Genealogy eBook

8/9/2019 Genealogy eBook

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Getting Started

in Genealogy

ONLINE
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New book from Genealogical Publishing Companyhas everything you need to know about social networking

in genealogy

SOCIAL

NETWORKING

FOR

GENEALOGISTS

Drew Smith

This book describes the wide array of social networking services that are now available online andhighlights how these services can be used by genealogists to share information, photos, and videos with

family, friends, and other researchers. Each chapter guides you through a unique category of social

networking services using genealogy-related examples. From blogs and wikis to Facebook and Second

Life, author Drew Smith shows you how to incorporate these powerful new tools into your family history

research.

Specifically, youll find chapters devoted to the following social networking concepts and services:

Blogs Collaborative editing Genealogy-specific social networks General social networking (Facebook) Message boards & mailing lists Photos & video sharing Podcasts RSS feeds Sharing personal libraries Tags Virtual worlds Wikis

THE AUTHOR

Drew Smith, MLS, is an academic librarian with the University of South Florida in Tampa. An expert in

digital genealogy, with a lifelong interest in family history research, he is Director of the Federation of

Genealogical Societies and President of the Florida Genealogical Society of Tampa. He is also a regular

contributor toDigital Genealogistmagazine and is co-host of the weekly Genealogy Guys Podcast.
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AN INVITATION FROM GENEALOGICAL.COM

We invite you to subscribe to "Genealogy Pointers," the free weekly e-

newsletter produced by www.genealogical.com, the online home of Genealogical

Publishing Company (GPC) and Clearfield Company. GPC and Clearfield are the

oldest and largest publishers of genealogy reference books and CDs in the

world.

Every issue of "Genealogy Pointers" is full of special product offers and

excellent tips for tracing your roots. "Pointers" readers are also the first

people to learn about new products from our publishing companies.

To get an idea of what our free e-newsletter has to offer, you can view the

most recent issue of "Genealogy Pointers" at

www.genealogical.com/SamplePointers.pdf. The newsletter includes a terrific

listing of free websites you can use to track down living relatives, a one-

week sale on Midwestern books and CDs, an essay on some of the major

reference books in royal and noble genealogy, and even a preview of the kinds

of articles you will find on our blog, GenealogyandFamilyHistory.com.

We hope you enjoy reading the newsletter and then decide to subscribe to"Genealogy Pointers." To do so, simply CLICK HERE or go to our Home Page

(www.genealogical.com) and click on the "Genealogy Pointers" link on the left

side of the screen.

* * * * * * * * * * *
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Getting Started

in Genealogy

ONLINE

William Dollarhide


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Copyright 2006William DollarhideAll Rights Reserved

Published by Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc.3600 Clipper Mill Road, Suite 260Baltimore, Maryland 21211

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means,electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by anyinformation storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from theauthor and publisher in any manner whatsoever except in cases of briefquotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 2006924535International Standard Book Number 0-8063-1770-1

Made in the United States of America


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ContentsContents

Preface ............................................................................................................ 7

How to Start.................................................................................................... 9

Step 1. Family Interviews ..................................................................... 9Step 2. Contact Other Relatives ........................................................... 10Step 3. Get the Death Certificates ........................................................ 11Step 4. Follow up Death Records ........................................................12Step 5. Federal Census Search ............................................................. 15

Step 6. Billions of NamesFind One .................................................17Step 7. Family History Library Catalog Search ................................... 19

Where to Find More ...................................................................................... 21

Search for Book Titles on the Internet .................................................. 21Important Genealogy Websites to Bookmark ....................................... 22Lineage-Linked Sites ............................................................................ 24Genealogical Software and GEDCOM Utility ..................................... 25Find More at the National Archives...................................................... 26Regional Archives and Other Facilities ................................................ 26

Genealogy Resource Centers in the States .................................................... 29

Research Help for the Addicted .................................................................... 51

Professional Researchers ....................................................................... 51Genealogy Magazines ...........................................................................52Online Genealogy Newsletters & Blogs ............................................... 52The Top Twenty Reference Books for Genealogists ............................ 53

Master Forms ................................................................................................. 57

Family Data Sheet ................................................................................. 58

Pedigree Chart ....................................................................................... 60Family Group Sheet .............................................................................. 62

5


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Books by William Dollarhide

Published by Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., Baltimore:

Map Guide to the U.S. Federal Censuses, 17901920(with William Thorndale) (1987)

Managing a Genealogical Project (1988)

Genealogy Starter Kit (1st ed., 1993; 2nd ed., 1998);also published under the title Getting Started in Genealogy (2001)

New York State Censuses & Substitutes (2006)

Getting Started in Genealogy ONLINE (2006)

Published by Heritage Quest, North Salt Lake, Utah:

Seven Steps to a Family Tree (1995)

Map Guide to American Migration Routes, 17351815 (1997)

British Origins of American Colonists, 16291775 (1997)

Americas Best Genealogy Resource Centers(with Ronald A. Bremer) (1998)

The Census Book: A Genealogists Guide to Federal Census

Facts, Schedules, and Indexes (1999) Grow a Family Tree! (2001)

6
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PrefacePreface

7

If you ever wanted to trace your American family tree, this book will help you do it.Genealogical research is a process of discovering where written facts about your an-cestors can be found. It has been said that over half of human knowledge is knowingwhere to find it. But that was before the Internet. Now we know where to find it.

The object of this book is to reduce the process of genealogical research to its mostbasic elements, enabling the raw beginner to be brought up to speed in no more timethan it takes him to read a handful of pages. At the same time it is a one-stop resourcebook for the practicing genealogist, providing in one convenient place the names and

web addresses of essential record repositories.

This book begins with a How to Start section outlining a unique seven-step systemfor gathering facts essential for any genealogical project: interviewing family mem-bers, contacting relatives, writing for death records, following up on death records,census searching, name searching, and Family History Library searching. These arethe building blocks of genealogical research, the only prerequisites demanded of theresearcher.

A Where to Find More section follows, giving the websites of the most importantgenealogy look-up sites, lineage-linked sites, genealogical software/GEDCOM sites,

and a list of the various branches of the National Archives and their web addresses.

A comprehensive listing ofGenealogy Resource Centers in the States comes next,giving the websites of the most important genealogical collections in libraries, archives,and genealogical societies for all states, followed by a Research Help for the Ad-dicted section, with a listing of research firms, genealogy magazines/newsletters, andthe most important genealogy reference books.

In the back of the book are Master Forms used to keep track of the information gath-eredspecifically a Family Group Sheet, a Pedigree Chart, and a Family Data Sheetall designed for making photocopies as needed.

In a world choking on information, where prodigious feats of learning are requiredjust to function, where explanations turn into textbooks, isnt it a relief to find all theright stuff in just 64 pages!


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What Do You Know?

In the back of this book is a form called a PedigreeChart. Sketch a similar diagram on scratch paper ormake a photocopy of the chart and then try filling inthe blanks with names, dates, and places. Write in thenames and details using your memory only. Afterdoing this you should have a pretty good idea of whatyou know and, more importantly, what you dont

know about your ancestry.

What Do You Need to Start?

There are three things you need to know about some-one to pursue his genealogy. They are the threeWs:

1. Who (a name)2. When (a date)3. Where (a place)

Who? A full name, including a maiden name for awoman, is important. When? An approximate datefor a genealogical event (a date of birth, death, mar-riage, residence, etc.) is needed to locate a personsomewhere within a certain time period. Where?This is the most important oneit is theplace wherea person was born, married, lived, or died.

If you know all three items for an ancestor in yourpedigree you can obtain much more information. Forexample, if you know that your father was born inAlabama in 1932, you can send for a copy of his birth

certificate. (You would have to know the place hewas born to know where to write.)

Or, if you know that your grandmother died in Cali-fornia in 1984, you can get a death certificate, thena funeral record, a tombstone inscription, a cemeterysextons record, a church record, social securityrecord, and on and onall because you know theplace of death.

How to StartHow to Start

The place is the key element in doing genealogy,because that is where the records are stored today.Finding genealogical references to a person beginswhen you discover the jurisdiction where a writtenrecord was first recordeda record of birth, mar-riage, or burial, for example; or when you find evi-dence of residence, such as land records, tax lists,voter registrations, and so on.

