Almost two years ago, in July 2015, I wrote a post which turned out to be quite popular. The topic was actually visiting blog websites – not just reading through feedly or some other aggregator – and checking out the additional information found in tabs.

I realized that I was missing out on all kinds of extra information – links to genealogy resources, others’ family trees (and they turned out to be cousins) and educational information links. I learned quite a bit while blog surfing.

The first time around, I chose to highlight only those bloggers who were not also professional researchers. The blogs I visited included: Nutfield Genealogy, Finding Lost Russian and Ukrainian Family, Genea-Musings, Jana’s Genealogy and Family History Blog, One Rhode Island Family, Celebrating Family Stories, Granite Genealogy, Julie’s Genealogy and History Hub and, the lone business-oriented site because it’s about DNA, DNAeXplained-Genetic Genealogy.

As I did some spring cleaning of my own on this blog site, I decided to take another look around some of the many blogs I follow. Many do not have toolboxes with resources, but they do have surname lists and stories which are definitely worth checking out.

Here are a few blogs that have more extensive toolbox tips that I’d like to share this year:

1. Collecting Cousins – Mary Ann’s home page greets the reader with multiple resources links to check out, neatly divided into topic, state and country. There is another link to genealogical forms and how-to’s.
2. Cow Hampshire – Janice A. Brown’s roots go to New Hampshire, hence her blog name. There are links to SearchRoots, which gives tons of New Hampshire resources. I found in my own research that there aren’t tons of easily found New Hampshire records online so if you have NH roots, be sure to visit here. She also has links to lots of genealogy and history sites.
3. Genealogy à la Carte – Gail Dever created her toolbox links after my 2015 post. She went one step further and even created an ever-growing list of Canadian genealogy groups on Facebook. Gail also has a robust list of tools for those with Canadian roots.
4. Do you have Jewish/Eastern European roots? If so, be sure to visit Lara’s Jewnealogy. She has links to locating records, DNA tips and summaries of past IAJGS conferences.
5. Rosie’s My Danish Ancestors is the place to go if you need ideas for Danish research. There are multiple links to resources and websites that can help answer your Danish research questions and show you how to access the records.
6. Last, but not least, I will include my own Empty Branches on this list, as I’ve spent a week updating almost every tab of links located just below the header photo. The new addition is Genea-Tech Toys, with links to most of the tools you might want to use for your 21st century research. I hope you will take a moment and check out the changes.

I have to issue a challenge to all of you bloggers who don’t have research toolboxes set up on your sites yet. How about it? I find myself drawn into the bloggers who have some of the “extras” to share. It’s like a free lesson in how to do “whatever” in genealogy.

If your blog has a toolbox and I haven’t mentioned your site in 2015 or this time around, please leave a comment. I didn’t check all 200+ blogs that I follow, but it took quite a bit of hunting to find the six new sites I focused on this year. Although several of the bloggers listed above give presentations, I tried to spotlight those who weren’t overtly professionals selling products.

There are tons of those sites online and they also have some great toolbox links, but it’s nice to recognize the littler guys.