5 More Ways to Start a Genealogy Research Project
by Rich Hill
As described in the first part of this series of four articles these are
good procedures to follow, step by step, in order to be able to document
and prove your ancestral line. These methods might seem a little boring to
start with but if you do not do each recommended procedure you will
definitely miss crucial details that will be able to prove your
connection.
Continuing from article 1...
6 - In some of the previous documents that you accumulated at the start
you will have located some obituaries and death notices. Visit the
cemeteries where you know that some of your ancestors are buried and
record the stones of the known people of interest and also record the
names and dates of the people that are buried immediately adjacent to
them. Chances are you will later find that they are related. The cemetery
office or sexton will also have more detailed information than what is on
the stone, or a stone might be lacking but they would have the burial
information. The official burial record books will have data that is
certainly not on the gravestone such as who paid for the burial and other
facts that you will find no where else.
7 - After you discover the death dates then find the newspaper obituaries
because they might give additional information on other family member's
names. Newspapers are one of the very best sources of clues that you have
access to. Do not take everything at face value as newspapers are filled
with inaccuracies, but use these obits, and death notices, marriage
announcements and birth announcements to gain dates and names and
locations that will lead you to other resources that will help you prove
or disprove these pieces of data. Check with the funeral homes also if
they are still in business. Some times you will find the records of a
closed funeral home business at another company in the area. Make phone
calls and ask questions to find these.
8 - After you have recorded a few weeks of data, go back and interview the
relatives that you had visited with before. They will no doubt have
remembered more details to tell you, and when you arrive and show them
what you have accomplished to date it will no doubt jog their memory and
you will come up with some brand new clues. Always ask if they might have
any old family bibles, diaries, family records, old letters, family
photographs, etc., that you might be able to copy. These will lead you to
many more details that will help to confirm relationships. This is one of
the steps that most novice genealogists skip over and you should not pass
up this most excellent opportunity. It never fails that when you go back
to visit your great aunt or some such elderly person, they will be so
happy to see you and they will always tell you something like, "I was
going to call you..." because they remembered something in the mean time.
Of course they never do call so it is up to you to go back and jog their
memory. Besides, you will brighten their day with each visit.
9 - There are many thousands of free websites that you will be able to get
information from on the Internet. If you get serious about this endeavor
you might also want to subscribe to some of the paid subscription sites
where you can get actual census details online. Some of the best paid
sites are ancestry, footnote and genealogy bank. They all have different
resources and most of them usually have a free trial period to see if it
is what you want.
10 - The free genealogy websites that I refer to are: familysearch org
(the Mormon website,) cyndislist, mapquest, rootsweb, USGenWeb org (going
down to the basic county Genweb pages will be most helpful) Oh and the
very best free genealogy website to use is Google! You will be amazed at
how many clues and bits and pieces you will find on your own family
history information using Google. Learn how to do Boolean searches and
narrow your searches down to person's names, locations and dates. There is
an amazing amount of material already indexed on Google. Also do your
searches at books.google because there are now millions of rare local
histories and genealogy books that have been digitized and are readable
online for free.
