 |
Tips for the Beginning Genealogist
This page is for all of you who are starting out on your personal genealogy. This came from a research paper I did for a college English class. While I am in no way an expert on genealogical research, I have a friend who does genealogy for a living, and she looked this over and said it was accurate. Hope this helps...
If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail me. Just click on the button.
Finding the Family Tree:
How to Start and Where to go
When starting to research one's family, "the best source to use… is the people in your family" (Croom, 12). Someone in the family has a Bible with the family tree pages filled in with the names of parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. They will also have recorded birthdates, christenings, marriages, and deaths on those individuals.Someone else might have original documents such as birth certificates, marriage licenses, military discharge papers, or other official papers with vital information. Someone may have already done some work and filled in the blanks back several generations. Take this work and use it as a starting point for your research.
Another way to extract family data is to talk to relatives, old and young. Family stories can produce information on lost and distant relatives and former homes. Those distant relatives may have the next name or birth date that extends the research another three or four generations.
After scouring the family for the smallest scrap of data, the next step is researching local, regional, and national records. Sources can be found at local parishes and libraries, as well as official documents in stored at courthouses, city halls, and state and national archives. These places will provide a wide variety of reference material from which information may be extracted.
Many churches have congregational records with christening, baptismal, and marriage data. These records frequently have family information on them. If a religion has traveling pastors, tracking them down may prove beneficial, as they will sometimes carry the records of the ordinances they performed with them.
Local libraries are a good source of secondary sources (those that are copies or abstracts). Some will have extensive copies of books and research materials on hand to help in one's quest. Many have texts on genealogical research providing points of contact in neighboring and regional areas.
County and State registrars will generally have records on marriages, land titles and deeds, wills, and other useful information which contain names of family members and ancestors. They may also have business records, judicial proceedings, and voting records with vital statistics available. This will be a long and tedious process, but if the family is a long-time resident in the area, it could prove to be a gold mine of information.
Once the local sources are depleted of information, the ultimate source of hard copy information is the National Archives in Washington, DC. The Archive sources include population census records dating from 1790, more land records, naturalization records, ship passenger lists, and military service and pension records to name a few. For many, this source may seem out of reach due to the distance between themselves and the Archives, but this is not the case. The LDS Family History Centers have microfilmed indices of the various records available, and they are happy to help order the appropriate films with the detailed information.
If time is a rare commodity, or if one prefers to see what others have done, the electronic route may be a better path to follow. With the storage capacity of the CD-ROM, "(m)any genealogy programs are available which can link related individuals into family groups, [provide] vital statistics… and print (reports)" (Croom 103). With this in mind, some of the more popular resources are commercial software, the Internet, and the LDS Family History Centers.
For the person who wants to stay at home, there are numerous software programs available to help the genealogist, rookie and professional alike. Some of the more advanced, Windows-based applications, such as Family Tree Maker Deluxe Edition III and Generations Deluxe, boast extensive databases with over 50 million names stored on CD-ROM for the user to search. These applications start at around $50 and require a more advanced personal computer to run. Many of these programs also allow Internet access through their websites to other sources; some allow individuals to create websites with their files for others to view.
The Internet is the newest repository for genealogical information. The LDS official cited in Fidel's article said "surveys show 20 percent of the content of the Internet relates to genealogy." Various organizations and many individuals have posted their information on the Web. The best way to find pertinent information is to utilize the various search engines using the keyword "genealogy," then using those pages to find the appropriate surnames.
When one is ready to leave the home, the LDS Church has produced what many consider the most extensive genealogical database available. The LDS Family History Library has been collecting data from private and public sources around the world since 1894. A Church official recently reported that "(e)xtraction projects had now produced records for more than 300 million individuals" (Nelson). They have placed a compilation of this information in the LDS Family History Centers, with over 3,000 centers scattered worldwide. Those centers utilize a computer application called Family Search to allow people, members and non-members alike, to search the records for possible leads. The two most utilized aspects of Family Search are the Ancestral File and the International Genealogical Index (IGI), programs within the program to help focus the search.
The Ancestral File is a database of records submitted by members of the LDS church showing the results of their research with the ancestors linked accordingly. Anyone fortunate enough to have an ancestor found in this database may find their research completed back to the 16th century or beyond.
The IGI is a database of the records processed and stored at the LDS Family History Library in Utah. These records may or may not have individuals linked as families. This information has been compiled from regional and national records when microfilming of this information is granted by the appropriate officials. The aforementioned Church official reported this "has been done in 110 countries, accumulating more than 2 billion exposures with approximately 13 billion names" (Nelson). The Library is in a continuing process of extracting those names for inclusion in the IGI.
Also available under Family Search are the Social Security death index and the military death index for the Korean and Vietnam Wars. These indices are records compiled by the appropriate agencies and made available through the National Archives.
Works Cited
|
