Genealogy

Have you ever wondered who your ancestors were and where they came from? Have you grown up on stories about a distant ancestor who played a role in history? Genealogy is the study of an individual’s ancestry. By tracing your ancestry, you can get answers to your questions about your forebears and maybe even find proof that one was truly a knight in the Crusades.
 
The first step in tracing your family history is starting with your living relatives. Ask them for details about their siblings, cousins, parents and grandparents. In some cases, you may get lucky and find a family member that has the family Bible; birth, marriage or death certificates; naturalization papers or family photos. Don’t be surprised if you find someone else in the family tracing your roots. It is a popular hobby.
 
The internet can yield a wealth of information on family members. In many cases, records have been transcribed and uploaded to the internet, allowing you access to records that at one time would have required travel to a distant location or paying a researcher in the area to get for you. Some of these require membership in a subscription genealogy website, but you can also find some records for free.
 
Subscription websites have search engines that you put your ancestor’s data into and it brings up records that are exact or close matches to the data you have entered. If you are sure your ancestor’s data is right, you may be tempted to click the exact match button when you search. However, keep in mind that names were sometimes misspelled by those filling out the record books and, on records that noted age rather than birth date, your ancestor could appear to be a year younger or older depending on when the document was filled out.
 
It is also important to remember that while your ancestor may have stayed in the same place, the place name may have changed. For instance, some people born in Virginia before it was divided can be found in West Virginia records after the divide. If you can’t find your ancestor, try checking to see if that location was once part of another county, state or country.
 
The USGenWeb Project is divided into state and county websites. There is also a WorldGenWeb Project to help you locate immigrant ancestors. Each of these websites contains user-submitted data from that area. Data may include family trees, cemetery records and birth, marriage or death certificates. In some cases, census records may also be available. Most websites in the project also have a list of local researchers who are willing to do lookups for free.
 
If you know where your ancestors were born, married or died, you can also go to the local record repositories for information. This may be the local courthouse or the state department of vital records. In some cases, you may be able to get information from the church your ancestor attended as well. Birth certificates contain the parents’ names, in some cases even the mother’s maiden name. Marriage certificates usually noted both parties parents. Death records typically have the deceased’s parents and sometimes their spouse as well.
 
For more recent ancestors in the United States, you may be able to request a copy of their application for a social security card. Use one of the many social security death index search engines available online, some of which are free, to locate your ancestor. There is a fee to get a copy of their application, but it often gives you the person’s full name, date and place of birth, where they were living at the time of application and parents’ names.
 
Searching cemetery, funeral home or obituary records can sometimes give you needed information. If you know where your ancestor died, try finding transcriptions for the local cemeteries to locate them. You can also contact the local funeral homes to see if they have records on your ancestors. Obituaries are often a goldmine for genealogists as they typically have a lot of information, which includes the deceased’s name, spouse, parents, siblings and children. They may also note where the person is buried.
 
Once you get started, you will be surprised at how much fun you have. There is nothing quite like breaking through a brick wall or confirming that your ancestor was in fact someone famous. Genealogy is one hobby that most people find sticks with them and they find themselves still working on their family tree years down the road.