I've written to a company that does geneology research and was advised that, to do the chart would cost thousands of $'s. I have no objection to doing the research myself but don't know how to go about it. Can I search online for vital statistics records or do I have to visit every location that maintains the records? Any advice on how best to proceed would be most appreciated!
I would like to do a geneology chart dating back 10 generations.?
If you are interested in doing your genealogy, the best way to get started is to start with yourself. Write down everything you know about your parents, then keep going back until you run stuck. Most people can get back to their grandparents and maybe a set of great grandparents. At this point there are so many ways to get back further in your tree. Much of it depends on the records available. For instance, it you live in the United States, public records are only going to take you back so far. Many localities weren't required to keep records until the late 1800's or even early 1900's, and many courthouses were burned in the Civil War destroying many of the existing records that were already in place. In Europe and many other countries, records go back a lot further. Other avenues of getting information are studying old land records, wills, cemeteries, city directories, local histories and military records. Another gold mine of information is if your parents kept old letters of the family. It wasn't uncommon in the early twentieth century for women to have post card books. Some old post cards have some interesting information as well. If you are young, you may have the honor of being able to interview your grandparents for information. If you do this, I would recommend taping the conversation because often it is impossible to remember everything they said and you will have a treasure for future generations. Even though tracing your tree yourself takes a lot of time and a lot of effort, you learn so much and it is so much more worthwhile than pulling up a tree on a website and wondering where in the world the author got their information.
I am assuming your family is in the U.S. If it isn't then disregard my answer.
First, ancestry.com does have a 14 day free trial-BUT you must cancel before the end of 14 days or they will charge your credit card. Also, don't be suprised if they ask you to put your cancellation in writing and fax it to them. I have had friends tell me that they had to do it this way to cancel. I personally have found the information at Ancestry.com very helpful. A few years ago, I had a 14 day trial and didn't find them to be worth the money, but over the last couple of years they have added so much. They have all years of the census fully indexed, immigration records, military records, newspapers, family trees and the list goes on. They have truly evolved the last couple of years and they keep adding more information.
Here is a list of some of the free genealogy websites.
www.rootsweb.com -This is a good one that is free. It is run by Ancestry.com but shouldn't be confused with Ancestry.com- the pay site.
www.cyndislist.com
www.familysearch.org website for the Church of the Later Day Saints.
www.genforum.com This is a site that is full of individual message boards. You can search and post by last name, state, country, or county. This is a great one. Simply post your question on the respective board, and when people answer you will get a notification on your E-mail. I have had a LOT of success on GenForum.
I must say, however, that a good genealogy query, doesn't just say. " I need information on John Smith" Try to provide as many dates, places, and details as possible. One little thing can make the difference as to the answer you get.
a good query has
1) the persons name
2) all of the biographical information you know to date and
3) asks a specific question
The reason it is so specific is because people won't waste your time and theirs telling you what you already know. Also, by providing ALL of your known information (for example, the childrens names) it gives people alternate people to research to help arrive at your answer.
http://www.usgenweb.org/ -When you get to the main page, you can get to the state and individual locality pages by clicking on the appropriate links. Keep in mind that some towns are going to have more information than some smaller obscure towns. It all depends on what kinds of volunteers contribute information to their sites. Genealogy is very much a hobby that depends on people.
Check your LOCAL LIBRARY. Many libraries have subscriptions to Ancestry.com or hertiage quest that you can Access from home with your library card number. Heritage Quest is geared mostly toward the US records.
www.interment.net or www.findagrave.com These are cemetery sites that have grown by leaps and bounds.
http://ssdi.genealogy.rootsweb.com/cgi-b...
This is the link to the Social Security Death index. This is a very helpful resource to finding death dates of people who died in recent years (since about the 60's)
If your family immigrated to the US in the last 100-125 years you can try
www.ellisisland.org
This one is cool because you can actually have a look at the ships manifests!!
If you start your search for your ancestry, it will probably turn into an obsession. It is very addicting and it is like a big puzzle with so many benefits. You learn where your family came from, where they've been, often you can learn about family medical history. There just isn't a down side. Remember the old addage, "If you want something done right, you often have to do it your self." You are not going to just find your entire genealogy in one search. It is an ongoing puzzle. I tell people, if you can find one thing every time you are searching, you are doing GREAT. If you find any more than that at any given time you are LUCKY!! Write to me if you have any questions. I would be happy to help if I can. Blessings.
Reply:As you can see from the answers you got, genealogists love to help newcomers to the field. Your county may have a genealogical society. If it does, it will be full of sharp old ladies who would be thrilled to give you advice. (Sharp as in experienced and intelligent, not rude.) Look in the phone book or ask your local librarian.
Reply:Hey Wiser With Age,
First, all the fellow answerers above did a great job. What makes you say 10 generations? Sounds like a Genealogist waiting to make money off your family.
