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Linking With the Past
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10 of the most popular genealogy questions, with the answers you need to get you started on the rewarding quest for your roots. By Kimberly Powell.
1. How Do I Begin to Trace My Family Tree?
Start with yourself and work backwards through the generations, recording each person's major life events on ancestor charts. Interview your relatives - especially the elder ones - and ask them if they have any family documents, photos, baby books, or heirlooms. Don't forget to enjoy the journey - what you learn about your heritage is more important than how many generations back you can take your family tree.
2. What Does My Last Name Mean?
Only occasionally does your last name provide insight into where your family originally came from. The same surname often originates in many different places or has multiple possible meanings. Or it may be that the present incarnation of your surname bears little resemblance to the one carried by your distant ancestor due to spelling variations or anglicization. It is fun, however, to learn what your last name means and how it was derived.
3. Where Can I Find the Book on My Family?
Many people curious about their roots expect to begin and end their search quickly, hoping to find their family tree already done. It doesn't often happen, but both published and unpublished family histories can be found at public libraries, in the collections of local historical and genealogical societies, and on the Internet. Try a search in the Library of Congress and Family History Library catalogs. Review all published genealogies carefully, as most contain some inaccuracies.
4. What is the Best Genealogy Software?
It may sound cliche, but the best genealogy program basically boils down to finding the one that's right for you. Almost all family tree software does a good job of letting you enter your family data and view and print it in a wide variety of formats. The differences add up in the features and extras. Try them out before you buy - most genealogy software programs offer free trial versions or a money-back guarantee.
5. How Do I Make a Family Tree?
Family trees are meant to be shared and most people want to find a way to do it beautifully or creatively. A number of fancy family tree charts can be purchased or printed. Full-size wall charts make more room for big families, and great conversation starters at family reunions. Alternatively, you can create a family history book, CD-ROM, scrapbook, or even a cookbook. The point is to have fun and be creative when sharing your family's heritage.
6. What is a First Cousin, Twice Removed?
How am I related to so and so is a question that often comes up at family reunions. Grandparents, aunts, uncles and first cousins are easy, but once you get into more distant family relationships most of us get lost in the tangle. The trick to determining the actual relationship between two family members is to start with the ancestor they both have in common. From there, a handy cousin calculator or relationship chart can do the rest.
7. Am I Related to Someone Famous?
Have you heard that you're descended from a president or royalty? Or perhaps you suspect a family connection to a movie star or celebrity? Maybe you even share a surname with someone famous, and wonder if you're somehow related. Just like any other family tree research, you need to start with yourself and work back toward a connection with the famous individual. Many famous family trees can be found online, which can help in making a connection.
8. Where Can I Find Birth, Death and Marriage Records?
Vital records, called such because they record life's "vital" events, are the building blocks of a family tree. Records of the births, marriages and deaths of your ancestors will generally be civil (government) records back to a certain point in time, which varies by state, parish or country. Prior to that, church or parish registers are the most common source for information on vital records. Tombstone records can also provide clues.
9. What is My Family Coat of Arms?
There are hundreds of companies who will sell you "your family coat of arms" on a t-shirt, mug, or 'handsomely engraved' plaque. They look nice, and make great conversation starters, but actually most likely have nothing to do with your family. Coats of arms are granted to individuals, not families or surnames, and may rightfully be used only by the male line descendants of the person to whom the coat of arms was originally granted.
10. Where Did My Ancestors Come From?
What town or country did your ancestors originally come from? Did they sail across the ocean to America or Australia? Or move down the road from one town to the next? Learning where they came from is the key to a new branch in your family tree. Read up on history to learn about common migration patterns or check with relatives for info on family customs or surname origins. Records of death, marriage and immigration may also hold a clue.
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For each person make a Family Group Sheet, a Research Log of where you obtained your information and Research Questions you might have on this person along with a checklist. Remember to document everything you find on your ancestors.
The Family Group Sheet is a very simple way to keep track of family groups. Take the information that you receive on each ancestor and make a Family Group Sheet (an example is shown at end of this page) on each person in your family. Start with yourself, then your parents and their children, your grandparents and their children, etc. As you go back further in time you may contact relatives or other researchers.
The Research Log is very important for in the future when you share you data or decide possibly to publish your work you will need to know your sources for obtaining the information on your family lines. It is always nice to keep a log for each ancestor. Show their name, birth, death, married, spouse. For instance if you found the persons birth certificate show the date you found it, birth certificate, the source (quoting file#, etc.), source name & address. Wherever you obtain information be VERY specific with the information quoting authors, titles, pages, publishers, etc
Research Questions can sometimes be personal questions you have on a certain ancestor other than birth, death and marriage. Again make a chart for each ancestor with their name, birth, death, married, spouse. You might have a list of questions for example, Immigration, Occupation, Religion, Adoption, Military Service, Spoke Foreign Language, Family Stories about this Person.
Do interviews with your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins in your family lines. Even talk to your families friends. Tell them you are researching your family roots. Ask them birth and death dates and places, marriage dates and places and who the person married. Always begin with the current year and work backwards. When you get stuck move to the next line or investigate the brothers or sisters of your ancestor. Ask them to check their homes for information they might have on ancestors and family members
Check all your family members for family bibles, genealogies and histories, an excellent resource for family lineage. Sometimes the dates might not be exact but you can always correct them later after you obtain birth, death, marriage and baptism records.