Online: Have you tried a Google search of yourname? See what happens when you use your fatherssurname and mothers maiden name together. Ifsomeone in your family has ever done genealogicalresearch, there is a chance that you can find the re-sults of that research on the Internet. Go to:www.google.com.

The Internet is going to be your main source for col-lecting information, but it can be an overwhelmingexperience without going through some steps to re-fine your research project. Therefore, before jump-

ing into the billions of names listed on the Internet,start with these steps:

Step 1

Family Interviews

The first step is to find clues by interviewing mem-bers of your family. Start with your immediate fam-ily membersin person, by telephone, or e-mail. If

you receive and save Christmas cards from relatives,you may already have their postal addresses. Com-pare your memories with the memories of your broth-ers, sisters, parents, grandparents, or any other liv-ing relatives. You may discover that others in yourimmediate family have different stories to tell.

In a large family, for example, the experiences andmemories of the oldest child may be quite different

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10 Getting Started in Genealogy ONLINE

from those of the youngest child, yet they share thesame parents. Cousins sharing the same grandpar-ents may have completely different memories andimpressions.

Online: Can you locate phone numbers or e-mailaddresses for your close family members? How abouta White Pages look-up. Try www.msn.com fortheir free directory look-upbut there are many oth-ers. Use the key words white pages directory in aGoogle search to find them.

Interview questions. Are there family photo albums?Are there old letters sitting in a trunk somewhere?Are there any family papers of any kind? Insurancepapers? Think of things that are in your home or close

relatives homes that may give Dads name orGrandmas recipes; perhaps theres an old journalfrom the family farm business. Who ended up withGreat-Grandmothers old Bible? Has the family everbeen mentioned in a book? Maybe an old history ofJefferson County? Is there a famous person to whomyou are supposed to be related? And be sure to askeveryone in your family if they know of anyone whohas ever done genealogical research on any part ofthe family tree.

Always ask about the places where people lived.

Remember, understanding the place is the key tofinding any written evidence of a persons life. Asyou gain more information, keep a record on thePedigree Chart.

Note taking. Collect and record any information youlearn from the interviews. Start keeping notes onstandard sheets of paper that can go in a standardloose-leaf notebook. If you tend to scribble and takenotes on napkins or scraps of paper, jot things downin such a way that the notes can be copied later onto81/2" 11" sheets. Begin your note-taking with theidea that someone besides yourself may read themsomeday.

You may be better at keeping notes in your word pro-cessor. But whether you write it by hand or type theinformation into a computer file, try to organize thenotes in some logical order. These notes will proveinvaluable as you gather what you know about yourfamily. Suggestion: start a file with notes for one sur-name. Include notes to yourself about the research,when you did the work, who you contacted, etc.

Record the family data. Another form in the backof this book is a Family Group Sheet. For each mar-ried couple shown on the Pedigree Chart, a FamilyGroup Sheet should be started. Here is the place you

can identify all of the children of an ancestor.

An important rule that should be followed as you fillin the charts is to treat the brothers and sisters of yourancestors as equals. This is because they share thesame parents. Thus, they are branches of the tree thatmay lead you to a common ancestor (they all sharethe same ancestors as you). While the Pedigree Chartonly identifies direct ancestors, the Family GroupSheet is a place to identify your ancestors as parentswith all of their children.

Try to obtain the names, dates, and places for eachbrother or sister of your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on. Include the names ofspouses of these siblings too, along with their mar-riage dates and places. This is how we have successin genealogy. We identify a complete family group,with all of the facts about each member of that fam-ily. Moving back to the next generation will be mucheasier if you have more than just your direct ances-tors to use for records and sources.

The Family Group Sheet is a very important tool. By

showing the brothers and sisters of your grandfather,for example, you will have a worksheet for a familygroup. The dates and places where brothers and sis-ters were born will show the movements of the fam-ily. Again, the place is the key. By understandingwhere each child was born, married, lived, or died,you will have more places (towns, cities, counties,states, countries) to find written evidence relating tothe parentsyour ancestors.

Step 2

Contact Other Relatives

Your homework should reveal names of other rela-tives. These may be distant cousins or a great-auntyou really do not remember that well. Your cousinsare sources to you now. You need to contact them,either by writing a nice folksy long-time-no-seeletter, using your telephone, or sending off an e-mailmessage. See if a reunion is possible. See if you canvisit cousins in person, and see what kind of family


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How to Start 11

memorabilia they may have. Offer to share any in-formation you learn with them, such as copies ofphotographs of their very own grandfather (who hap-pens to be your grandfather, too).

Each generation back in time should reveal morerelatives. You are related to someone because youshare one person as a common ancestor. Identifyingrelatives, however distant, is a valuable way to addmore details about your own ancestors.

An unusual or uncommon surname (your last name)is a benefit. You can find other people with that nameusing phone books or city directories. Today the bestway to look up someone is to use the many WhitePages available on the Internet. You can create aletter or e-mail message that you copy and send outto those you can locate with that name, giving someinformation about your ancestors, and asking if theyknow of a connection to themselves. This can reallypay off. Many successful genealogical projects werestarted by just contacting people with the same name.

But if your name is Johnsonhave you consideredgoing into stamp collecting? Sorry, just kidding. Evenwith a name like Johnson, you can have success writ-ing letters and sending e-mail messages. To make

contact with a person with a surname like Johnson,add full names, time period, and an exact place whereyour own Johnson lived. Add the names of a spouse,children, parents, grandparents, etc., so that a querycan be recognized for any possible connection.

Step 3

Get the Death Certificates

After you have gathered everything you can fromyour relatives, your Pedigree Chart should have a fewmore details than when you first started. It is nowtime to send for copies of death certificates for anyof your parents, grandparents, or close relatives whohave died. If you know the state in which the persondied, this is an easy thing to do. Statewide registra-tion of vital records started during the period 19001920, and all but a few states have vital records fromabout 1910 forward. Before that, death records maybe available from a county courthouse.

Online: Go to www.vitalrec.com, where detailed in-formation about accessing death records can befound. This is one of the best free-access websitesanywhere, supported by most of the state vital sta-

tistics offices with frequent updates. All fifty statesare represented, plus the District of Columbia, andall U.S. territories or possessionswith links to vi-tal records offices in many countries around theworld.

You will be able to find the vital records office ofinterest, the date the records begin, the fee for ob-taining a birth, marriage, divorce, or death record, anda direct link to a website. Most of the state vitalrecords websites give you the means of ordering acopy of a vital record online, with secure online pay-

ment using a credit card.

You do not need to know the city or county where aperson died; however, you may have to pay extra tohave the state vital records office search a span ofyears for a person who died. Usually, knowing aname, approximate date of death, and any other in-formation you can add, such as parents, spouse, orchildren, should be enough to locate a persons deathcertificate. Generally, death records are open to thepublic if the request is from a direct descendant of

the person who died. For other relatives, there maybe restrictions based on the length of time since thedeath occurred.

The standard death certificate form for all states in-cludes important information about the deceased.Besides the cause of death, the certificate includesthe name of the persons father and maiden name ofthe mother. The exact date and place of birth anddeath should also be on the certificate. In addition,you may learn the name of the persons spouse, thefuneral director, the cemetery where the body was

interred, and the informant (the person who pro-vided the information for the death certificate). Onmore recent death certificates, you will learn thedeceaseds social security number.

Remember the rule of treating brothers and sisters ofyour ancestors as equals. That means you should at-tempt to get a death certificate for uncles, aunts,great-uncles, and great-aunts, in addition to parentsand grandparents. If you take these steps, you willlearn more information about your own ancestors.


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Why a death certificate? Because it is the starting pointfor learning an exact place of death, particularly if allyou know is the state where a person died. Even if youhave exact death information for a person from fam-

ily sources, you still need to get a copy of a death cer-tificate. You need a document that you can cite as thesource of the information, and you need more than onedocument (for every genealogical event) if you everwant to have the proof of relationship.

Next. Since there are several types of records relat-ing to a persons death, the next step is to follow upwhat you have learned from the death certificate.