My advice, get some software first. Ted likes Rootsmagic, I never tried it, I use Family Tree Maker. You get free time on the Pay sites and can download Family Tree branches that match your initial inputs. Helpful starter information.
Do as they said above, get your living relatives information. Collect all the Birth, Marriage and Death certificate copies you can. Those prove everything that links one generation to the next.
As you progress down a branch, take time to learn about your ancestor. They are not just a name on a branch, but coursing in your veins! Appreciate the lives they lived if you can, get stories about them. Pictures are helpful. The software will help organize this information.
You can always come here for more advice, you can see you will get a ton of advice. Normally, when this many people answer a question, I don't bother. But I like to assure that you start with yourself, immediate family (parents), then up each branch with their parents first. Get what you know.
You should study what is and is not acceptable practice for proof of a link also. Vital records, included sites below, are the backbone of genealogy. You can SEARCH for sites that have these records in municipalities through out the world from your internet keyboard. Just use YAHOO, and put "VITAL RECORD %26lt;location%26gt;", where location is a County, City, or State. Then you follow the process they describe to get your Birth, Marriage or Death records. Anyway, welcome to the world of GENEALOGY.
Oh, last are some sites for Certified Genealogists. Just so you can see what it takes.
Reply:After researching over 20 yrs, I have never paid anyone to do work for me. The fun and challenge is in finding it for yourself, trust me. That does not mean you should not pay someone for a specific thing, if it would actually save you.
Records from this century GENERALLY are less available than older ones, for privacy reasons. Many of those are ones your own family may already have... marriage certificates, birth records, family photos, old letters, etc.
One of the widest volunteer networks is the us genweb, with sites in every county. There also are mailing lists which I find easier. There is NO RULE as to what records you will find online. Every family line or ancestor is unique in where he/she came from. You learn each step of the way. One rule for best results is to learn what good documentation means, and rely on that. Not everything online is reliable, including other's research.
Rootsweb.com is also very valuable. There are mailing lists for both surnames and localities. which focus the efforts.
Stop by www.cyndislist.com, which is one of the oldest collections for resources, including beginner how-to's. Browse through the different types of websites. Actaully, the estimate given is not out of line, when considering the time involved. But you would miss out on a lot of satisfaction.
Reply:A good place to start are the geneological records kept by the Mormons. I have an aunt who is big on geneology, and she goes out to Salt Lake City every year. But some of their records are also on the web. She's found out all kinds of things--they have pay records of all individuals at least as far back as the Revolutionary War. She was able to trace one ancestor and where he was stationed throughout the war, check on who was listed in every census, you name it.
Reply:Start with a chart for the people you know. Use census records to show where they were born and died; going backwards.
Ancestory .com can probably help you; but dedicated searchers assume they will have to visit a few courthouses to work thru some of the questions.
Reply:I know a friend who is doing the same exact thing. It takes lots of work and patience but is doable. Good places to start is asking your family who are or where your family members. Get their full name. Also, get the realionship. That is how are they related. Is it by marriage. Waas the personadopted. Where they live, where they come from etc etc. Once you have all this information then you will star contacting peoplefrom the towns the person you are looking for came from. God places to look are church records. Most people marry by the church and get babtised in a certain church. the church keeps records of this for some reason. You can also go to that towns library and they might have records of who and to whom a person was borned or married to.
This will give you a head start.
Reply:I applaud you for wanting to take on such a large project. The problem with answering your main questions is that the best we can answer is "it depends".
I started my first research in high school in the 70s and never got much help from the people who had the answers I needed. There are TO THIS DAY a few lines where I am barely scratching the surface and can't take them back past my great grandfather in one line and great-great grandmother in another line. The reason is that they got on a boat in Europe and travelled to America and that's as far as I can track them from this side of the pond. Belgium is horrible to research and eastern Poland is just starting to organize their records and make them available to Americans.
So the first "it depends" is that it depends on how long your family has been in America. The year of arrival is intimately tied to how good the records will be that the US kept at the time of their arrival. Before 1830, the US didn't even mandate that a ship's captain provide a passenger list to the port of arrival. And it wasn't until 1900 that they mandated that the port of arrival actually KEEP the passenger list or that it even be complete. So the quality of the information available from those records is really inconsistent and much of it isn't accessible or even still in existence. For the two main points of arrival, Ellis Island (appx 1890-1924) and Castle Clinton (1830-1920) the records are being brought online. Ellis Island has theirs completely typed in. The Battery Conservancy (which is doing coordinating the Castle Clinton project for the Port of New York) is still far from done. They have the unfortunate challenge of making it through the Potato famine years. You can find the majority of arrivals to the US at http://www.ellisisland.org and http://www.castlerock.org
Hand-in-hand with that is that not every immigrant to the US came via ship. Strangely, anyone could WALK into the US from Mexico or Canada without any documentation until just about 100 years ago. No passports, no visas, no documentation of any kind was needed for anyone crossing that way. So if your immigrant ancestor came first to Canada, then decided to settle in the US later, they simply crossed over, found a piece of land and resettled without the US even caring that they were here or Canada really caring that they had left.
