So, if you've spent time trying to track down your families history, you probably already know that it isn't always easy and it isn't always quick. Fortunately, there are a lot of good resources that you can turn to if you want to fill in the blanks on your own personal family tree. There are also A LOT of dead end resources, paid prescription only ancestry sites with a lock down on YOUR families history, and tons of speculative and conflicting resources. The goal of this post is to offer a few tips and tricks that may make it easier for you to begin your genealogical journey. Feel free to add if you have any tips or tricks to share!
1. Citing your resources is key! I've done hundreds of hours of research and literally combed over countless resources, and a big mistake that I've made in the past is not citing my resources. First off, citing your resources is giving credit where credit is due. Secondly, citing your resources leaves you with a breadcrumb trail back to your sources.
2. Building off the first point, always SAVE and catalogue your resources. Make a file folder on your desktop, create a word doc. and back it up to the cloud, etc. This is a good rule for any resource including pictures, census records, land deeds, etc. You are not likely going to find that perfect record that works it all out for you. What you're more likely to find is that you are going to have to build up the picture on your own with bits and bits of information gleaned from a vast number of sources! The internet is a dynamic landscape! A document that you find easily one day with that key piece of vital information may be gone the next. A working link one day may be broken the next.
3. If it seems even remotely related, keep it. You will find as many misleading or inaccurate file sources as you will good one's, and you will most certainly find information in odd or unexpected places. Point being, save sources that could be related to your work even if you think they likely aren't. As your genealogical journey progresses, you're likely going to discard some possible links but find that others that seemed unlikely are good. It's usually easier to weed out and delete unrelated resources once you have a good stock of information on hand than it is to go back and find that one remote resource that had that one important clue.
4. Know your resources and use them! There are already tons of sites that are not only credible but which also are dedicated to genealogical study. The chances are pretty darn good that someone out there has already worked out their family tree and done some pretty stellar work that will aid in your own research. There a number of these sites and they are a great place to start if you're interested in starting your own genealogical research. These include but certainly are not limited to:
www.findagrave.com
www.wikitree.com
www.familysearch.org
www.fultonhistory.com
Local Libraries are also often great sources of genealogical information and contain sections related to local genealogy or other archives.
If you are lucky, YOUR NUMBER ONE SOURCE of information is your family. Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, family bibles, saved newspaper clippings, obituaries, etc. are a great place to start even if you feel like you know what you need to begin your research. I regret the lost opportunities to gain information from some of the older members of my extended family.
5. Verify your information across multiple sources where you can! Don't necessarily accept all of the information you find in one source or tree. Try to find other sources which support the information and familial connections, particularly when taking your information from another persons family tree because these is always the potential for error that could set you on the wrong path.
6. Genealogical discussion forums can be great places for information. They may be hard to wade through, but they often contain some really great and even obscure information. Don't be afraid to reach out to the authors of these forums as well!
7. Paid Subscription sites can be useful, but they are not necessary! I spent months researching before relying on these types of sites, and once I did subscribe to sites like ancestry.com I was surprised to find NOTHING that I had not already found for free before subscribing. There are tons of frees sources that existed before sites like ancestry began locking genealogical information down under a subscription and there are tons of people publishing their research online, so if you are willing to put the time in know that you can find the information you want without a pricey subscription. That being said, sites like ancestry can be a convenient and quick source of genealogical information if you have more money than time for research. Genealogy can be VERY time consuming and it can take months or more to find the information you want even if you are a strong researcher.
Here are some things to keep in mind while doing your research:
1. You may need to start out being relatively general with your search queries. Being too specific in your search inquiries may limit your result pool drastically and weed-out some potentially very useful results. For example, rather than searching "John Smith born 1905 and died 1970 in Fayette County, Kentucky" try something more general like "John Smith 1970 and Kentucky". Historical records, even government ones like the census or draft cards, may have inaccurate or incomplete data so using too specific a search may prevent results that you need.
