If the source is a book, magazine, or public record, list such things as publisher, address, date of issue, etc. Be as complete as possible. You will never need this information until the day you neglect to record it. Just as surely as wind will blow spit back into your face, you will need a vital piece of information from the one source you failed to document.

Principle Five Keep good records. Noting your sources won’t do you any good if you can’t find them. You will find more detail about this at

Organize

Your Records on another page on this site.

However, you don’t need a file cabinet and a bunch of file folders as suggested on that site. You can pick up empty boxes from the liquor store [don’t ask me how I know!] that are sturdy and just the right size for regular typing paper, group sheets and the like.

Sort your records first by surname, then by geography, then by family. The important thing is to keep them up to date. File everything as you receive it. Little slips of paper and relative’s letters have a way of quickly getting lost.

Where to Look First in
Your Ancestry Search
Like charity, ancestry search begins at home. Start with the current generation. You should have fairly complete information on your generation’s
name
birth date
baptismal date
wedding date(s)
       with spouse(s) name(s) and, where applicable,
death date and
burial place.

If you collect all the data on your own family–siblings, your parents, your spouse, your children to the extent all these exist, you will set a pattern of data collection that will stand you in good stead throughout your ancestry search.

Frequently your parents can give you information on their parents and siblings. Grandparents, if living, can give you theirs. If you have one child and fully record information up through your parents and grandparents, you will have a database on 15 individuals, not counting any siblings.

[You can skip this paragraph if you like. It is an example of what your ancestral line might look like if not too different from mine–at least when you get back to my generation and go from there.] I have
       5 married children (one thrice married) [12 records],
       12 grandchildren [12 more records–a total of 24]
       a brother twice married,
       a sister thrice married (1 child) ,
       a married step-brother (2 children) and
       a deceased step-brother (unmarried with 1 child) [15 more records–a total of 39],
       mother with 5 brothers and 4 sisters [10 more + spouses & children],
       a father with 7 sisters and a brother [9 + spouses and children–a total of 58 not counting spouses and children of my parent’s generation, and
       4 grandparents and their siblings [62 plus siblings and siblings children by the time we reach my grandparents’ generation.]. This is what is meant by exponential growth!

The point of that little exercise is not to flaunt numbers so much as to show the richness of research sources. The aunt who can’t remember her mother’s marriage date may have half a dozen counterparts who do. Even that aunt can say, “I don’t remember Mama’s birthday, but she belonged to a circle at the church and I’ll bet Miss Francis knows.” Now you have another lead, even if your aunt is the last living relative of that generation.

You have to be careful with oral sources. Very often memories, especially of older people, are faulty, but the validity of oral reports may be more valid than some think. The whole matter of

Oral History is examined on another web page on this site. You may want to view it for additional information. Still, what people say can lead you in the right direction even when it is not particularly accurate, e.g., Miss Frances mentioned above plus church records, a very rich source indeed.

One aspect of oral history that can prove fruitful is the stories family members tell. Even Uncle Willis’ “We had more than a hundred attending that reunion,” may be more valid than Aunt Marie’s lengthy description of how Robert ate so many boiled peanuts at the reunion that he couldn’t eat his favorite lemon meringue pie when it was served. Still, both can not only provide links to sources [Who was Robert? How many of those 100 can you name?], but certainly add interest when writing the family history.

So, listen to each story carefully. Get all the details you can. Ask questions. Story-tellers love for people to ask questions. It shows they are listening. Record the time and place the story is told and who else, if anyone, is present.

Search for clues. Ask for details. The seemingly most insignificant point in the whole story might open doors you never knew existed.

Say Uncle Billy is telling for the umpteenth time of how he fought and licked a bully. He says, “When I got home and Ma saw how torn and dirty my clothes were, she was about to whup me. I said, ‘But Ma. Bruce was pickin’ on Johnny. I had to take up for him.’ So I missed the second whuppin’I was threatened with that day.”

Without thinking, you ask, “Who was Johnny?” You just had not heard that name before. You figure it was a buddy.

Uncle Billy says, “He was Uncle Cyrus’ oldest boy.”

“I didn’t know Grandmother had a brother named Cyrus,” you tell him, getting ready to take notes.

“She don’t. He’s Pa’s uncle. I guess he’s really a great uncle, but we all just called him uncle. He had eight kids. Johnny was the oldest. Then there was Eliza....”

And away you go gathering more information because of a seemingly insignificant individual in Uncle Billy’s story.