Step 4

Follow up Death Records

When Grandpa died, he had very little to do with theinformation written on his death certificate. Some-one else did it. Someone else may not have knownall the facts. It is estimated that 20 percent of all deathcertificates have a mistake on them. Since the onepiece of information you can count on is the placethe person died, you need the death certificate to getthe other evidence relating to a persons death. Put-ting these other items of evidence together is how youprove something. One document, one memory, or justone source is not enough.

With a death certificate in hand, you will now havesome very specific and necessary tasks to do. Foreach death record, you need to follow up any cluesyou learn and get some other records:

Get more vital records. If the death certifi-cate gives a date and place of birth, you can send fora copy of a birth certificate. If the date of birth pre-cedes statewide registration (about 19001920), abirth record may still be available from a countycourthouse near the place the person was born. At thispoint you may have enough information about amarried couple to obtain a copy of a marriage record.And, the same office is the keeper of divorce records.

Online: Go to the www.vitalrec.com site and locatea state. Under that state will be listings of all coun-ties with the local vital statistics registrar (countyclerk, recorder, etc.), most with direct links to thelocal website.

Get a funeral record. A death certificatemay mention the name of a funeral director. You cancontact a funeral home and ask if there are recordsconcerning a persons death and funeral service.

These records may have details not found anywhereelse, e.g., you often pick up the names of relativesto the deceased not mentioned in other records. If thename of a cemetery was not mentioned on the deathcertificate, the funeral director will have this infor-mation, including the exact location of the plot.

Funeral directors are usually very easy to talk to andcooperative (they want your familys business). Toget an address and phone number for a funeral homeanywhere in the U.S. or Canada, call or visit a fu-neral director in your area and ask to use his direc-

tory of funeral homes, The National Yellow Book ofFuneral Directors. This directory gives the name,address, and phone number of every funeral home inNorth America, and it is updated every 12 months.

Online: The National Yellow Book is published byNomis Publications of Youngstown, Ohio. Nomisalso publishes a directory of active cemeteries in theU.S. (those where burials are still done). Both ofthese directories are online at the Nomis website:www.yelobk.com/directories/online_directories.

html.

Nomis wants you to register to use the website, andthey limit access to those involved in the funeral in-dustry. (It may be a stretch, but if you designate your-self as an Educational Professional you will beaccepted.) If you answer Consumer in the regis-tration form, you will be taken to another free funeralwebsite: www.funeralnet.com.This site has thesame database of funeral homes supplied by TheNational Yellow Book, plus a search for active cem-eteries and a limited supply of newspaper obituaries.

Funeral directors are well versed on other funeralhome businesses in their area, including those thatmay have changed their names since a death certifi-cate was issued. So even if the name of the funeralhome from a death certificate does not appear in anymodern listing, a funeral director in the immediatearea can probably tell you what happened to therecords of that old mortuary. (Funeral homes rarelygo out of business completely; they are more oftentaken over by another.)


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How to Start 13

With the exact modern name and place of the funeralhome, see if that business has its own website. Do aGoogle search for the name and place, e.g., JernsFuneral Bellingham. Such a search will bring up the

website itself, as well as any reference to that funeralhome from some other source (such as a genealogi-cal report that lists names of people, place of death,funeral home, cemetery, etc.).

If you can find a website for a particular funeralhome, you should be able to find its e-mail addressas well. Send off a message asking for help. If youwrite to a funeral director, include a self-addressedstamped envelope (SASE) as a courtesy, and to makeit easy for him to return something to you.

Funeral directors are also experts on the location ofcemeteries in their area, which leads to the next item:

Get a cemetery record. If the cemetery ismentioned on the death certificate or found in the fu-neral directors records, the cemetery is now a sourceof information. There may be a record at the office ofthe cemetery, and the gravestone inscription may berevealing as well. When you contact the funeral home,ask about the cemetery where the person was buriedand whether they have an address or phone numberfor the cemetery office, or at least know who might

be the keeper of records for the cemetery.

Online: check the directory of active cemeterieslisted at the Nomis site at: www.yelobk.com/directories/online_directories.html .

Or visit the www.funeralnet.comsite to find an ad-dress. With the modern name and address in hand,do a Google search to see if that cemetery office hasits own website.

Obscure inactive cemeteries, including small family

plots located on old homesteads, can be located in adatabase provided by the U.S. Geological Survey.The place names taken from the USGS topographi-cal maps and indexed in the Geographic Names In-formation System (GNIS) are the most complete andcomprehensive of any place name database. Includedare named features found on the maps, includingtowns, streams, mountains, etc.and over 100,000named cemeteries.

Go to: http://geonames.usgs.gov/. At the MainPage, click on Domestic Names and then Search

GNIS to go to the query form. All you need is thename of the cemetery and the feature (cemetery) toinitiate a search for that name.

Try a surname from your Pedigree Chart: many ru-ral cemeteries were named for the first family donat-ing land, and this database is how you find the exactlocation. From this database it is possible to print adetailed USGS topographical map of the area, includ-ing the exact latitude/longitude location of the cem-etery. Use the map to find other genealogical resourcecenters near the cemetery, i.e., the nearest church, thenearest courthouse, the nearest school, etc.

Get an obituary. A newspaper obituary wasprobably published soon after the persons death. Old

newspapers from the town where the person died areusually available in the local library. They may beon microfilm. Go to your own library and ask for theAmerican Library Directory, published by R.R.Bowker, Inc., of New York. Every library in the U.S.has this book. Get the address for the library nearestthe place your subject died and write a letter request-ing a copy of that persons obituary from a localnewspaper. Provide the full name, date of death, andplace of death (from the death certificate). Most li-braries will do this type of look-up for you, but if not,they may provide you with the names of local re-

searchers who will do the work for a fee.

Online: A special website that provides direct linksto libraries is the Libweb site (Library Servers viaWWW) http://lists.webjunction.org/libweb/ .Mostlibrary websites have a place to e-mail questions tothem.

There are many old obituaries extracted and indexedon the Internet. If you believe your subject died inOregon, try a Google search using the key wordsobituary index Oregon to see what comes up.(Google says there are 387,000 entries meeting thatkey word criteria.) Also, look for websites for news-papers; many include obituaries, although most ofthese cover only a short time in the recent past.

Get a Social Security record. If a persondied within the last 30 years or so, the death certifi-cate includes his social security number. If so, youare in luck. You can immediately send for a copy ofthe deceaseds original application for a social secu-rity card, called a form SS-5. For any person who was


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employed from 1936 forward, your chances of get-ting this record are very good. And you will be re-warded with a great genealogical document.

The application was filled out by the person and in-cludes his own signature. The SS-5 gives the personsname, name of father, maiden name of mother, dateand place of birth, address at time of application,occupation, and name and address of an employer.This is primary evidence because it was written bythe person himself.

Online: The Social Security Administration providesan index to deaths that is open to the public. TheSocial Security Death Index (SSDI) is updated quar-terly and includes the name of nearly every person

in America who died since 1962, the year SSA be-gan computerizing its records. All deaths reported toSSA are included, but there are a few omissions dueto the handling of social security accounts for sur-viving spouses or for people who never had a socialsecurity number. The SSDI is online at severalwebsites. One with free access is available at theRootsWeb site: http://ssdi.genealogy.rootsweb.com/.

The search form at this site includes a persons firstname, middle name(s), last name, and social secu-

rity number. The surname search can be modified toinclude soundex spellings, an indexing system thatgroups names by their sound rather than exact spell-ing, e.g., Johnson, Jonsen, Jonnson, etc. The searchdoes not require the social security number and canbe done just for the surname. In fact, this is the bestway to find out the social security number for a per-son who died.

Any hit for a deceased person who looks like yoursubject allows you to click on SS-5 letter, whichcreates a custom letter to the Social Security Admin-

istration asking for a copy of form SS-5 for the se-lected person. Copy the letter to a word processor fileand you have the means of printing and mailing theletter to the correct SSA address. The fee for obtain-ing the SS-5 is mentioned in the letter.

