Friday Finds – Week 8, 2026
Here are some articles I have read over the last week.
Norwegian genealogy, history, and culture will always be the heart of this blog. Friday Finds is where I step outside the “parish borders” for a moment and take in the wider landscape.
Here I share a handful of reads from across the genealogy world: new record releases, useful methods, fresh tools, and the occasional story that reminds us we’re all working on the same human puzzle — just with different archives and different languages.
1) Using Family Stories to Identify Ancestral Hometowns (Case Study) — Family Tree Magazine
Family stories aren’t just nostalgia—they can be hard evidence in disguise. This case study shows how small details from relatives can lead you to a specific ancestral hometown and unlock the next set of records.
Note: I couldn’t open the page directly (site access blocked from my side), but it shows up in Family Tree Magazine’s own listings and newsletter archives.
2) Using the AMS Maps to Compliment Your Genealogy Research
Published : February 12. 2026
The Army Map Service (AMS) published detailed maps of places all over the world. The Special Collections and Archives subdivision has approximately 20,000 of these maps depicting places within North America, South America, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Europe in different scales.
3) MyHeritage Adds 210 Million Historical Records in January 2026 — MyHeritage Blog
Published: February 2, 2026
Big record-release roundups are practical, skimmable, and actionable—especially for readers working across multiple regions. MyHeritage reports 210 million newly added/updated records from places including the U.S., U.K., France, Ireland, Sweden, and Brazil—spanning newspapers, vital records, church records, and more. Great for anyone doing “one more search” on a stubborn brick wall.
4) Using Custom Clusters to Find DNA Matches — Ancestry Blog
Published: 21 October 2025
This one is for anyone who’s ever opened a DNA match list, scrolled for thirty seconds, and thought: “Right… and now what?” Ancestry’s Custom Clusters (part of Pro Tools) groups your DNA matches into meaningful clusters—useful for quickly seeing which side of the family a match likely belongs to, and for building targeted research leads from shared match networks.
5) Hawaii digitizes 64 volumes of state records, publishes online with free public search tool — StateScoop
Published: February 2, 2026
A genuinely interesting digitization story—and a reminder that “genealogy records” aren’t only births, marriages, and deaths. Hawaii’s State Archives finished digitizing 64 volumes (genealogy, land, and court records) and put them online with a free public search tool—covering records from the early 1800s into the late 1900s. A good example of how archival modernization can open brand-new research paths.
A small weekend suggestion
If you only have time for one thing: read the case study (#1), then do the old-fashioned follow-up. Write down the family stories you’ve heard, who told them, and the details that repeat (place names, occupations, nicknames, “he came from…”). Those are often the breadcrumbs that point to the correct parish, the correct farm, or the correct county.
That’s it for this week—happy hunting, and may your next search be the one that finally turns up the missing piece.