Where to Look Next in
Your Ancestry Search

Even before you gather all the information you can from your personal contacts with the family, you can begin to verify data you’ve recorded. And uncover more data.

If your family lived in a town, or a community in a city, you can often find fruitful results by visiting the church there. Even though the city may be large, like Boston or Philadelphia or New York or Chicago, there are communities in those cities as homogenous as the smallest Midwestern town. Even fairly young cities like Los Angeles, Houston, and Miami have their enclaves.

Churches frequently have
baptism records with information about the child’s birth,
wedding records,
an archive of church bulletins or newsletters with announcements of vial events,
death records,
and cemeteries.

Cemeteries have records written in stone. Most are quite accurate, but on occasion the stone cutter makes a mistake or has received the wrong information. Once chiseled in stone, who wants to pay to change it? So be aware of that possibility.

In addition to the church you will find the library very useful. Many libraries, especially in larger cities. Have census records on microfilm and machines you can use to read, and sometimes print out, information. Census records are very helpful, but sometimes errors are found there, too.

You must understand that census takers were very human. They were paid to enumerate an area. I he were 95% finished and didn’t have the names of certain families that lived back up in the hills in a house protected by vicious dogs, he might ask local folks about those living “up there.” Births, deaths, and even migrations may have taken place without the town folks knowledge, but the census taker took the word of the locals and recorded it. After all, he didn’t get paid until he turned in his records.

There are records of county historical development. It is frustrating to search vainly for local records in the town courthouse. Then you find out the records are in another courthouse. They re there because that courthouse served the local region before the current county was carved out of that one. Check out county development in the library.

Also check county histories, both the current county’s history and the histories of the county or counties from which it was carved. Even some early West Virginian records must be accessed across the state line in Virginia.

Biographies of local people serve as a resource in many cases. And don’t forget histories of local businesses and local fraternal orders, volunteer firemen, and the like.

Courthouses can present a challenge many times, but if you go to the Clerk of Court’s office and ask where to look for particular records they can be and usually are very helpful. One clerk, for example, told me that in addition to the records I was searching, I might want to look in plat books which listed the names and locations of dwellings and their occupants.

Wills, marriage records, death records, and land records are very helpful in providing documentary evidence of information, But even here you may find errors. I was reading a will from 1760 in the courthouse in York PA and found a woman’s surname spelled five different ways!

Using the Computer in
Your Ancestry Search

The computer has provided great assistance in ancestry search. Records that once available only by travel, mail, and diligent rummaging through dusty records are now available by the touch of a button.

But the computer is not all it cracked up to be. Often there is too much information through which to search. Sometimes the availability of records are costly.

Ancestry.com has over 2 billion names available to search, but there is a fee for using their resources. Many find it worth the fee, but we’re talking about free search in this article.

Sometimes there is a way to utilize Ancestry.com and others like it for free. On occasion they will permit you to use their database for a period, usually 2 weeks, to “try it out” and see if it is for you. You know and I know that once hooked a person is likely to say, “Hey. It’s worthy a few bucks to get all this information.” If you are truly disciplined, you can make a list of everything you need to know before you accept their free trial. Then accept it. Work every waking hour during that trial period to find the answers you need. Then cancel the membership.

Databases like Ancestry.com are not the only path open for use of the computer. There are forums, message boards, genealogy letters [like Family Search Secrets Newsletter], newsgroups, and search engines, all of which provide free help.

Sites like those placed up by the Church of the Latter Day Saints [LDS] are free and very helpful. Incidentally, LDS has libraries across the nation which access tons of material from their collection in Salt Lake City–the largest collection of genealogical materials in the world. Check to see if there is one near you. You don’t have to be a LDS member to use the service.

A very basic use of the computer is to trade information via the Internet and Email. Exchange of materials used to be slow, expensive, and chancy. You would offer to pay an exchanger for copying and postage. When the material arrived a week [or weeks] later, you might find that
(1) the material duplicated what you had, or
(2) the information was inaccurate. [I received information about my grandfather, born in Eckert MD and hardly ever out of MD his whole life, listing his place of birth as SC.]

Warm friendships and lost cousins are found via Email as well as the information you share.

If you do not have a computer, you don’t have to buy one. Libraries, senior centers, high schools and colleges that provide adult education, and even churches frequently have free use of computers that are connected to the Internet.

The final step in collecting genealogical materials is putting it together. There is another web page on this site that deals specifically with writing and publishing your family history, so I won’t pursue that.

I’ll simply say, happy free ancestry search!