Even if your subject does not appear in the SSDIbecause the date of death was before 1962, the onlineindex at the RootsWeb site can be useful for creat-ing the letter asking for a copy of the SS-5 form. Usethe name of any deceased person to get the letter, then

modify the letter to be specific to your subject. Theletter also can be used to request a copy of the SS-5for a person for whom you do not have a social se-curity number. In such cases, you need to add as

much information about the person as possible: dateand place of birth, date and place of death, names ofparents, etc.

Review. After you have a death certificate, youshould follow up and obtain a copy of the deceasedpersons birth certificate, and possibly marriage anddivorce records, as well as a funeral record, cemeteryrecord, newspaper obituary, and a social security SS-5 record. For any person who died during the 20thcentury, the chances are very good you can obtain allof these follow-up records. From each document you

obtain, you will learn something new about the per-son. And you will be gathering primary genealogi-cal records that will prove every statement you makeon a Pedigree Chart or Family Group Sheet.

Piles of paper. As you receive documents throughthe mail, you need to file them (or copies of them)along with your research notes in a notebook. Onenotebook can be organized by the surname of theancestor, and as more records are added you canseparate the notes and documents by the placespeople lived. For example, you could have one note-book on the Johnson ancestors (plus people whomarried into the Johnson family, collateral ancestors,and even suspicious people). Then, separate the IowaJohnson notes in one group, the Kansas Johnsonnotes in another group, and so on. If you assign pagenumbers to your notes, such as Johnson KS-1, KS-2, KS-3, and so on, you will have a source codethat can be used on the Family Group Sheet.

Your note collection can include references to 1)ancestors(parents, grandparents, great-grandparents,

etc.); 2) collaterals (siblings and their spouses anddescendants); and 3) suspicious people (those whohave the right name, time period, and place of resi-dence, but no proof of relationship). Keep all threetypes together in the notes collection, separated bythe place where the record originated. From the notescollection you will be able to add names, dates, andplaces to the Pedigree Charts and Family GroupSheets. Refer to the backside of the Family GroupSheet form at the back of this book to see how Ref-erences can be identified.


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How to Start 15

If you want to reduce the manual paper drudgery, tryscanning the image of each document, adding thepicture file to your word processor textual notes col-lection. But the electronic files need the same orga-

nizational attention to source codes for each pageof notes. And the original paper documents yougather need to be put in a safe place.

Next. You will have success in finding primary docu-ments for your immediate families. And you will becollecting the records that may give a place where aperson was born, lived, married, divorced, or died.Often the place indicated is the state and not thecounty. Therefore, the next step is to find the exactplace where a person lived from the federal censuses.

Step 5

Federal Census Search

You can now build on the information you have gath-ered so far, such as an obituary that says your grand-father was born in Alabama, or a place of birth on adeath certificate that says your great-aunt was bornin New Jersey. The federal census is how you findthe name of the county in Alabama and New Jerseyin which the events occurred.

To apportion the U.S. House of Representatives, theUnited States Constitution has a provision that a na-tionwide census of the population shall be taken ev-ery ten years. This provision has become a boon forgenealogists, because the first five censuses (1790through 1840) not only counted the population, theylisted the names of the heads of households living inevery state.

Beginning in 1850, the federal census was taken bylisting the names ofevery memberof a household,making the federal census schedules a tremendoussource for finding families living in America. The oldcensus name lists survive for all censuses except1890 (which was destroyed in a fire) and certainstates for the period 17901820. Complete survivingmanuscripts of the censuses, 18301930, are now lo-cated at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.A federal law protects the privacy of any personnamed in a census for a period of 72 years; as a re-sult, the latest federal census open to the public is the1930 census.

The many thousands of original population schedulesfrom the 1790 through 1930 censuses have beenmicrofilmed and made available to archives, librar-ies, or individuals. Census records have become a

major source for locating the place where an ances-tor lived and, for census years after 1840, learningabout his date and place of birth, occupation, personalwealth, education, spouse, children, hired hands, andeven immigration information. From 1880 on, thecensus schedules list the names of each member ofa family with their relationship to the head of thehousehold.

You may be able to look at these microfilmed cen-sus lists at a library near you; however, the best placeto look is at one of the regional branches of the Na-

tional Archives, which have microfilms for all sur-viving censuses from 1790 through 1930. (Find thesefacilities at the www.archives.gov/locations/website.) A few other national library collectionshave all federal censuses, 17901930, on microfilm,such as the Family History Library in Salt Lake City,the Mid-Continent Library in Independence, Mis-souri, and the Allen County Public Library in FortWayne, Indiana. All state libraries/archives havecomplete sets of census microfilms for their state, andmany have sizeable collections for surrounding statesas well. Larger city libraries may have at least their

states census microfilms.

If you are near one of the facilities with all censusmicrofilms, the starting point is the 1920 census,which has a unique soundex index to every head ofhousehold and for all states and territories. (The 1930census is online, but for off line research, the 1930does not have a complete soundex index like the1920.)

A soundex index is a method of indexing names byremoving extra letters from a name that sound alike,as well as double letters and all vowels, and thencoding the hard sounds of the remaining letters. Thisindexing system allows you to find a person in thecensus whose surname can be spelled different ways.The soundex index was originally prepared by theWPA in the 1940s on 3" 5" cards, one for each headof household, and lists every member of the house-hold by name. The cards now appear one after an-other on a roll of microfilm, organized by state andalphabetically by the soundex code. If any of yourancestors was living in the U.S. in 1920, the soundex


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index is the way to find them on a census page. The1880, 1900, 1910, 1920, and 1930 censuses eachhave a soundex index, all of which are finding tools.Of these, only the 1900 and 1920 are complete in-

dexes for every household in America.

Before the advent of online census indexes, manycomputerized name indexes to censuses were pub-lished in books. In fact, it was these printed censusindexes that became the basis for most of the censusindexes online today. These book indexes are foundin the same libraries and archives as the census mi-crofilms. Published statewide census indexes existnow for the period 17901860 for all states; and in-dexes for 1870 are partially complete. Since thesesoundex and printed indexes are organized on a state-

wide basis, you can use them to focus your searchfor a surname or narrow your search down to a spe-cific county of residence. All census schedules from1790 to 1930 are organized by the counties withineach state or territory.

There are many details about families that can belearned from the census schedules, but the most im-portant aspect of census searching is the ability tofind precisely the place on the ground where some-one lived. And as you begin to learn the residenceswhere your ancestors lived, you will open the door

to many more genealogical sources related to thatplace.

Online: The scanned images of every page of allfederal censuses, 17901930, are online at severalsites on the Internet. The most complete, and with themost every-name indexes, are those at thewww.ancestry.comcommercial site. A subscription(upwards of $200/year) is required to accessAncestrys records and images, but they do offer a14-day trial membership for free.

Even without a subscription, the Home Page for theAncestry site has a search form for finding names ofpeople in their various database collections. (Ances-try says they have over 4 billion names.) Use thisform to search for a single person and the results willshow hits from all of the censuses, 17901930. Butthe results will also include names from many otherdatabases.

You can do a search for a name in the entire data-base of censuses, 17901930, which can be useful if

the name is uncommon. But for a name like JamesJohnson, the name list will be endless. Therefore, itis usually more efficient to search each census yearseparately, where limits to a persons approximate

date of birth will help narrow down the search.

For focused census searches, click on the Searchtab at the top of the Ancestry Home Page screen. Thiswill bring up the categories of databases available,including US Federal Census. Go to the secondpart of the census search screen, Search a SpecificU.S. Federal Census by Year. After a search andsubsequent list of names, each item can be reviewedin more detail, including a link to the image of thecensus page on which a name appears. But to lookat an individual record or image from the lists of

names, Ancestry will try to sell you a subscriptionfirst.

The http://heritagequestonline.com/site is alsocomplete for all federal censuses, 17901930. Nameindexes included at HeritageQuest Online are onlyfor the heads of households for most years, but theblack and white images of every census page areoften clearer and easier to read than the Ancestrygrayscale set. This site is only accessible at a sub-scribing library or institutionthere are no individualsubscriptions. But there are many subscribing librar-

ies that allow their patrons (those with a library card)to access the site remotely. Check with your locallibrary to see if they subscribe to the HeritageQuestOnline databases and whether that library will allowremote access to it.