Moving on from there, the next favorite set of records for genealogists is census records...and not just the decennial census records carried out by the US government, but also the state census records that many states carried out in the middle of every decade. These are available from many places. People have mentioned Ancestry.com (which is a fine site, just a little expensive if you buy your own membership), but the very best place to search them is a large public or private library (the Newberry Library in Chicago has THE most phenomenal genealogy research center in the country...the room is larger than most libraries are in total size). If you have a good library in your area, then the odds are good that they have either a public-use membership to Ancestry or to a service called Heritage Quest. Both are excellent and using them for free at a library is a great way to save money. With this route, you get to not only look up the records online, but also to use the reference books available at the library which should never be overlooked. For instance, if you have German or Polish ancestors, there is a large set of books called "Germans to America" that you'll need to use. Any good library will have a set. If you have Dutch ancestors, then you need a book called "Dutch to America" which is better than any American passenger lists...they took the port records from the ports of Rotterdam and Amsterdam and organized them. The beauty of it is that those ports kept wonderful records and you can even find a person's hometown here....at a time that America didn't care what town a person came from back in Europe.
I'm sure you've figured out that birth, marriage and death records are our bread and butter. The next "it depends" is that the availability of these records depends on where your family lived and when. Before 1870, most states didn't require towns or counties track ANY of this. After 1868 you'll start finding towns and counties organizing death and marriage records, but births weren't required to be registered until 1930 in most states. People born into lower economic classes or living in very remote rural areas will rarely have a birth certificate. But don't fret because there is a much better source of info from that era...if your ancestors were church-going people. If your ancestors were married in a church, then the pastor marrying them would keep them in a register. If the minister or priest baptized their babies, then there's a register at the church. If the minister buried your ancestors, then the church has the records. Getting church records may take a little time, but (especially if your ancestors were Catholic, Episcopalian/Anglican, Lutheran or Methodist) these are extremely well-maintained and well-documented records...and they're free. I always request a mass in honor of a loved one if the church does a lot of research for me. Everyone wins that way. The caveat is that you can't look at the books yourself and you have to remember that most of the people working in these offices are very overworked and underpaid. So you have to be very specific in your requests..."I would appreciate a copy of the marriage record of _______ and _______ from June, 1850 and the baptismal records of their children (names/dates). Enclosed is my check for $20 to cover your expenses and to request a mass in their honor on the next available anniversary of their marriage. Thank you"
If you just ask "I'd like all records on the Smith family in your books", you're likely to get your letter back with a request for specific information and specific names.
The best part of getting used to searching through church records is that you can use this same method to research in Europe. Many of the european church records (even Catholic) are filmed by the Mormons and available in the US for under $5 per film. If you realize how many generations will be documented in that one film, it's a real bargain.
Once you get all of your immigrant ancestors identified, you may want to plan a trip for a day or two to the National Archives and Records Administration regional center for the area where your ancestors settled. These sites have records that are usually not online, and only available in full for free if you go there. For instance, they have all of the Declarations of Intent and Naturalization petitions for our immigrant ancestors. Before 1906, these records don't have much information. But for those arriving after 1900, these are the records that will give you parents' names, hometowns, religion, ship and date of arrival, ship and date they left Europe, all relatives living in the US, etc. NARA also maintains all military service records at their facility in St Louis MO. You can write to them for the records if you had ancestors who EVER served in the military in the US. They'll send you everything from the military service record. They also maintain all government service records if you had ancestors who worked for the federal government, served in Congress or as a judge, etc. Those are also maintained in St Louis.
The final set of records that you'll get used to consulting are land records. These aren't always online, or if they are it's only back to the 1950s at the earliest. No county has the money to pay transcriptionists to copy land records back to 1700. These might be the only records where you'll have to make the trip yourself. But even then, call ahead and see if a clerk will copy it for you and fax it to you or read it to you over the phone. I've had that happen many times and it saves me a trip because the information wasn't pertinent to the person I thought it was. The same is true if you're looking for birth/marriage/death (BMD) records, as the county is the only place that maintains them and there might be 5 people with the same name. Call ahead and get the info read to you and make sure it's the person you're actually researching before you pay for a copy of the record or make a trek out there to see it for yourself.
If you need any help with records from a particular place, visit the USGenWeb site for that county. You'll find many dedicated volunteers who will go do the lookup for you and only charge you for actual costs. It's a great way to get a good researcher to do the legwork for you. If you need anything from SE Michigan, I'd be glad to help myself.
Anyway, there's more to it than this...but if this is the beginning of your journey, I'll start here and let you know that you can email at any time if you need help or direction. Good luck to you...you can do 10 generations in about a year if the records are there for you. Who knows, maybe your ancestors were kind enough to never migrate and all of your records are at your state archives in one nice neat package. Happy hunting!
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