Genealogical Research: A Guide on How and Where to Find Information

Did you ever wonder where your family came from or who you were descended from? Did you ever wonder how people could find such hard to find information? Actually, it's not very hard at all to find information on your family, especially if they have lived in the same place for a long time. The following guide applies to the United States.

Start by gathering all the information you can get your hands on. Ask your parents or grandparents, if they are still alive, who their parents were and when they were born and when they died. Ask anyone in your family if they have any information on anyone in your family who is deceased. This is your starting point. By looking up death certificates you can begin to trace your family back in time.

You may also want to check church records if you know where members of your family attended church. This is an often over looked resource. Parishes often kept track of who was a member, when they were born and christened or baptized, who they married, and when they died. Some families have kept Bibles that have names and dates in them. That is actually how I got started on my quest to find my family's origins. My great grandmother had written a bunch of family member names and their dates of birth and death into a Bible from 1863. So I suppose I had it easy, since I had a bit of a head start on the whole process with little effort.

Once you have all of your information, you will want to go to your local courthouse to the registrar of deeds. This may vary by state, and there may be a different place that you go depending on where you live. Basically, you'll go where ever birth, death and marriage certificates are filed. Most offices will have a place where researchers can look up the above documents along with wills and land deeds. Most files are on microfilm although I have seen copies of wills bound in books. Ask the people who are working there for help if you aren't sure what to do or where to go.

Start by looking up death certificates based on the information you have. Each death certificate will list who the parents were of that person. It typically costs a dime or a quarter to print each page, so make a copy of the death certificate. Then look up the people who are listed as the parents. Once you find them, you will be able to see who their parents were and so on. However, if they died outside of the county you are in, they will not be listed. You could call or write to that county and request information if it is too far for you to travel to. You can also try this with birth certificates, but I have found that the government has been keeping death certificates much longer than birth certificates so it's much easier to research using death certificates. While you are there you can look up marriage certificates as well. It will just add to the amount of information you have.

Once you have gleaned all the information you can possibly get from the registrar's office, you should go to the main branch of the local library. If you live in a small town you might have to travel to the nearest city to find a library with the necessary information. Most large libraries will have information for your area, your state and even some information on the entire country. There will be censuses, both local and national, ship logs, and other relevant information.

Censuses are a good way of verifying how many people were in a household. However, there are some drawbacks to the census. First of all, much to the annoyance of researchers everywhere, there is no census for 1890 as it was mostly destroyed in a fire in 1921. Also, the censuses before 1850 only included the head of household. So, women and children are listed only as a number with their age. It isn't a total loss however; since there are approximate age ranges, you can use it to cross check other documents you may find on that particular family. Slaves are listed only as numbers, without any age.

This brings up the topic of researching your family if you are Native or African American. Basically, it's not impossible, but it's pretty hard. Often the only names listed are given names. This can make it extremely difficult to track a family when no surname is given. Also, for example, there are instances where Natives married into my family, but the person, usually a woman, has no surname listed. This can be extremely frustrating.

Many libraries accept bound material relating to genealogy, and so you may find some books with research that other people have carried out. This is useful for cross checking any information you find. Always attempt to cross check any information you find. One wrong link can easily lead you in a completely wrong direction and waste hours of your time.

Another resource that you can find in most libraries, are ship's logs. If your ancestors came from Europe, once you've traced back to the first generation here, you can find out what ship they came here on and what their point of origin is. This can be helpful if you'd like to trace your family further back into the old world.

There are often cemetery listings as well. This is one more resource, as families are often buried in the same plot. You may want to visit the cemetery and see who is buried near the person in question. This may give you more information that you didn't previously have. You may see a name that is familiar and wish to go back to the registrar of deeds to look them up. If there are no markers, don't despair. All public cemeteries are required to keep records and there is often someone in charge of the place. Ask them to show you where the grave is.

Some cities and towns have genealogical societies. These can be great resources although you often have to make a donation to use their facilities. They will often have books that no one else will and even have people to help you out. And if you're willing to pay enough money, you can hire someone to research your family for you, but I think that takes all the fun away. Even if you don't want to pay their fees to use their library, you can buy family charts there so that you can chart your family tree. You will need the huge ones if you get back too far and you may need multiple ones, with different people starting the tree off. You will be amazed how many people you are descended from, it was never something that I really thought about until I started filling out that chart. After just ten generations, you have the possibility of having over a thousand ancestors and after twenty generations there is the possibility of having over a million ancestors! And it doubles every generation. I say possibility because some could show up in more than one spot for a number of reasons. One reason why this could be is if cousins married each other, then you would have two branches that were duplicates. This was actually quite common not too long ago.

Finally, there is the Internet, although there are a ton of websites devoted to genealogy, I caution strongly against taking anything anyone else wrote at face value unless they have cited where they got the information from and you can go and check the source. You will have no idea whether they cross checked their lineages or how thorough they were with their research and fact checking. I can not reiterate it enough as to how easy it is to make erroneous links between people. If you think there is a suspicious link between people, try to find the original information on those people. Also, never assume anything. Just because you have the same last name, doesn't mean you're related. If you find that you're descended from someone famous, quadruple check how you came to conclude that, as it may be completely wrong.

And finally, have fun! It is a great experience researching where your family came from and finding out information about them.