Beginning Genealogy

Pastfinders of South Lake County

Clermont, Florida

● Start with what you know. Write down every birth date, marriage, death of your family members that you can remember. Document each fact by indicating who told you or if it is personally known to you. If a family member has original documents, ask if you may copy them for your files.

● Collect photos, family papers, military discharge papers, school records, wills, diaries and any other important written material you may find pertaining to your family. Make a file folder for your collection and note on the outside what is in it.

● Talk with your older relatives. Ask if they have photos or papers to share. Ask about their childhood and their parents and grandparents. Encourage them to reminisce about their youth and make notes or tape. Communicate with all relatives, even if you haven’t seen them in years, and tell them what you are doing. Ask specific questions - you may be surprised at the answers as people remember things differently. For a great list of questions go to: www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~flgso/intvwqus.htm . This list is from the Okeechobee Genealogical Society and is very comprehensive and invaluable.

● After you have collected all known information you will need to send for copies of documents that prove a birth, death or marriage. These vital records will be found in state repositories. Some states have great vital records resources and are very cooperative while others are not. Use Google to search for Vital Records, naming what state you are interested in.

● Begin creating a Pedigree Chart for each person. Your folder will help you fill in some of the information. Each person done will lead to 2 more (mother & father) who will need their own chart. These will lead you to researching the next generation. You will begin to use primary and secondary records to gather your information. Your public library may have a genealogy section where you will find local biographies, family and local histories, genealogies, journals, diaries, letters, passenger lists and census indexes - both federal and state. These are “secondary” research aids. Searching your town, county and state records for primary records will be the next step. Here you will have access to land records, the vital records mentioned above, and court records such as wills and probates. Other sources you may need to become familiar with are immigration and naturalization records, military service records, Federal census, church records and the Social Security Death Index which began in 1937. Other than the vital records, these are all considered secondary because they rely on information gathered by unknown persons without knowing who gave them the information.

● Remember, every time you use a research aid, either write down or make copies of the pertinent pages and don’t forget to note the date, the resource used and where it is located. If you need to see that item at some future date, you want to be able to easily locate it. You MUST document your sources. I did 3 years of research and kept sketchy notes and now find myself saying “Where did I get THIS?”. That makes a weak link in my work which must be addressed.

● Check out the local library. They may have free access to Ancestry.com and Heritage Quest. Both of these sites are highly useful but are costly to have on your PC. You must be in the library to use Ancestry but you can probably get Heritage Quest on your home computer by going to the library site and using your library card number.

● Be very careful with information you get on the web about your families. Some is good but some is almost totally fictional. There is a lot of undocumented material from people who just want to collect names and they post their “collection” without hesitation. If they can’t say where they got the information, our advice is to look it over, note anything that may give you a lead for further research and don’t add it to your genealogy until you are convinced that it is really your ancestor.

● Another word of advice. No matter how you spell your name, learn to expect variations and broaden your search using the variants. My maternal grandmother’s maiden name was Eels. Not exactly a name easy to live with but one that is easily spelled, or so you would think. Here are the variants I have encountered while tracing the family: Els, Eells, Elles, Ells, Ellis, Ails, Ellice, Eellis and a few more. You should see what can be done with a more difficult name! Given names, as well, will be spelled many ways, sometimes 2 or 3 different ways in one document. Nicknames were used in place of a birth name and foreign names were Americanized. Spellings were often at the discretion of the record keepers. When looking in census records, you will be able to fall back on what is known as the Soundex System which is based on the way a name sounds rather than the way it is spelled.

● Once you have all this information, you will want to put it into a genealogy program. There are a number of good ones and you might want to research them to find the one that works best for you. Family Tree Maker, PAF (Personal Ancestral File by the Mormon Church), Legacy, and RootsMagic are just 4 of them.

● When you face a “brick wall”, find a fellow genealogist and discuss it with him. We all develop our own methods of research and a fresh perspective may be all you need.