Genealogy Online

by Elizabeth Crowe

  Experienced genealogists are more than willing to help the beginner. Longtime online genealogist Pat Richley-Erickson, also known as DearMYRTLE, has a lot of great advice on her site, www.dearmyrtle.com. Here are what she feels are the important points for the beginner: Just take it one step at a time, and devise your own filing system.

  Don’t let the experts overwhelm you. Use the Family History Library’s Research Outline for the state/county where your ancestors came from. They can get you quickly oriented to what’s available and what has survived that might help you out.

  Don’t invent your own genealogy program. Instead, choose one of the commercially available ones. Only use a GEDCOM-compatible software program, because it is the generic way of storing genealogy data. This way, you can import and export to other researchers with common ancestors in the future.

  That’s the “what” to do, and soon we’ll look at that more closely.

  “How” to do it includes these two basic principles: document and back up.

  From the start, keep track of what you found, where you found it, and when. Even if it’s as mundane as “My birth certificate, in the fireproof box, in my closet, 2014,” record your data and sources. Sometimes, genealogists forget to do that and find themselves retracing their steps like a hiker lost in the woods. Backing up your work regularly is as important as recording your sources. Both of these topics will be covered in more detail in this chapter.

  Your System

  Software choices are covered in Chapter 2, where you will see how modern genealogy programs help you to do this. However, remember the good old index card (see Figure 1-1)? These can be useful to record data you find in a library, a friend’s book, or even an interview with older relatives until you can get back to your computer.

  FIGURE 1-1. A sample index card with page numbers indicated for the data collected. The name of the book is written on the back.

  The handwritten index card also serves as a backup, which brings us to the second most important thing: Back up your data. For most of this book, I assume you are using a computer program to record and analyze your data, but even if you are sticking to good old paper, typewriter, and pencils, as my fourth cousin Jeanne Hand Henry, CG, does, back that up with photocopies. Back up your computerized data in some way: external hard drive, flash drives, or online storage sites (see the following box) are all options, but you must back up. Grace happens, but so does other stuff, like hurricanes, wildfires, and hard drive crashes.

  Many genealogists believe that using a good genealogy program with a feature to record sources is the way to go. Paper sources can be scanned into digital form for these programs. (You can also store paper documents in good old-fashioned filing cabinets.) Remember to keep a record of all your research findings, even those pieces of information that seem unrelated to your family lines. Some day that data may indeed prove pertinent to your family, or you may be able to pass it on to someone else. Even if you decide to do the bulk of your research on a computer, you might still need some paper forms to keep your research organized. The following box lists some websites where you can find forms to use as you research censuses and other records so that you can document your findings and sources. There’s more about documentation later in this chapter.

  A Baker’s Dozen of Free Forms

  You can find free, downloadable forms to record and track your research. Here are just a few places:

  • Ancestry.com has Portable Document Format (PDF) files of useful forms, such as a family group sheet, research calendar and research extract summary. Check out http://www.ancestry.com/save/charts/ancchart.htm.

  • You can find several good forms at the Midwest Genealogy Center site, including some that can help you research old United States census records: http://www.mymcpl.org/genealogy/family-history-forms.

  • The FamilySearch page has a small catalog of various downloadable forms: https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Research_Forms.

  • Mary (Hagstrom) Bailey and Duane A. Bailey are two generous genealogists who have posted forms they developed for their own use at http://www.cs.williams.edu/~bailey/genealogy/. They are free for nonprofit use.

  • Ontario GenWeb has a collection of forms useful for recording Canadian research: census, vital statistics, and so on, at http://www.rootsweb.com/~canon/needhelp-genforms.html.

  • Free-Genealogy-Forms (http://www.free-genealogy-forms.com/) has forms to help you record data from North America and the United Kingdom.

  • Lynne Johnston Westra has gathered a few useful forms at http://www.rootsweb.org/~ilfrankl/resources/forms.htm. For example, you’ll find PDF files of family group sheets and a census summary chart to help you trace a family through several censuses.

  • Search for Ancestors (http://www.searchforancestors.com/) has a set of tools you can use online, such as a cousin calculator and a way to generate a virtual time capsule for any given year and place.

  • Microsoft Office Online (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/results.aspx?qu=genealogy&ex=2) has several templates for Word and Excel, including a family history book template for sharing your results.

  • Family Tree Magazine has a page of forms in text and PDF formats for note-taking, checklists, and more (http://www.familytreemagazine.com/freeforms).

  • For researching in the United Kingdom, go to http://www.genealogy-links.co.uk/html/freebies.html for a list of free forms, tools and more.

  Good Practices

  To begin your genealogy, begin with yourself. Collect the information that you know for certain about yourself, your spouse, and your children. The data you want are birth, marriage, graduation, and other major life milestones. The documentation would ideally be the original certificates; such documents are considered primary sources. Photographs with the people in them identified and the date on the back can also be valuable.