A compete searchable 1880 federal census is onlineat the www.familysearch.org site. This is thewebsite for the Family History Library in Salt LakeCity, which will be described later.

There are other federal censuses online at various

RootsWeb sites. To find one, go to the mainRootsWeb page at www.rootsweb.com. Click onWebsites. Or do a Google search for a specific stateand year, such as 1860 census online Iowa.

There are two very useful websites designed just forfinding census records online. The first, www.census-online.com, gives a list by state of everycounty, and any countywide census database can beaccessed with a direct link from this site. The otherwebsite, www.censusfinder.com, does the same


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How to Start 17

thing in a slightly different format. Use both sites tofind a countywide census extraction online. The listsare nearly the same, but since the sites are updatedat different times, see what is new at each.

Your census searching will be successful. Startingwith the 1930 census you will find your ancestors andyou will be led to where they lived at the time of the1920 census. Keep going and find your families asfar back as possible. Several generations of your an-cestry can be identified using census records alone.

Piles of paper. Since the census images are onlineat the Ancestry.com and HeritageQuest Online sites,you can make copies of these pages, either electroni-cally as picture files or directly to your printer. Iden-

tify the copies by assigning a page number, addingthem to your notes collection, and separating themby surname and place. Census records will add morepaper to your collection than any other resource, sotry not to place them on the pile; think of a means ofkeeping them in notebooks where they can be revis-ited as needed.

Step 6

Billions of NamesFind OneSurfing the net to retrieve genealogical data startswith two important look-up websites designed spe-cifically for initial genealogical research, with liter-ally billions of names. Here are the two main look-up services which allow you to search for a personby name, date, and place:

www.familysearch.org. This is theHome Page of the Family History Library (FHL)website. A name search here takes you through the

combined indexes of six major databases, and thesearches can be done using several distinguishingcriteria, i.e., exact spelling of a name or soundexspelling, date of birth or death, place of birth or death,and more.

If the surname is uncommon, searching for just apersons last name will be rewarding. But for morecommon surnames, you will be inundated with un-known people. You can test this by going to the FHLHome Page and searching for James Johnson. If youtype just the first and last name and start the search,

you will be presented with an endless list of peoplewith the name James Johnson worldwide, perhaps asmany as 25,000 entries.

But try the search again by adding an event (birth,death, etc.), a range of years for the event, and a place(U.S. state) of the event, and the list can narrow toonly a few hundred entries. Therefore, a shotgunapproach to searching the Internet in the look-updatabases still needs to be oriented to the NameDatePlace criteria.

Here are the major databases included in the Fam-ily-Search look-up:

Ancestral File. A collection of linked fami-

lies, some with several generations, submitted bypeople from all over the world. A hit on a personlisted here allows you to locate the name and ad-dress of the person who submitted the information.

1880 Federal Census. An every-name indexand extraction of the census which can be dis-played on the screen for one individual or one fam-ily exactly the way the names appeared on theoriginal handwritten census schedules. A familyfound here is hot-linked to the Ancestry.com siteand the same page (scanned image) of the census

schedule. (No membership in Ancestry.com is re-quired if the link starts at the FHL FamilySearchsite.)

1881 Canadian Census. An every-name ex-traction for all Canadian provinces and territories.

International Genealogy Index. A databaseof names, dates, and residences of people extractedfrom a myriad of local resources, such as Euro-pean parish records, American vital records, courtrecords, etc. The IGI has over 250 million entriesfor the U.S. and Canada alone, and at least thatmany for all other countries.

Pedigree Resource File. A database contain-ing over 105 million names online, with recordsthat have been submitted by individuals throughthe FamilySearch Internet Genealogy Service. Thisonline index includes individual records withevents, parent information, and submitter informa-tion. The compact disc version (discs 1105) of thePedigree Resource File contains more family in-


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formation, plus many records with notes andsources (but not all).

Social Security Death Index (SSDI), from the

Social Security Administration. This version of theSSDI (unlike the one at the RootsWeb site men-tioned in Step 4) is not linked to a SS-5 Letter,but having the names integrated into the otherdatabases is useful.

Searching the FamilySearch site is going to revealmore possible ancestors and collaterals. You will findthat many of the Ancestral File and Pedigree Re-source File entries are names submitted by other ge-nealogists, and rarely are sources cited for the infor-mation they submitted. You cannot extend your

pedigree without documentation that proves a rela-tionship, and you are now responsible for confirm-ing any relationships asserted in these files, either bycontacting the submitter or repeating the researchthey did to arrive at the relationships.

www.ancestry.com. Based on the numberof visits, Ancestry ranks in the top ten of any websitein the world. And with over one million paid sub-scribers, it is one of the most successful commercialsites of any kind. An active genealogist is destinedto sign up for an Ancestry membership because the

databases available are so unique and important togenealogical research.

Your first visit to the Ancestry site was to search thefederal censuses. This time go to the Home Pagesearch. Do a search for every ancestor on your Pedi-gree Chart and every member of a family from yourFamily Group Sheets. Be specific to a name, date,and place to narrow down the number of names thatwill appear on the hit list.

Another approach is to browse the record categories.

Within each category a name search can be done. Anabbreviated category list includes the following: Census

-US Federal Census-UK Census Collection-more . . .

Birth, Marriage & Death

-Social Security Death Index-Obituary Collection-more . . .

Trees & Community

-OneWorldTreeSM

-Message Boards-more . . .

Immigration Records

-New York Passenger Lists-Passenger & Immigration Lists-more . . .

Family Facts

-Surname Distribution-Place of Origin-more . . .

Military

-WWI Draft Registration Cards-Civil War Service Records-more . . .

Directories & Member Lists

-New York City Directory, 1890-Early UK and US Directories

-more . . . Family & Local Histories-AGBI-Slave Narratives-more . . .

Newspapers & Periodicals

-Historical Newspaper Collection-Periodical Source Index-more . . .

Court, Land & Probate

-Texas Land Title Abstracts-Middlesex, MA Probate Index-more . . .

Reference & Finding Aids-Genealogical Library Master Index-Ancestry Map Center-more . . .

Remember, a membership is not required to searchthe databases for the names, dates, and places of yourancestors. In any search the resulting list of namescan be viewed, but access to the records or imagesrequires a subscription. So it is possible to survey thenames of interest from the Ancestry site and thendecide if a membership is warranted.

After your census searches and those in the databasesat FamilySearch.com and Ancestry.com, you willhave collected more paper than you thought possible.You should have a pretty good handle on the names,dates, and places of every person on your PedigreeChart. Extend these searches to every member of afamily and you will be well on your way to a fullgenealogical presentation through at least four gen-erations, perhaps more.


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How to Start 19

Next. Since the county of residence is the most im-portant place for finding more information, the nextstep is to find out what resources are available to youfrom a U.S. county. The best place resources (for the

world) are found at a library in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Step 7

Family History LibraryCatalog Search

Searching census records and the main look-up siteswill provide precise information about a place of resi-dence for a person, particularly the name of a county

rather than just the name of the state. It is now timeto start a location search for more genealogical in-formation in that county.

There are 3,141 counties in the United States, andhistorically, public services at the county level are themost frequently used. As a result, a researcher willdiscover that every county courthouse in America isan untapped treasure chest of information about thepeople who lived in that county.

Many of these county courthouse records are on mi-

crofilm at the Family History Library (FHL) in SaltLake City, Utah. Operated by The Church of JesusChrist of Latter-day Saints, this library is open tothe public, and the array of genealogical resourcesfound there can only be described as astonishing.In addition to nearly a half-million books on theirshelves, the equivalent of 6 million 250-page bookscan be found in over 2.5 million rolls of microfilm.These resources may include published histories fora county; original court records on microfilm; birth,death, and marriage records; censuses and tax lists;and a whole range of source material currentlyavailable.

