Getting Started With Genealogy - Family Group Records

Family group records or sheets are a great way to keep information about families organized and updated as you learn more. They hold information about the husband, wife and children within a family unit.

What You'll Need

First, print out some blank family group records. I use the one from Ancestry.com because it includes a cause of death field, but there are many free family group record templates available online. Byub.org and NewEnglandAncestors.org both provide free family group records, or you can search Google or even make your own custom form with a spreadsheet program if you can't find one you like.

Second, you are going to need your sources. Physical sources should always be kept together in an easily accessible location. The sources you find online should be downloaded if they are scanned images or PDFs, or recorded in a notebook or text file if not a downloadable resource.

Start Filling in What You Know

Go ahead and fill out a family group sheet with your parents as the husband and wife, and you and your siblings as the children. Only enter the information you have sources for, such as your birth certificate (which you should have by now, if not, order one from your local county court house), family bibles, marriage records or what you are absolutely certain of.

For example, I don't think it is imperative to get copies of your siblings' birth and marriage records if you have had enough experience with celebrating their birthdays and anniversaries to know the dates. However, it sure won't hurt if you can get them. Even an email from your siblings giving the dates and places of major events in their lives will suffice as documentation, just be sure to print it out or save it to your computer.

You will, if not right now, eventually, want a record of your parents' marriage. If you don't already have it, add it to your "to do" list. Same with death certificates, if either of your parents or any siblings are deceased.

Continue in this same manner with your grandparents' family units and so on.

Cite Your Sources

You can do this on the back of the family group record. Simply write down the documents or other sources where you obtained the information (your birth certificate, a family bible, a transcribed interview with a relative, etc.), and where the source is located (in your possession, on your computer, the county clerk, the genealogy library, etc.).

Also indicate what information was provided by each source, as some documents will provide data on more than one event. For example, a death certificate usually contains birth date, birth location, death date and location, parent names, cause of death, and burial information.

Keep Your Family Group Records Updated

Every time you discover new information about an individual in your pedigree, update your family group sheet. This is why I always recommend filling these out in pencil.

You may, as I have, discover that the birth date you found on a death certificate is in conflict with a birth record you recently found. The birth record would take precedence over the death record for the birth date because it was recorded closer to the time that the event happened.

Using Your Family Group Sheets

The best part about having a family group record for each ancestor in your line is that you will have quick access to the names of their children. This will aid you in searching for extended family, which can give you great clues in finding out more about your lineage.

For example, many times older relatives would go to live with one of their children if they were no longer healthy enough to take care of themselves. Knowing all of a grandparent's siblings' names and data may help you find where a great grandparent lived out the remaining years of their life, especially if that great grandparent had a tricky name that was often spelled differently from one census to the next (yes, I'm talking about you, Miss Bettie Camilee Markham ;)).

Keep your family group sheets together, and bring them where ever you do research, whether it is on the computer, a genealogy library, a relative's house, or any place your think you might find sources.

You will also be able to use your family group sheets when you begin entering your family tree information into a genealogy program, but we will get to this later.

Question: How important is it to get official documentation on your own living siblings, and why? Please share your opinions and views in the comments section.

Tip: Strategy for Organizing Documents Found Online

When you've scored your first scanned image of a family history record, you are definitely going to want a copy of it. But, since you are likely to find a number of other documents in your endeavors, you need a way to keep them organized so you can find them later.

I found out the hard way that stuffing them all into one folder with their original file name quickly leads to time-consuming confusion and chaos. Over years of trial and error, I came up with a filing system that works very well for me now. You may want to develop your own system or adapt mine to your own needs.

First, I made a Genealogy folder inside the My Documents folder. Within that folder, I created one folder for my dad's line and one for my mom's line (with their surnames as each folder name). Then within each of those folders I added folders for surnames married into that line, so I have three folders of surnames married into my Norman line. Then within those sub-folders, I continue to add surname folders as needed when I discover a new surname married into that line. Of course, these don't all have to be created at once, but can be done as you go.

