Lists
Jewish Genealogy Basics: Ancestral Town (Shtetl) Information
Genealogy Basics: Historical Newspapers
Using FindAGrave to...
Preserving Photographic Prints, Slides and Negatives
In addition to the articles, there are other resources available on the site that are meant to help you in your research. These other resources generally have their own pages with tabs in the menu at the top of the page that link to them.
First, there are PDF forms that are useful for getting started in your genealogy. These forms will help you collect information on your family, and can be sent to other family members so they can fill them out and return them to you. For more information, see the Forms page.
Second, there is a search engine that gives enhanced results for genealogy searches. It does this by focusing on the web sites that are most likely to have information of interest to the genealogy researcher. To try it out, see the Search page.
A common quest for people researching family in the United States is finding where overseas their family originated. This is sometimes easy, but frequently difficult. One of the best ways to find out where a family member came from is to find their Naturalization papers. Finding Naturalization papers themselves, however, can be difficult, and the Naturalizations page helps guide through some of the resources available for this task.
If you have any questions about the site, would like information on specific resources, or would like to find out more information on one of the articles, please be in touch. For information on something in a specific article I recommend leaving a comment so everyone reading the article can see my response. If it's not specific to an article, I can be reached via e-mail at bloodandfrogs@gmail.com and I try to respond to every e-mail. Please include in your e-mail how you found this site.
If you like this site and want to help spread the word, one easy way to do that is to press the Google +1 button here
Thank you,
Philip Trauring
Author, Blood and Frogs: Jewish Genealogy and More