  Such documents are considered primary sources because they reflect data recorded close to the time and place of an event.

  Note

  A primary source is an original piece of information that documents an event: a death certificate, a birth certificate, a marriage license, etc. A secondary source is a source that may cite an original source, but is not the source itself: a newspaper obituary or birth notice, a printed genealogy, a website genealogy, etc.

  Pick a Line

  The next step is to pick a surname to pursue. As soon as you have a system for storing and comparing your research findings, you are ready to begin gathering data on that surname. A good place to begin is interviewing family members—parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and in-laws. Ask them for stories, names, dates, and places of the people they knew. Ask whether some box in the attic or basement might have a file of old documents: deeds, marriage licenses, naturalization papers, family bibles, and so on. A good question to ask at this point is whether any genealogy of the family has been published. Understand that such a work is still a secondary source, not a primary source. If published sources have good documentation included, you might find them a great help.

  Visit a Family History Center (FHC) and the FamilySearch site (www.familysearch.org), which has indexes to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints family History Library and access to the new FamilySearch site. This site has data uploaded by members of the church, as well as other genealogists, and extractions of original records, such as marriages, births, deaths, and census records. In Figure 1-2 is my grandparents’ marriage license as an example.

  FIGURE 1-2. When possible, get documents to back up what you’re told. Family bibles, old newspaper clippings, diaries, wills, licenses, and letters can help here.

  Adventures in Genealogy

  Family legend can be a good starting place, but don’t accept what you hear at face value. I will give you an example from my own experience.

  When my husband and I were dating, his family’s stories fascinated me. One is that his mother is descended from Patrick Henry’s sister, who settled in Kentucky soon after the Revolutiona
ry War. Her Logsdon line was also said to be descended from a Revolutionary War hero. T. W. Crowe, Mark’s paternal grandfather, said his grandmother was full-blooded Cherokee.

  The maternal line was researched and proven by Mark’s mother as part of the Daughters of the American Revolution project. Documentation galore helped provide the proof. But the paternal line was more problematic. While T. W. Crowe had some physical characteristics of Native Americans, as does my husband, no one in the family had documents to help me prove the connection. Had I been able to prove it, our children might have been eligible for scholarships and special education in Native American history. After we married and had children, I asked T. W. for the details that would qualify our children for this, but he would not discuss it with me. Indeed, the more I pressed for information, the more reticent T. W. became, and he died in 1994 without my finding the evidence. However, I have kept searching. Using the old family bible, which has a record of T. W.’s parents, I am still looking at census records, wills, deeds, and other data to see whether I can prove one of them was of Cherokee descent.

  A relative told me that T. W., in effect, had been testing me: The Native American grandmother was something not talked about in his generation or the one before his. By telling me what was considered a “family scandal,” T. W. was trying to find out if I would be scared off from dating his grandson. The poor man had no idea he had chosen to test me with something that would get my genealogy groove on!

  Which brings up this point: While all family history is fascinating to those of us who have been bitten by that genealogy bug, to others, some family history is, at best, a source of mixed emotions and, at worst, a source of shame and fear. You must be prepared for some disagreeable surprises and even unpleasant reactions.

  References to Have at Hand

  As you post queries, send and receive messages, read documents online, and look at library card catalogs, you will need some reference books at your fingertips to help you understand what you have found and what you are searching for. Besides a good atlas and perhaps a few state or province gazetteers (a geographic dictionary or index), having the following books at hand will save you a lot of time in your pursuit of family history:

  • The Handy Book for Genealogists United States of America (9th Edition) by George B. Everton, editor (Everton Publishers, 1999). Pat Richley-Erickson, aka DearMYRTLE, says she uses this reference book about 20 times a week. This book has information such as when counties were formed; what court had jurisdiction where and when; listings of genealogical archives, libraries, societies, and publications; dates for each available census index; and more.

  • The Source A Guidebook of American Genealogy by Sandra H. Luebking (editor) and Loretto D. Szucs (Ancestry Publishing, 2006) or The Researcher’s Guide to American Genealogy by Val D. Greenwood (Genealogical Publishing Company, 2000). These are comprehensive, how-to genealogy books. Greenwood’s is a little more accessible to the amateur, whereas Luebking’s is aimed at the professional certified genealogist, but still has invaluable information on family history research.

  • Cite Your Sources A Manual for Documenting Family Histories and Genealogical Records by Richard S. Lackey (University Press of Mississippi, 1986) or Evidence! Citation & Analysis for the Family Historian by Elizabeth Shown Mills (Genealogical Publishing Company, 1997). These books help you document what you found, where you found it, and why you believe it. The two books approach the subject differently: The first is more amateur-friendly, whereas the second is more professional in approach.

  Analyze and Repeat

  When you find facts that seem to fit your genealogy, you must analyze them, as noted in the section “How to Judge,” later in this chapter. When you are satisfied that you have a good fit, record the information and start the process again.