Online: Go to: www.familysearch.org. This is theHome Page for the Family History Library, and it isthe same place you visited earlier for a name searchin the FHL databases. This time click on the tab forLibrary, then Family History Library Catalog.Select the Place Search option, which gives a querybox to type the name of a place. Type the name of astate first. This will take you to an alphabetical listof topics for that state, including Almanacs, Archives,

Bible Records, Bibliographies, Business Records,Cemeteries, Censuses, and so on. At any state topiclist you will note that the microfilmed statewide fed-eral censuses are listed in detail, but you may dis-

cover that there were state censuses taken in that stateas well. (For example, check New York, which hasstate censuses from 1825 to 1925, all available onmicrofilm.)

These topics relate to statewide records, so to lookat a list of topics for one county of that state, clickon View Related Places in the top right hand cor-ner of the state topic screen. This will present an al-phabetical list of the counties of that state. Select acounty and you will be presented with a topic list forthat county.

Here is the place to determine which county recordshave been microfilmed, or perhaps extracted, ab-stracted, or indexed in books. Are there birth records?How about land and property records? Maybe thereis a published history of the county. Look for re-sources that may include the name of your ancestor.Virtually all of the topics contain name lists, such astax lists, voters registrations, military lists, and vi-tal records. Make a note of those that look like a placeto continue looking for evidence of your ancestor inthat county. Think of it as a to do list.

Do this survey for every ancestor on your PedigreeChart and for every member of a family shown onyour Family Group Sheets. Some will be from thesame county, but to be thorough, make a list of ev-ery county identified as a place of an event from yourFamily Group Sheets.

Even if a person lived in a county for just a few years,the chances are very good that his name is writtendown in a courthouse record of some kind. For ex-

ample, a persons birth, marriage, or death recordmay be there. If a person ever bought land there willbe a deed record in the courthouse. In addition, thereare tax lists, voters registrations, registered cattlebrands, licenses to engage in business or service,military lists, civil court records, or probate records,such as wills, estate papers, and administrations.

Using the online FHL catalog, you can call up a listof any books, maps, periodicals, or microfilm pub-lications containing genealogical information for


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any state, territory, county, or town of the UnitedStates; or for countries all over the world. Outsidethe courthouse, knowing the right county of resi-dence narrows the search for cemeteries, libraries,

museums, genealogical societies, and other placeswhere genealogical information is available aboutpast county residents.

Nearly all of the resources are available on interli-brary loan, and anyone can make use of a local Fam-ily History Center to borrow rolls of microfilm. Tolocate one near you, go to the link at the FHL siteHome Page for Family History Centers.

These are the seven steps in Getting Started inGe-nealogy Online. This is how you start a genealogi-cal project. You will note that there is a thread that

connects each step: theplace where an ancestor lived.It is the most important ingredient needed to pursueyour genealogy because the place is where recordsare stored today.

You should repeat the seven steps each time you iden-tify a new ancestor. For example, when you discovera new name, go back to your relatives for theirmemories. The new information may jog an oldmemory that did not surface the first time around.

All I did was go on the Internet and ask for a printout of the Johnson Family.


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After going through the seven steps for GettingStarted in Genealogy Online there will still be holeson your Pedigree Chart. And your Family GroupSheets will also need more details for each memberof a family. The FHL catalog search (Step 7) was asurvey of the places of residence for your ancestors,mainly as a means of learning what records have beenpublished in books or are available on microfilm atthe Family History Library. With the to do list com-

piled from your FHL catalog search, you can nowbegin a systematic search for these same resourcesthat may be online.

To be successful in finding more genealogical infor-mation, most online searches should still be relatedto the NameDatePlace criteria. To do this, themost important genealogical look-up sites are iden-tified below.

But first, your to do list may include several pub-lished books, and there are many ways of finding

almost any historical or genealogical book titleonline.

Search for Book Titleson the Internet

If you want to find information about a particularbook, such as a county history, an extraction of vitalrecords, a census index, etc., you can get the exacttitle of the book from your FHL catalog search. Youcan search for a specific title using several genericbrowsers and other genealogical look-up browserswith great success. You also can search some of themost important library collections through theironline library catalogs. Here are the best websites onthe Internet for finding genealogical publications:

www.google.com. The search engine atGoogle is the worlds most used browser, and for

good reason: the number of search hits is aboutdouble that of any other browser. In the Googlesearch box, type in the full title of a book and youwill find it. In fact, you may find it thousands oftimes. Add the word online to the search criteriaand see what happens. Enclosing the title in quotes,e.g., Genealogy and History of MontgomeryCounty, New York, limits the first hits to that exactphrase. Without the quotes, you will get thousands

of added hits for anything in which one or more ofthe words are relevant. The Google Advanced Searchallows for more creative searching, such as omittingcertain words, specifying must words or phrases, orusing words from a title only.

www.barnesandnoble.com. Barnesand Noble is the worlds largest bookseller. Newbooks are listed, but also used books available fromaffiliate sellers. Search for any title or author to seeif you get a hit.

www.amazon.com. Virtually every bookin print or recently out-of-print can be found atAmazon.com. You can search by author or title, andthe resulting list is well presented. This is also a goodplace to find a bargain price for a used book.

www.ebay.com. eBay has a growing num-ber of auctions under the category Everything Else> Genealogy. Often, obscure genealogy titles can befound here. There may be a greater number of CD-ROM publications at bargain basement prices here

than anywhere else, particularly for CDs of censusindexes, histories, and vital records indexes. Key-word searching is possible for any title, but refine thesearch to include titles and descriptions. If theseller provided an index to names in a book (manydo), a current auction with a detailed book descrip-tion and indexed names can be found using the key-word search (advanced).

21

Where to Find MoreWhere to Find More


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www.genealogical.com. This is thewebsite of the Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc.(GPC), of Baltimore, Maryland, the largest publisherof genealogical titles in America. GPC is responsible

for many of the primary research publications neededby genealogists. A recent addition to their website isa name search to some 30 million names indexedfrom GPCs 2,000 books and CDs.

www.godfrey.org/index.htm. This isthe Home Page of the Godfrey Memorial Library ofMiddletown, Connecticut. In addition to a uniqueAmerican genealogy collection, fully catalogedonline, this library has annual memberships (for un-der $40.00), allowing anyone remote access to spe-cial online resources not normally accessible outside

of a library. Included are these library-only onlinedatabases:

OCLC Worldcat. Quickly find any book aboutyour family among 58 million titles held by 30,000+libraries around the world. The premier library onlinecatalog.

Early American Newspapers (Readex). Searchevery word of these digital copies of Americasearliest newspapers. Narrow your search to justmarriage notices or obituaries. Easy to search, print,or save.

More Newspapers. Separate collections of morethan 3,000 historic newspapers from across the U.S.,Canada, the UK, and the world. Quickly find obituar-ies, articles, and newspaper data of all types, witharticles dating back as far as the 1700s.

Marquis Whos Who. Search more than 1.2million biographical sketches including more than 3million spouses, parents, children. Invaluable genea-logical tool.

Columbia World Gazetteer. Quickly gatherbackground information on any place in the world.

Major cities or obscure villages, this source will giveyou the background information you need. Ideal forquickly identifying the county for every city.

www.newenglandancestors.org. Thisis the Home Page of the New England HistoricGe-nealogical Society of Boston, Massachusetts. Thelibrary has 5,280 feet (one mile) of shelves withbooks, manuscripts, and original family histories, andtheir online catalog at this site is the place to search.For people with New England ancestry, this site is amust. Name searches are available at the Home Page.

www.acpl.lib.in.us/genealogy/index.html. This is the Genealogy page forthe Allen CountyPublic Library (ACPL) of FortWayne, Indiana. The ACPL Historical Genealogy De-

partment includes the largest number of printedcounty histories of any American library, from vir-tually all counties of the U.S. Search their onlinecatalog to find one. The department also holds thelargest English-language genealogy and local historyperiodical collection in the world, with more than5,100 current subscriptions and nearly 10,000 totaltitles as far back as 1847. Individual names and ar-ticles may be accessed through the PERiodicalSource Index (PERSI), compiled by the departmentstaff. PERSI is a featured online database at both theAncestry.com and HeritageQuest Online sites. It has

become the primary source for digging up genealogi-cal information published in periodicalsname lists,cemetery extractions, military lists, etc., most ofwhich have never been published anywhere else.

http://catalog.loc.gov/. This is the onlinecatalog page for the Library of Congress in Wash-ington, D.C. It would stand to reason that the largestlibrary in the world would have an excellent geneal-ogy collection. The catalog search enables you to finda book title by subject or author.

http://catnyp.nypl.org/. This is CATNYP,the online catalog of The New York Public Library,New York City. Publications are easy to locate here.

www.dar.org/library/onlinlib.cfm.This is the online catalog of the DAR Library (Na-tional Society, Daughters of the American Revolu-tion) in Washington, D.C. What makes the DAR li-brary unique is the thousands of submittedmanuscripts from local DAR research teams allacross the country, including cemetery transcripts,abstracted court records, vital records, and military

lists. Locality searching here may bring up recordsfound nowhere else.

