Diane Southard spoke these words at the 2019 RootsTech in a presentation: “We’re all made up of all of us.” Stop and think about that for a second. I think she means that as we genealogists research our ancestors, we want to know about them because we recognize that we come from them. They are a part of us yet.

Since about half the U.S. population in the 19th century was from the British Isles (England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales) it follows that as we’re successful in our research, we will likely get back to having British Isles ancestry. They made a good half of us.

Which brings me to www.findmypast.com. “Findmypast is the ultimate destination for British and Irish family history with unrivaled records…” It was announced at RootsTech 2019 that “over the past year, we’ve added millions of new pages to the British Newspaper Archive, reaching all the way back to 1709…”

Findmypast has twice the Irish records of any other site; the largest online collection of UK parish records; British military records; Migration records you won’t find anywhere else. Their new offering is The Catholic Heritage Archive “making available records from the Roman Catholic Church across the US and Britain that have never been publicly available.”

Think you might ought to click to www.findmypast.com and take a looksee?