How to Find Your Roots: Part 1
With the national conversation on birthright citizenship. I thought I would repeat the series I have done in the past on how to find your roots. I will be adding some new information to several of these articles. I would suggest that my readers keep these articles in a safe place to refer to them when needed.
With the national conversation on birthright citizenship. I thought I would repeat the series I have done in the past on how to find your roots. I will be adding some new information to several of these articles. I would suggest that my readers keep these articles in a safe place to refer to them when needed.
If you stick to it, you will be rewarded with information about your family history. It does take ample research. I was able to put together a booklet on my family and include some of the important documents that I was able to locate. Later in my research I joined ancestry.com. There is a fee to join but it is worth the cost. There are some sites that do not charge a fee such as familysearch.com. It will get you started.
The following are ten things to do at the beginning of your research:
Talk to older members of your family. You can just begin a conversation about their own history and listen carefully to what they have to say.
Write down as much information as possible. I had a conversation with an aunt that lived in Washington when I visited her years ago. I just listened to her talk about her childhood and I learned so much. I took notes so that I would not forget the discussion.
Look through the U.S. Federal Census of 1910, 1920, 1930, and 1940. You can get copies of these Census records from ancestry.com.
Study the slave schedules of 1850 and 1870.
Read the entries in the family bible if one is available. This helped me very much. I read my mother’s bible and discovered that when any of her siblings passed away, she recorded the date, time, and place of their death. This information was key to helping with names and dates.
Read obituaries of family members to get additional information.
Contact a Genealogist in the area where your family lived. Most libraries have people on staff who can help you.
Look through old photo albums.
Write to the National Archives in the state of your family.
Write to the Bureau of Statistics for birth and death certificates.
You can begin your search with these tips. Part 2 of this series will discuss the importance of the Census.