Important GenealogyWebsites to Bookmark

The FHL catalog search was the start for finding re-sources relating to a state or county in the U.S., andthe to do list you compiled can now be used to see


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Where to Find More 23

if any of these resources are available as online da-tabases. There are several important websites whereyou can start this search, including Linkpendium,Cyndis List, and RootsWeb.

For example, if you are seeking something about thehistory of Montgomery County, New York, the ex-act title of a book is not necessary. Using the key-words History Montgomery County New York, oneof the first Google hits listed will be the following:

Linkpendium > Genealogy > USA > New York >

Montgomery County. 1771 Tryon County New York(Source: Olive Tree Genealogy) Family Files Sur-names Department of History and Archives; Migrationsthrough Montgomery County . . .

Linkpendium turns out to be a powerful search en-gine for genealogical subjects. And since many of theGoogle search results will refer to the Linkpendiumsite, why not go there next?

www.linkpendium.com. This site has aPlain Jane look about it. But there is nothing plainabout a site that offers direct links to over 3.5 mil-lion websiteslinks that lead you to websites spe-cific to one surname; or links to a U.S. locality wheredetailed genealogical information is available. http:/

/wikipedia.org/ (English) defines the word compen-dium as a concise yet comprehensive compilationof a body of knowledge. Adding link is an aptdescription of this remarkable compendium of thebody of genealogical knowledge. In less than twoyears, Linkpendium has surpassed the standard ge-nealogy site locator (Cyndis List), with six times thenumber of websites and a simple concept of reduc-ing all searches to just two categories: find a surnameor find a place.

For example, at the Home Page, click on Localities:

USA to see the alphabetical list of states. Click onany state to see the first item, Statewide Resources,followed by a county list. Click on a county to seean excellent array of resources for that county, alllinked to a specific website. A typical county list ofresources may include the following:

Linkpendium > Genealogy > USA > Iowa > Union

County: Biographies, Oral Histories, Diaries, Memoirs,

Genealogies, Correspondence

-Creston GEDCOM Index

-Union County Biographies (Source: U.S.Biographies Project)

-Union County GEDCOM Index Cemeteries

-Cemeteries of Union County (Source: Interment.net)-Cemetery Maps-Gravestone Photo Project (Source: USGenWeb)-The Political Graveyard (Source: The PoliticalGraveyard)

-Union County Iowa Cemetery Transcription &Photo Project (Source: The American History andGenealogy Project)

-Union County Cemeteries (Source: ePodunk)-Union County Cemeteries (Source: KimsCemeteries of the United States)

-Union County Cemetery List (Source: Find AGrave)

-WPA Graves Registration Survey Union County Census Records and Indexes (13) Directories

-City Directories: Southern Midwest, 18821898includes Creston (Source: Genealogical Publish-ing Company and Clearfield Company)

-Creston Directory 1889 (Source: Explore Ances-try for free)

-Dodge Township 1876 Directory (Source: KinyonDigital Library)

-more directories History

-1876 History of Union County (Source: Kinyon

Digital Library)-National Register of Historic Places-Union County (Source: Wikipedia)-Tornados, Blizzards, Floods, Worlds Fairs andother events

Introduction and Guides

-Cyndis List of Iowa locality links (Source:Cyndis List of Genealogy Sites on the Internet)

-Union County Research Guide Iowa Genealogi-cal Society

-Union County Resources (Source: RootsWeb)-Union Genealogy (Source: GenDir)

And there are more items under these categories: Land Records Libraries, Museums, Archives

-Family History Library Holdings (Source: FamilyHistory Library)

-Union County Libraries (Source: Public LibrariesLibrary Directory)

-USGenWeb Archives (Source: USGenWeb) Mailing Lists and Message Boards Maps and Gazetteers (15) Military Records and Histories Newspaper Records


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Obituaries and Funeral Home Records Photographs, Postcards, Historical Images Projects Surnames Web sites, obituaries, biographies,

and other material specific to a surname (33) Transportation and Industry Vital Records

In the above list of websites, note that there are ref-erences to Cyndis List of localities, Family HistoryLibrary topics for a county, RootsWeb sites,USGenWeb sites, and ePodunk county sites. All ofthese references are to major look-up sites in theirown right. Thus, Linkpendium has combined all ofthe Webs major genealogical locator services intoone compendium. Linkpendium has become a start-ing point to find specialized surname and localitysites on the Internet.

www.cyndislist.com/. This is CyndisList ofGenealogy Sites on the Internet,the standardlook-up website for genealogical information since1996. Searching Cyndis List may prove useful forcertain categories that cannot be placed in either asurname or locality focus. And Cyndis List is inter-national in scope, with thousands of links to websitesfocused on genealogy in European countries. Be-cause it is organized by category rather than surname/place, Cyndis List offers several different categorylists, or indexes

Main Category Index. An alphabetical listing bysubject (Acadian, Cajun & Creole, Adoption, Africa,African-American, Asia & The Pacific, Australia, Aus-tria / sterreich, and so on). Topical Category Index. (Localities, Help fromOthers, Computers and the Internet, Marketplace, Eth-nic Groups & People, Immigration, Emigration, andMigration, and so on). Alphabetical Category Index. (Aberdeenshire,Acadian, Cajun & Creole, Adoption, Africa, African-American, Alabama, Alaska, and so on).

No Frills Category Index. An alphabetical list-ing with no added notes.

From the Main Category Index, here is an exampleof the organization for the United States Index:

General U.S. Sites Library of Congress National Archives Social Security U.S. Census U.S. Civil War ~ War for Southern Independence U.S. Courthouses

U.S. History U.S. HistoryThe Great Depression U.S. HistoryLewis & Clark U.S. Military U.S.State Level Records Repositories: State

Libraries, Archives, Genealogical & HistoricalSocieties

U.S.Vital Records

www.rootsweb.com/. This is the HomePage for RootsWeb, an integrated system of websitesfor presenting genealogical databases online. Billedas the oldest and largest free genealogy site,RootsWeb is now owned and operated by Ancestry,Inc. RootsWeb is also the host for The USGenWebProject (www.usgenweb.org). The concept of bothof these systems is to provide locality websites, first

for the entire U.S., then by state, and within eachstate, a website for each county. With the goal of digi-tizing genealogical name lists, censuses, histories,vital records, and anything else that can be of valueto genealogists, both systems are manned by volun-teers. Thus, the databases vary from county to county,based on the time and interest of the volunteers ineach. But overall, all of the RootsWeb/GenWeb sitesare places where genealogy gets easier, because thereare many online databases that can be searched. Startat the RootsWeb Home Page to review the organiza-tion. Click on Websites to see the categories, firstfor surnames and second for localities. It should bepointed out that a search in either Linkpendium orCyndis List will directly link to all of the RootsWeb/GenWeb locality databases, but going to RootsWebor GenWeb directly to do the search will bring up thelatest entries. The RootsWeb/GenWeb websites areupdated frequently, and some of the latest databasesmay not be included in the main look-up lists yet.

Lineage-Linked Sites

A lineage-linked database website is a place wheregenealogists can publish their pedigrees into a largedatabase online. The names, dates, places, and rela-tionships/lineages for each tree are prepared bysubmitters in a special electronic format calledGEDCOM (GEnealogical Data COMmunication),generated by a genealogical software system.

