Growing a Top-Notch Family Tree: With Stories from its Branches

This two-part nonfiction book gives advice to genealogists about specific steps to take to grow a great family tree online, with details about what to do and what to avoid to have the best possible tree for current family, future generations and the wider community to enjoy. It includes details about three different online sites, Ancestry, FamilySearch and MyHeritage. It also discusses the importance of DNA testing and DNA matching with relatives to help you verify your findings.

The second half of the book shares interesting stories about family tree members, including famous ones like Mayflower passenger Stephen Hopkins, colorful characters from the Stewart/Stuart family of Scotland, and "troublesome" women relatives like Elizabeth Woodville of England, Elizabeth Hutchinson, from Massachusetts, and fancy dresser Thomasine Boyes, a British immigrant to Massachusetts and wife of Rev. Francis Johnson, a popular Puritan minister. Stories are told about great-grandfather Hall Deland, a key figure in the Underground Railroad in Michigan, along with a great-grandfather who got rich buying slaves and working them on his Louisiana plantation. Some stories are funny, such as one about a relative's embarrassing encounter with Puritan ethics, while others are quite sad, such as the chapter about six generations of sad endings among Zealand relatives.

This book is designed to be both educational and entertaining for anyone interested in genealogy, be they new to the subject or an experienced master.