2. Searching for date ranges is generally more useful than searching for specific dates. At some point, you're going to find that different sites and sources record different dates for critical events in any deceased figures life. For example, my paternal grandfathers date of birth is usually recorded in 1930 but some sources indicate a 1932 birth. When searching using dates, you can often benefit from searching date ranges. I recommend searching a date range of at least 2 +/- years off of the date you expect is most accurate. For example, I would use a date range of at least 1928 to 1932 for my grandfather. Sometimes a bigger range is needed the farther you move back in time and you may want a range of 5 +/- years or so.
3. Take any and all information with a grain of salt. Even government records like draft registration forms and census rolls can and often will be inaccurate. The older the information, the more likely in general that it will contain errors.
Specifically when dealing with Census Records, consider dates, name spellings, state of birth, and even race and ethnicity as useful guideposts but not carved-in-stone guaranteed to be accurate. Birth years, ages, and state of birth is often inaccurate. This information can still be great for making family links, but what you find in the census may not completely match what you find in other sources. Census records may also indicate that the individual was born in the state the census was taken in. Don't necessarily disregard records that have mismatches in this type of information, because there's a fair degree of likelihood of inaccuracy in census records.
4. Depending on the region, you may run into the problem of having multiple individuals with the same or similar names in the same locality during the same time period. Comparing family member names is useful to isolating the record you want, but the frequent use of some names can make this difficult and you might find that someone in the past has mistakenly confused two (or more) individuals records. You will likely find records that essentially merge the information of multiple individuals. For example, John Smith b. 1873 in Washington, D.C. might easily be confused with John Smith b. 1877 in Washington, D.C. You might find information that combines the records of the two, so be aware of this. While doing my research, I early on located records which gave a vast amount of information for the supposed family member I was looking for. It provided parent, sibling, and descendant information and more and seemed like a gold mine! What I soon learned though was that there were several James Roberts living in the same general area at the time and the information that I found was put together by someone who had mistakenly combined the information of about three of these individuals. If you start to notice that there are multiple similarly aged and named individuals recorded as living in the same general area as the relative you are researching, keep this in mind and be very discerning.
5. Keep in mind any connected individuals when doing your research. If you can't find the information you want by searching for a member of your direct line, try searching for related individuals (you'll likely be doing this at some point while building your family tree anyway). If you can't find "John Smith 1870 Washington" try searching for a sibling, cousin, aunt/uncle, if you have this information. Some individuals will have a lot of information available, while others not so much.
6. In my experience, it's easier to find information when searching with year of death as opposed to birth year. It is also generally more useful to search for women using their married names as opposed to their maiden names or by focusing the search on a male relative. Unfortunately, there doesn't always appear to have been the same focus on recording the information of women as you would generally see placed on their male counterparts. Including Middle Names in searches can sometimes be useful, but it can also be limiting and cause you to miss records that you need. Try searching with the first and last name first and take note of any middle names or initials you uncover, as these can be useful to eliminating any invalid but close matches later on.
7. Do not necessarily rely on social securities numbers as an accurate indicator of where an ancestor was born. It may sound surprising, but you will start to uncover indexes of deceased individuals SSN's at some point as certain types of information become public within so many years of an individuals death. If I remember correctly, social security numbers were introduced during the 1950's. In my experience, people born before the advent of the social security number system often ended up with a social security number indicating the state they lived in at the time rather than the state they were born in. These numbers can be misleading.
8. If you are researching an ancestor who you know or believe to have been Native-American, you may want to check rolls specific to documenting Native-American populations in addition to records like the census. The Baker Rolls are an example of this but there are other census-type rolls that specifically document Native-American peoples.
I hope this is helpful to helping some of you in starting or continuing along your genealogical journey! If you have any questions, please feel free to comment on this post or the site. You can also reach out to me at kentuckyroberts@gmail.com and I will attempt to reach out to you as soon as possible. If you have any tips or tricks that you feel would be helpful to helping others, feel free to comment!