by Margaret Sherman Lutzvick
Have you ever felt like you are hitting a brick wall
in beginning your family research, and you just do not know where to start? This page
tries to help get you through those first steps of genealogical inquiry by pointing you to
some important research entities, and by giving you some practical advice based upon
experiences that we have all had.
While I do not pretend to have all of the answers - because I don't - I really do take
each request seriously, and do make some attempt to help find a missing ancestor.
Sometimes I am able to help and sometimes not. But, generally, what I do find is that most
people requesting information have a couple of things in common; they are mostly beginners
serious in their quests for information about their family and/or may be starting with incorrect
information that they have forever "tracked." Because I and everyone else was
in the same situation at one time or another, there is much sympathy for those just
starting out. Consequently, a very broad and generic list of things to do in beginning
family research has been developed, and it is as follows.
1. Do not go solely on family tales such as, "Grandmother said that we descended
from General William Tecumseh Sherman."
You must identify the oldest family
member, e.g., great-great grandfather or great-great grandmother, as far back as possible
by proven dates of birth, death, marriage, location, or anything else that you
can find written. This can be accomplished through immediate family documents such as
bible records, birth or death certificates, wills, property deeds, etc. Chances
are you will find pieces of or much on your ancestry on some great family
history sites on the Internet. But you must still document and prove it for
yourself if there is no Internet documentation.
2. Prepare a generic information request form letter to send to the identified
counties
or states of where you think or know that your ancestor at some time or another lived.
(Cities do not have much, if any, information). Be specific about what it is that you
want. Examples follow.
* Types of information that you can usually get from County Clerks' offices include property deeds, wills, surrogate court in testate administrations (died without a will), jury lists, some death records, and sometimes obituaries.
* Resources that you may be able to get from Historians' Offices are obituaries, old newspaper articles, specific historical accounts of an area that may or may not include your ancestor, local family histories on specific families, some census reports, and many other types of information.
* State offices can usually provide birth and death records after about 1885. However, each state is different, so try to determine when the state that you are contacting began mandatory collection of death records.
In every case it is imperative that you prominently include your name, address, and phone number on all correspondence to ensure that you will receive a response.
3. Never send a query about your
ancestor without
dates, locations or some other pertinent information. No one is going to find John
Smith of VA when they don't know at least a date of birth, death, marriage,
census, or etc.
4. Never underestimate the value of property deeds and other land records. Some give names
of children and most list spouses. All show exactly where your ancestor lived in a given
county.
5. If you want to determine if your ancestors living between, say the 1730s through
early 1800s, served in the Revolutionary War, or if ancestors living, say between 1835 to
early 1900s, served in the Civil War, you can request the, National Archives Order
Form for Copies of Veterans Records, by writing to;
National Archives and Records Administration
7th and Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20408
or go online to;
National Archives & Records Administration
When completing a form, you will need to have the minimum information of name, approximate birth and death dates, place of residence upon enlisting, and which service they may have served in. If you do not know the latter, you may need to submit more than one form - one for each branch of the service. Be sure to read the exact directions to complete the form and to know where to mail it. One address is used for payment of the request, and another address is used for the form itself. Be sure to complete all required blocks.
Hint: If you use a credit card your request will be rapidly answered.
There are four kinds of records that
can be obtained if your ancestor was a veteran:
* Military
* Pension
* Land Grant
* Medical (You must write "Medical Records" across the top of the
form.)
Other good sources on military information, that can be found in almost any library, are Abstracts of Revolutionary Pension Files and the DAR Patriot Index. If you should find your ancestor in the pension files, they sometimes list all of the children, the spouse, where they lived, and other information.
12. If you remember nothing else this may be the most important point of all.
Do not expect to have all of your
questions answered by mail, a compiled family CD ROM file, or the Internet.
If you plan to use your data for publishing, joining any military
society, or etc., you must prove your family links yourself. That is, if someone tells you that they have your family information, then ask for
the official source, and then go to that source, look it up, and get copies. Or you may
wish to offer to pay copying & postage costs to have your contact - an individual or
otherwise - snail-mail or FAX you the documented proof. If they do not have it, then keep
searching. There is no substitute for actual documentation.
In short, doing family research involves a lot of reading, studying, thinking out family
patterns, and so on. Unfortunately, there usually are no short cuts. It can be a lot of
hard work, unless you accidentally stumble into someone who may have an answer for you,
and then be able to give you documented proof. Although this does in fact happen, there
usually is no easy way to find one's ancestor's without a lot of personal hands-on
research.
While these research ideas above are not all encompassing, they may perhaps give the
beginning family researcher some basic ideas of where to go and how to start. It is
surprising, if only one of these contacts - military, county, state, online responses - is
made, how fast your genealogical understanding and further resources will grow in a very
short period of time.
In all cases good luck in your family research.
Review : "Silent Windmills: Ancestry of Neva Viola Ross
Going to Palmyra: Sherman Deeds"
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This page copyright © 1997-present by Margaret Sherman Lutzvick. Links to my page are always welcome, but use of original material found in the Buried Genes Home Page site on other WEB sites or in other media is prohibited. All rights reserved.