The pedigree details from a GEDCOM file are thenmerged with linked lineages that have been submit-


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ted by others. Some sophistication is used by the sys-tem to determine if a newly submitted person is thesame as one already in the database. A checklist ofname spelling, date of birth, place of birth, name of

spouse, date of marriage, place of marriage, names ofparents, and names of children is done to ensure thematch is correct. When this happens, one submittermay gain from information submitted by anotheronewho had more names, links, or extended pedigrees.This is an ideal way to share your work and makecontact with cousins you never knew about.

However, all of the data is subject to confirmation,because it depends on the veracity of the submittedinformation. The main problem is that many of thepedigree links come from untrustworthy published

sources, such as printed family histories. There aremany published genealogies with blatant errors, yetthey are often copied by genealogists as the truth.If more than one genealogist submits an identical, butincorrect, pedigree, there is no way for the lineage-linked system to know if the information is corrector not. As a result, all of the links found in one ofthe lineage-linked databases need to be taken as pos-sible rather than the truth. In every case youshould confirm the information and the sources andcontact the submitter, or repeat the research done bythe person who submitted the information.

The best way to access one of the linked lineage sitesis to start at Cyndis List (www.cyndislist.com/).Goto the Main Category Index and find the categoryDatabasesLineage-Linked, which includes thefollowing direct links:

Ancestry.comAncestry World Tree. Morethan 400,000,000 names. A free database that allowspeople to publicly share their family trees with otherresearchers. The database comes from earlier hand-entered data (some 2530 years old) rather than from

recent GEDCOM file submissions. (No membershiprequired to access this database.)

Ancestry.comOneWorldTreeSM

. This data-base gathers family trees and family historyrecords for millions of people, analyzes the birth,death, and marriage data, and then displays themost probable matches for your ancestors. Thedata mostly comes from GEDCOM files submit-ted by Ancestry members. (No membership re-quired to access this database.)

FamilySearch Internet Genealogy ServiceSearch for Ancestors. The searchable databases atthe Family History Librarys Home Page include thefollowing lineage-linked databases:

Pedigree Resource File. Family history files thathave been submitted by registered users of theFamilySearch Internet Genealogy Service.

Ancestral File. Pre-GEDCOM, includes datahand-entered mostly by LDS members.

International Genealogical Index. Links may beto the parents of a person, but more often links areto a spouse only. Extensive coverage from Euro-pean sources.

GenServFamily History. Over 22,000,000names in 15,500+ GEDCOM databases.

OneGreatFamily. Provides its members with theability to collaborate and build a worldwide geneal-ogy database. Information entered by members canbe matched and merged with that of other membersto create family trees. The system provides notifica-tion of potential matches with data already containedin the database.

WorldConnect Project. From RootsWeb. Morethan 420,000,000 names.

Genealogical Softwareand GEDCOM Utility

You need the GEDCOM utility to submit data to oneof the lineage-linked databases. To get the GEDCOMutility you need a genealogical software package thatincludes that utility. There are hundreds of genealogi-cal software systems available on the market, butthere are just a few that have any great numbers ofusers. A good review of the top ten genealogical soft-ware systems is at: http://genealogy-software-review.toptenreviews.com.

You will note that all ten systems reviewed are forWindows PCs only. (There are only a couple of sys-tems for the Macintosh.) Three of the software sys-tems should be noted here:

Personal Ancestry File (PAF). This soft-ware has a huge user base and is available as a freedownload from the Family History Librarys website.The FHL invented the GEDCOM utility and it is in-cluded in PAF.


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Family Tree Maker. The largest sellingsoftware, with over 2 million users. A product ofAncestry, Inc., it can be purchased from their site.(Basic version is about $30.00.) The GEDCOM util-

ity built into FTM includes direct submission of filesto the OneWorldTreeSM

database.

RootsMagic. This software is probably theeasiest to use. It has the best layout of a pedigree,family group, descendancy, or lineage, and has cus-tom-printed reports that can go to your word proces-sor for editing. Available for about $30.00 from thepublisher at www.rootsmagic.com. The GEDCOMutility in RootsMagic compiles the information fasterthan any other software system.

The GEDCOM utility included in virtually all genea-logical software systems has become the standardmethod of transferring linked genealogical files be-tween computers. After the data is entered into a soft-ware database, every item can be converted to theGEDCOM format, including all names, dates, places,and links to spouse, parents, and children; plus allnotes, textual biographies, or source references. Asa result, a genealogist can start with any genealogi-cal software system, then decide to change to anothersystem by exporting a GEDCOM file from the firstsystem and importing the same file into a second

system. This can be done with no loss of data.

But the GEDCOM utility has really proven itsvalue as a means of submitting genealogical infor-mation to an online database. Its a way of adver-tising your work and to find other people workingon your surnames.

Find More at theNational Archives

Finding genealogical records in their original formshould start with the National Archives. The twomain branches of the National Archives and RecordsAdministration (NARA) are in the Washington, D.C.area. Both of these facilities have significant recordsof importance to genealogists. An excellent overviewof the record groups in these facilities is in the bookGuide to Genealogical Research in the National Ar-

chives of the United States, which describes the na-ture of the archival materials with the most value to

genealogists. The two facilities are described below,and general information about both archives is at theNARA website at www.archives.gov.

Archives IReference Branch, National Archivesand Records Administration, 8th and PennsylvaniaAve., N.W., Washington, DC 20408. This is the mainbranch of the National Archives, with 65,000 rollsof microfilm having importance for genealogical re-search, e.g., federal censuses, ships passenger arrivalrecords, military and pension records, and publicdomain land entry files, including homesteads, andmany more original records.

Archives IIReference Branch, National Ar-

chives and Records Administration, 8601 Adelphi

Road, College Park, MD 20740. Records includeU.S. passport applications. This facility also housesthe Cartographic and Architectural section, which hasthe original topographic maps produced by theUnited States Geographic Survey beginning about1888. This section also has drawings from patentapplications, a large collection of aerial photographsof the U.S., plus many other manuscripts.

Regional Archives

and Other Facilities

The National Archives and Records Administrationrecently reorganized by combining thirteen RegionalArchives, four Research Centers, and two NationalPersonnel Records Center facilities. In each regionalarchives branch (indicated with a ) there is a read-ing room with all federal censuses, 17901930, onmicrofilm, soundex and printed census indexes, plusmany other federal records. The research centers (in-dicated with a ) have case files from the variousfederal district courts, and the National PersonnelRecords Center facilities (indicated with a ) havemilitary personnel records and federal employee per-sonnel files.

Northeast Region (Boston), National Archivesand Records Administration, Frederick C. MurphyFederal Center, Waltham, Massachusetts. Website:www.archives.gov/northeast/boston/index.html

Northeast Region (Pittsfield), National Archivesand Records Administration, Pittsfield, Massachu-


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setts. Website: www.archives.gov/northeast/pittsfield/index.html

Northeast Region (New York City), National

Archives and Records Administration, New York,New York. Website: www.archives.gov/northeast/nyc/index.html

Mid-Atlantic Region (Philadelphia Center

City), National Archives and Records Administra-tion, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Website:www.archives.gov/midatlantic/public/index.html

Mid-Atlantic Region (Northeast Philadelphia),National Archives and Records Administration,Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Website: www.

archives.gov/midatlantic/agencies/index.html

Southeast Region (Atlanta), National Archivesand Records Administration, East Point, Georgia.Website: www.archives.gov/southeast/index.html

Great Lakes Region (Chicago), National Ar-chives and Records Administration, Chicago, Illinois.Website: www.archives.gov/great-lakes/chicago/index.html

Great Lakes Region (Dayton), National Ar-chives and Records Administration, Dayton, Ohio.Website: www.archives.gov/great-lakes/dayton/index.html

Central Plains Region (Kansas City), NationalArchives and Records Administration, Kansas City,Missouri. Website: www.archives.gov/central-plains/kansas-city/index.html

Central Plains Region (Lees Summit), NationalArchives and Records Administration, Lees Summit,Missouri. Website: www.archives.gov/central-plains/lees-summit/index.html

Southwest Region (Fort Worth), National Ar-chives and Records Administration, Fort Worth,

Texas. Website: www.archives.gov/southwest/index.html

Rocky Mountain Region (Denver), National

Archives and Records Administration, Denver Fed-eral C

Documents

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