Now it's time to save the document. This is my file naming strategy to help my find exactly what I'm looking for easily. First I start with what type of record it is, birth, death, marriage, census, obituary, photo, etc. Then other relevant information that will help me identify it, such as date, name of the person/people the record relates to, etc.

So, for example, I would save a census image as "census_1940_McLennan-Co-TX_Norman-George-Sr.jpg". This way, all of the census records I've found for Norman surnames are listed together, in order of year, then location, and finally head of household. If I find more than one household on the image, I'll separate the names with another underscore.

I handle death certificates a little differently. For example, death-cert_Norman-George-Sr.jpg, since all I need to know is who the death certificate is for in order to determine if it is the one I'm looking for. It is the same with obituaries, obit_Norman-George-Sr.jpg

Of course, this isn't the only way to manage the genealogy records you find online. I would love to hear about folder system and file naming strategies employed by others, as I am always working to better organize and structure my finds. Please leave a comment to share your own system.

Getting Started With Genealogy - Intro to Online Documents

So you have your paper and pencil pedigree, and whatever documents you have managed to collect. Now it's time to look for what you don't have. Grab your pedigree and have a seat, we are going to look at how to find some basic information online.

Searching Online Records

Family history record sites generally provide the same basic search fields, with some slight variations or additional search and filtering properties. Start by choosing one ancestor from your pedigree that you have some personal information for, such as their birth year or a location. Unless your ancestor has an extremely unusual name, you will need a little more information to narrow your results.

If you don't know the birth year, go ahead and estimate it. Most sites offer you the ability to search within a range of specific dates, or indicate an offset of anywhere from 1 to 20 years. This will narrow your results to individuals with the same name born within the indicated time period.

Know the state, but not the county? If you have an idea of what part of the state the person was born or lived in during their life, you can open a county map for that state in a separate browser tab so that you can compare it to the counties in your search results.

For example, if you know they lived in East Texas, open up a Texas Counties map, and look for counties in the eastern part of the state. You can find state county maps at the usgenweb.org site for the given state, or just search google for [Name of State] county map (or Parish map if the state is Louisiana).

Unless you are looking for a specific record, keep your searches fairly general. If you enter too much data, such as spouse and parents, you may end up filtering out records that don't contain this information.

Experiment with different search combinations, such as the birth year, location, and father's name to get results for different types of documents. Or search just the last name with a residence location and date range to return all records of that surname living within the given area at a particular point in time. You can also just search the parents' names to find documents relating to their children.

Name Variations

Many people go by nicknames, their middle name or even just their initials. This was no different in the past. One of my ancestors bears a different first name or initials on just about every census he appeared on. Be sure to search common nicknames ("Bill" or "Will for William", "Mattie" instead of Martha, "B. F." for Benjamin Franklin).

Also, when searching for female ancestors, run separate searches for maiden name and married name. If you don't know the maiden name, it can usually be found on birth and death records for the ancestor's children, her own death record, and on marriage records.

No Image Available

Some results will be accompanied by a scanned image of the record, but not all of them. In this case you will need to record the available data either in a .txt file (or whatever word processing file type you are familiar with), or in a notebook. This information will provide clues for further research, as well as information to help you find the physical record at a genealogy library or other history archive.

Online Family History Record Sites

This is hardly a comprehensive list, but it is enough to get you started.

FamilySearch.org - A massive collection of digitized family history documents. Completely free to use.

Ancestry.com - Possibly the largest collection of genealogical documents. Some collections are free to view, others require a subscription.

HeritageQuestOnline.com - Can be accessed online if your library is subscribed. Go to your library's website and search their electronic resources for HeritageQuest to see if it is available to you. Have your library card ready.

WorldVitalRecords.com - Requires a subscription.

Feel free to add your own tips for finding family history documents online in the comments!

1940 Census - 30 States Indexed and Searchable at FamilySearch

The volunteers at FamilySearch.org, who have been avidly indexing the 1940 Us Census images since it was released to the public in April of this year, now have 30 States available to search by name. That's more than half of the States, and roughly 75% of the entire 1940 Census.