  Success Story: A Beginner Tries the Shotgun Approach

  My mother shared some old obituaries with me that intrigued me enough to send me on a search for my family’s roots. I started at the ROOTSWEB site with a metasearch, and then I sent e-mails to anyone who had posted the name I was pursuing in the state of origin cited in the obituary. This constituted over 50 messages—a real shotgun approach. I received countless replies indicating there was no family connection. Then, one day, I got a response from a man who turned out to be my mother’s cousin. He had been researching his family line for the last two years. He sent me census and marriage records, even a will from 1843 that gave new direction to my search.

  In pursuing information on my father, whom my mother divorced when I was two months old (I never saw him again), I was able to identify his parents’ names from an SS 5 (Social Security) application and, subsequently, track down state census listings containing not only their birth dates, but also the birth dates of their parents—all of which has aided me invaluably in the search for my family’s roots. Having been researching only a short while, I have found the online genealogy community to be very helpful and more than willing to share information with newbies like myself. The amount of information online has blown me away.

  —Sue Crumpton

  Know Your Terms

  As soon as you find information, you are going to come across terms and acronyms that will make you scratch your head. Sure, it’s easy to figure out what a deed is, but what’s a cadastre? What do DSP and LDS mean? Is a yeoman a sailor or a farmer?

  A cadastre is a survey, a map, or some other public record showing ownership and value of land for tax purposes. DSP is an abbreviation for a phrase that means “died without children.” LDS is shorthand for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the Mormons. And finally, a yeoman can designate a farmer, an attendant/guard, or a clerk in the Navy, depending on the time and place. Most of this is second nature to people who have done genealogy for more than a couple of years, but beginners often find themselves completely baffled. And then there are the calendars—Julian, Gregorian, and French Revolutionary—which means that some records have double dates, or a single date that means something different from what you think it should.

  No, wait—don’t run screaming into the street! Just try to get a handle on the jargon. I have included a glossary at the end of this book with many expressions.

  Sources and Proof

  Most serious genealogists who discuss online sources want to know if they can “trust” what they find on the Internet. For example, the original Mayflower passenger list has been scanned in at Caleb Johnson’s site, www.mayflowerhistory.com. Would you consider this a primary source? A secondary source? Or simply a good clue? This is a decision you must make for yourself as you start climbing that family tree.

  Some genealogists get annoyed with those who publish their genealogy data on the Internet without citing each source in detail. Once, when I was teaching a class on how to publish genealogy on the Internet at a conference, a respected genealogist took me to task over dinner. “Webpages without supporting documentation are lies!” she insisted. “You’re telling people to publish lies, because if it’s not proven by genealogical standards, it might not be true!”

  And in 2012, many online genealogists were very concerned with the difference between evidence and proof. Websites, books, and long discussions raged across the Web about definitions and methodologies and techniques to the point almost of obsession.

  Here, dear reader, I have to admit I have a more relaxed attitude. You do have to read carefully, you do have to get as close as possible to the original record, and you do have to realize that information posted by someone on the Web may well be inaccurate. However, I do not think the information on the Web is any more or less accurate than information in your library in physical form. And you can’t let being careful get in the way of the sheer joy of finding a clue, an answer, or a fourth cousin you never knew about before.

  Please be aware that many respected professional genealogists disagree with me. I say this as a hobbyist, as someone who simply enjoys the research process and the puzzle solving involve
d with genealogy. I am not someone trying to impress anyone with my family history, and no important issue hangs on whether I have managed to handle the documents myself. If I wanted to register with the College of Arms or inherit a fortune from some estate, then the original documents would be absolutely necessary. If I just want to know what my great-grandfather did for a living, reading a census taker’s handwriting on the Internet will do. And it must be said, secondary sources are much easier to find than primary sources. The main value of these secondary sources on the Internet is in the clues as to where and when primary sources were created. Simply reading that a source such as a diary, a will, or a tax document exists can be a breakthrough.

  Some primary materials are online, however. People and institutions are scanning and transcribing original documents onto the Internet, such as the Library of Virginia and the National Park Service. Volunteers are indexing census records and marriage records at https://familysearch.org/indexing/. You can also find online a growing treasure trove of indexes of public vital records and scanned images of Government Land Office land patents (www.glorecords.blm.gov—see in Figure 1-3).

  FIGURE 1-3. You can view original land grants, such as this one for my ancestor Reason Powell, and order certified copies online. This sort of original record is invaluable in family history research.

  The online genealogist can find scanned images of census records at both the U.S. Census Bureau site (www.census.gov) and volunteer projects, such as the USGenWeb Digital Census Project (www.rootsweb.com/census/).

  Therefore, I still believe in publishing and exchanging data over the Internet as long as you remember to analyze what you find and make reasonable conclusions, not fanciful assumptions.