Ask family members if they have available baby and wedding books, divorce papers, funeral cards, awards, diplomas, school yearbooks, employment records, military records, medical records. It also could be that your family kept journals or diaries. Check the attic.
Get birth certificates on individuals. These most always show parents and sometimes other valuable information including where the parents were both born, their occupations, etc.
Get marriage licenses and certificates. These show ages, parents, witnesses and other various pieces information including in some cases where the bride, groom, and parents were born and their occupations, etc.
Get death certificates. Of course these show death dates, birth dates, parents, who reported the death, where the deceased person was residing and much more info including causes of death, etc.
Go to your local newspaper and get copies of obituary notices. Obituary notices are a wealth of knowledge. Look at an obituary in today's newspaper and you will see all the information that can be obtained from one. In the older obituaries, longer write-ups are given on family members when they died telling about not only the person but about their life and in some cases about when their family line settled in a certain area of the country.
Get church records on your family. Baptismal, Christening, Marriage, Membership, etc. These will show as much, in some cases, as vital records
Go to the cemeteries that you know your ancestors are buried in and look for other family members. Write down all information off of tombstones or take a picture, even those that may not necessarily apply to your current direct family members.
Ask all your family members to gather family picture albums out check for data, names, etc. You never know what you might find on the back of an old photo. Or who might have something hiding in their attic, garage or basement that has long since been forgotten.
Get Census records. Begin with the latest census available and work backwards. Census records have been take since 1790. Before 1790 you can use Tax Lists and other local lists that might have been compiled according to the state you are researching in. This will help you fill in the missing pieces and find family members. Some libraries and historical societies have census records on microfilm at their branches. Of course, today with the advent of the Internet and CDs, it is convenient for us to do our research in the privacy of our own home!
Go to your local library, historical society or LDS center.
Some other sources to look for might be these records: Adoptions, divorce, emigration, medical, ownership of land, naturalization, school, biographies in history books, wills, etc.
Go to Court Houses and check records for your ancestors. Check deeds, probate (wills, estate, intestate), voters records, indenture, marriage, court proceedings, any kind of legal papers that would have been filed in a courthouse.
Use the search engines (MSN, AOL, Google, Yahoo, Excite, Lycos, AltaVista, AskJeeves, etc.) on the Internet to put in the names you are looking for. You will find Web sites and also individuals listed. Also use the Internet White Pages to look for current generations that have the same last name as you.
Remember, in order to receive family information you have to share your family genealogy with others. That includes telling others where you obtained your information. If you received your data from a specific person, please give them credit for providing you with their research findings. It might not only have cost them a lot of their valuable time and patience in deciphering records, microfilm, etc. but additional expenses such as gas, copying & research fees and travel expenses. .
After researching your family roots, gathering your research materials and documents, entering your data into your "new" genealogy program, sharing your finds with family, friends and fellow family researchers, You may want to think about getting your own Genealogy Site on the Web!
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What is a GEDCOM?
GEDCOM, an acronym for GEnealogical Data COMmunication, is a specification for exchanging genealogical data between different genealogy software. GEDCOM was developed by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as an aid to genealogical research.
A GEDCOM file is plain text (usually either ANSEL or ASCII) containing genealogical information about individuals, and meta data linking these records together. Most genealogy software supports importing from and/or exporting to GEDCOM format. However, some genealogy software programs incorporate the use of proprietary extensions to the GEDCOM format, which are not always recognized by other genealogy programs. The GEDCOM TestBook Project evaluates how well popular genealogy programs conform to the GEDCOM 5.5 standard. Additionally, many tools exist to convert GEDCOM files to HTML pages.
One of the biggest advantages to using the Internet for genealogy research is the ability it provides to exchange information with other researchers. One of the most common methods used for this information exchange is, of course, the GEDCOM.
Anatomy of a GEDCOM File
If you have ever opened a GEDCOM file using your word processor, you have probably been faced with a seeming jumble of numbers, abbreviations, and bits and pieces of data. There are no blank lines and no indentations in a GEDCOM file. That's because it is a specification for exchanging information from one computer to another, and was never really intended to be read as a text file.
GEDCOMS basically take your family information and put it in an outline format. Records in a GEDCOM file are arranged in groups of lines that hold information about one individual (INDI) or one family (FAM) and each line in an individual record has a level number. The first line of every record is numbered zero (0) to show that it is the beginning of a new record. Within that record, different level numbers are subdivisions of the next level above it. For example, the birth of an individual may be given level number one (1) and further information about the birth (date, place, etc.) would be given level two (2).
After the level number, you will see a descriptive tag, which refers to the type of data contained in that line. Most tags are obvious: BIRT for birth and PLAC for place, but some are a little more obscure, such as BARM for Bar Mitzvah.
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The Genealogy Encyclopedia
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When tracing an ancestry it is common to encounter records filled with obsolete, archaic, or legal terms that can be difficult to interpret. Misinterpreting these terms can make the difference between linking persons to the right generation, parents, spouse or children. Understanding exactly what is stated in any record is vital before attempting to move to the next generation. Inexperienced or impatient genealogists undervalue the quality of their research by applying present-day definitions to documents created in an earlier century. Take the time to use the glossaries provided here and other excellent dictionaries, genealogical reference books and encyclopedias to interpret documents correctly.
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