The new US States added June 28 to FamilySearch's 1940 searchable records are California, Washington, Iowa, New Mexico, Nebraska and Missouri. The remaining states can still be browsed by enumeration district, but chances are, it won't be much longer before the indexing of the 1940 Census is complete. FamilySearch is hoping to complete indexing of the remaining census schedules by the end of July.

This event marks an impressive milestone for one of the largest free-to-use genealogical data repositories available online. To check out updated progress of the 1940 Census indexing project, visit familysearch.org/1940census/.

Here's a list of 1940 US Census States searchable at FamilySearch.org as of this posting:

• Alabama


• Alaska


• Arizona


• California


• Colorado


• Delaware


• Florida


• Hawaii


• Idaho


• Indiana


• Iowa


• Kansas


• Louisiana


• Maine


• Minnesota (pending)


• Mississippi


• Missouri


• Montana


• Nebraska


• New Hampshire


• New Mexico


• Nevada


• North Dakota


• Oklahoma


• Oregon


• Rhode Island


• South Dakota


• Utah


• Vermont


• Virginia


• Washington


• Wyoming

Preserve The Pensions Fund Gets Generous Donation

The Preserve the Pensions - War of 1812 Pension Digitization Fund has received a $135,000 gift in memory of Ardath Stedman, the mother of the late Jon Stedman, from who’s estate the donation originates. The generous donation will help in the Federation of Genealogical Societies' (FGS) endeavor to digitize the War of 1812 Pension records for preservation and access.

This year marks the bicentennial of the war America declared on the British in 1812. The military conflict began on 18 Jun 1812, and lasted almost three years, finally coming to an end on 18 Feb 1815. The Preserve the Pensions project hopes to complete digitization of the pension records by the bicentennial of the war's end.

The efforts of the FGS will result in free access to digital images of 180,000 pension applications from the War of 1812 for genealogy researchers. The records that have already been digitized and indexed can be found at Fold3, free of charge.

More information about the Preserve the Pensions project is available at www.fgs.org/1812.

Webinars Available Online at FamilySearch.org

Robert Kehrer presented the first in a series of FamilySearch webinars on June 19, 2012 intended to aid FamilySearch.org visitors about using making the most of FamilySearch's extensive collection of free genealogical materials. The second webinar in the series was recorded June 26, and will soon be amade available online to those who missed it.

The FamilySearch Webinars have come in response to an influx of user questions about many of the online genealogy site's existing and newly added features. The webinars will focus on specific elements of the FamilySearch.org website, and instruct viewers on how to access and utilize the immense collection of free family history data.

Part 1 of the FamilySearch Webinar is primarily geared toward familiarizing visitors with FamilySearch's International Genealogical Collection (commonly referred to as the IGI), but also covers the Library Catalog and Historical Records Collection. The version of the webinar that has been posted for the public is a re-recording of the original webinar, thus it does not contain the question and answer session that followed the original broadcast.

The second part of the informative webinar series is a rebroadcast of the original, complete with the questions and responses that followed the presentation. FamilySearch Webinar Part 2 focuses on searching and browsing the constantly growing collections of records available at FamilySearch. Topics include search strategies, result filtering, how to broaden search results, use of wild cards, additional information about the IGI, using the My Source Box, and features of the FamilyTree.

FamilySearch Webinar Part 1 can be viewed here.

FamilySearch Webinar Part 2 can be viewed here.

FamilySearch.org is a non-profit genealogy service provided by The Church of Latter-day Saints. The website contains a plethora of free family history records. Some of the document images that have been scanned into the genealogy data base require a member account to view, but membership and access to all of FamilySearch's resources is completely free.

Also known through history as the Genealogical Society of Utah, which was founded in 1894, the organization has been dedicated to the preservation and free sharing of family history and genealogical data in the form of microfiche, microfilm, and digital records for over a century. The vast collections at FamilySearch.org contain 2.5 billion names (and growing) from countries all over the world.

Robert Kehrer, presenter of the FamilySearch Webinars, is the Senior Manager of Search Technologies at FamilySearch.org.

Source: https://familysearch.org/blog/