Wednesday, March 17, 2010
More FAmily Genealogy
Yesterday I had a great time in Ohio with Mom and Grandma. Grandma was able to set me straight on a couple family ancestors and told me stories for over an hour about relatives I didn't even know we had. She has even started me on a new line of ancestry; she was really into talking about family history. If anyone has any advice on how I can pursue family history through any kinds of records, I'm open to them.
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I should think Ed Abbey's the guy.
ReplyDeleteCheers.
Well the first thing I did was get an account at Ancestry. This is a good site that allows you to trace your family fairly easy back to 1850 via census records. They also have a wide array of vital records and hundreds of thousands if not millions of family trees built by other people. Do however take the family trees built by others with a grain of salt as most are simply built on the backs of a few actual researches and lots of people who are simply putting people together as ancestors without any proof what-so-ever. However, they can provide clues for starting in a direction and as often as I find something incorrect, I find a lot more that is correct.
ReplyDeleteBefore 1850, census records went from naming everyone in the household to only the head of the household which makes using them much more speculative.
Ancestry is a subscription based service but there are free sources out there such as Family Search. However, most don't give you visual access to the census records and only transcribed records which are even full transcriptions of the record. There are a lot of nuggets in those records that aren't transcribed. Other good free sites are Rootsweb and Cindi's List. Another excellent subscription site that allows you access to hundreds of thousands of historical newspapers where you can get the inside story of your family and really flesh out their history is Newspaper Archive. I've literally found hundreds of articles on my ancestors in there and have only searched for a small fraction of them.
When you get back to the early 1800's, the real clue hunt begins. This is where I'm at. You have to start searching for records that can't be found online for any price. You either have to start traveling to courthouses and libraries where your ancestors lived or frequent a Mormon Family History Center near you where you can request microfilm of courthouse and other records for a nominal fee.
Lastly, I would invest in a good genealogy program, most of which are very reasonably priced, to keep track and organize all that you find. I would also keep a tree online on one of the previously mentioned sites for any future generation of your family to perhaps find someday.
Feel free to send me an email if you have questions. I'm an only a beginner but I'll help you if I can. My email is linked on my blog sidebar. Good luck!
Thanks bunches Ed .... I'm sure I'll be taking you up on your generosity!
ReplyDeleteDid I hear you say your Grandma? Wow!
ReplyDeleteAs for your question, I would have answered like Randall!
Yah .... my grandma is 96, and aside from physical ailments, she has an ultra sharp mind. Matter of fact, my mom called yesterday to tell me Grandma had searched for family info long forgotten since she knew I was gathering family history, and found, BELIEVE THIS, a book of speaking about family lineage [over 350pgs] on her mother's side .............. can hardly wait to get there next week and get my grubby hands on that one.
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