Hello Reader!

I hope your holidays have been full of all the best things!

I'm inviting you to two new genealogy offerings and I hope you can participate in one of them. You'll also find a re-cap of the most read articles on PAancestors.com in case you missed them.

Discover Your Ancestors January Workshop

If one of your goals in 2024 is to finally find your Pennsylvania ancestors, I am now offering a hands-on workshop that will help you do just that. You will work through a four part process - Assess, Strategize, Collaborate, Share - in a community of other genealogists. We will meet on Zoom and you'll be actively working on your research for about 10 hours a week for 3 weeks. Sound good?

I'm offering newsletter subscribers 50% off the January workshop with the code JAN2024 (good until January 5th). Get the full details and sign-up at Discover Your Ancestors.

New 10 Day Writing Challenge

One of my goals in 2024 is to finally write about my ancestors in an interesting way. In conversations, I learned I am not the only one who has been procrastinating on this!

I've set up a free writing challenge for January 1st-10th, called 10 Days of Chronicles. We will write and publish together in a quick sprint and support each other.

I will be doing this challenge along with you! If you would like to participate, just click the button below to join. You'll get an email with the details of what's next.

To learn more about the challenge - and why I'm calling it "chronicles" instead of "genealogy" or "family history", here are my quick notes on it.

Join the January Writing Challenge

My plan for 2024 is to repeat this writing challenge for the first 10 days of each month of the year. So if you can not do January, let me know, and I'll put you on the list for February 1st-10th.

Best of 2023

As a newsletter subscriber, I'd thought you'd enjoy a "Best of 2023" list for the most read articles on PAancestors.com. Here they are in order, starting with most popular:

The Easy Way to Find Deeds in PA

Whether you call it land, property, or real estate, deeds are the documents that shows of ownership of land. In Pennsylvania, all deeds are found at the county Recorder of Deeds office. Here's the easy way to find deed records in PA counties.

Three Steps to Find Pennsylvania Marriage Licenses

Pennsylvania began issuing marriage licenses in 1885 and these public records are not all online. Here's a 3 step process for locating marriage licenses starting online and ending at the county courthouse.

Updates from the Pennsylvania State Archives

Ongoing updates on the construction of the new Pennsylvania State Archives building in Harrisburg, PA and new ways to access genealogy records. (The Archives is finally open as of December 13th!)

Pennsylvania's Ship Building History

Most people don't think of Pennsylvania as being a center of ship building. Philadelphia and Erie were known as ship building centers of the United States. The United States Navy built vessels in both Pennsylvania cities from the country's early days.

40 Questions to Preserve Your Family History

It’s the beginning of the holiday season and time to get together with family. Here are 40 questions you can ask parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins to collect your family history.

I hope to see you at the Discover Your Ancestors Workshop or in the January 10 Days of Chronicles Challenge! I'm making 2024 the best year yet for genealogy!

Let's discover our Pennsylvania ancestors together,