Cash: To Spend or Not to Spend

If you don’t want to start out spending money on the genealogy, Ancestry.com and Fold3 can usually be used at your local library for free.  Fold3 can often be used at home (for free) via your library membership.  Ancestry.com offers a three month trial subscription for beginning genealogists.  This is plenty of time to get a good overview of what is available in others’ trees and quickly see your ancestors’ listings in census records.  If you are okay with starting your genealogy hobby with a financial investment, the best place to put that cash is Ancestry.com.  The second best place is FTDNA.com.

Figure out your objectives for Genealogy:

Everyone has different reasons for their genealogy research.  Some of mine, when starting out, were to:

• Find our native origins. Were we  English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, French, German, and Native American as family lore had it?
• Learn which of our ancestors served in wars, where, and in what capacity.  I had heard of a guy in the Revolutionary War and men who were in the Civil War, but I had no idea which ancestor served and what he did.
• See what is known about our ancestry based on others’ genealogy research.  I had heard of various books that great-aunts and other distant relatives had written.  Finding these obscure research materials is no easy feat.

If you simply want to know who your family was for a couple of generations back, print a blank family tree diagram (like this: Printable Family Tree Diagram (wikitree.com)) and fill it in by hand.  Start with what you know, make a few phone calls to family to find out what they know about your genealogy, utilize Ancestry.com’s free trial membership, search Findagrave.com, and look up each of your family’s surnames at Genforum.com.  That should give you more than enough info to achieve your objective.

1. Ancestry

It isn’t free and it is often criticized for its lack of accuracy of the member-submitted data.  There is a fair learning curve involved for genealogy beginners. However, it’s a great way to start the hobby as it forces you to organize your data from the beginning. For experienced genealogists, the databases available at Ancestry.com are invaluable.

• Several points:
• When there are two or more versions of the same genealogy data online, one being an Ancestry.com database, I search both, sometimes finding the data at one and other times finding it at another. For example, when looking for a WWII “old man” registration for an ancestor, I was able to find it at familysearch.org after having looked for it for several years on Ancestry.com. That is not a ringing endorsement for Ancestry.com, in this case, but I mention it to show the limitations of all of the genealogy databases. Ancestry.com’s transcriptions seem to have been done by less experienced transcribers than familysearch.org’s transcribers. Once the record has been found somewhere else, you can generally then find it at Ancestry.com and add it to your ancestor’s profile.
• I use Ancestry.com not only to add individuals to my family tree but also as the repository for an electronic version of all of my paper records.  If a piece of paper gets misfiled or lost, I still have an electronic copy.  If my hard drive crashes, I still have an offsite version of the genealogy data.
• I also use Ancestry.com to create timelines for individuals, adding pertinent events in the person’s life and attaching the corresponding documentation (when available) for that event.
• For beginners, start off by adding your ancestors to your tree and then attaching every census record you can find listing that person.  By 1850, all household members were listed by name as a family.  Censuses were taken every ten years.  Most of the 1890 census was lost.  Censuses after 1940 are not yet public.  So theoretically each ancestor should be found (if alive during the decade) in the census records for 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, and 1940.  People talk a lot about how incomplete censuses were.  In my experience, when I can’t find someone (who was still alive when the census was taken) in the records, most of the time there is a misspelling of the person’s name or the person was located some where else rather than the person having been excluded from the census altogether.
• International version.  This version costs extra.  You cannot attach any records from databases outside your home country without paying for the international version.  I do not pay for this version as most of the ancestors I’m researching are in the U.S.  When I need to use it for my genealogy research, I use it at my local library.

 

2.  Findagrave

The website is good for several things.  Foremost, it is the best place online to find the location of an ancestor’s burial.  Most burials are not at Findagrave, but many are.  Sometimes there is also a photo of the individual’s tombstone.  Best results are for people who died after 1900 or so.  A second benefit of Findagrave is that many people who aren’t interested in paying for an Ancestry.com membership post their genealogy data on Findagrave, as it is free to do so.  This makes genealogy research much easier. When you find an ancestor’s burial listing at Findagrave, often you will also see a profile of sorts about that ancestor, his/her parents’ names, children’s names, spouses’ and siblings’ names.  Thirdly, if you plan to visit a cemetery, Findagrave is a great place to get directions to and maps of the cemetery. Interment.net is Findagrave’s closest competitor.  Once in awhile you’ll find a genealogy record there that is not at Findagrave.

3.  Genforum

 The best use of Genforum is to see who else is researching your surname and what has been posted online by those individuals.  In the search box at Genforum, type in the surname you’re researching.  Common surnames are generally a waste of time to search at Genforum.  Rare surnames probably aren’t even listed, although you can fill out a request to have them added.  For the rest, after you type in the surname in the search box, you will be forwarded to a page of posts by other genealogists researching the same surname.  From that page, type a given name or location (generally in genealogy, counties are used as location references rather than cities) to see posts containing the keywords.  Always try the wife’s maiden surname as well as the husband’s.  At time, posts will be to the surname board of the wife rather than the husband, which may be due to the husband’s name being very common, their being multiple spellings of the husband’s name, or because the wife’s maiden name is more thoroughly researched.  Genforum also has forums for places.  They are worth a look, although I do better with Rootsweb when researching places for genealogy purposes.

4.  Family Search

The FamilySearch website has some genealogy databases not found anywhere else.  Like Ancestry.com, they have extensive census records.  I think the transcriptions at FamilySearch are superior to those at Ancestry.com.  Sometimes a photocopy of the original image can be viewed when it is not available for view at Ancestry.  You can search an ancestor’s name from the home page and see results found in the fully indexed databases.  You can also view the partially indexed databases by browsing through the published collections “by location” (the links to this are lower on the home page, after the search box area).  These genealogy collections haven’t yet been fully transcribed.  Generally that means paging through handwritten records screen by screen with only an ancient handwritten index to guide you.  It is time-consuming work but can result in important finds.  It is certainly a time-saver over a visit to the county courthouse in a distant state.  Finally, the FamilySearch Wikis (https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Main_Page) are a wonderful source to find out what genealogy records are available for a particular location.

5.  Google

Anyone you’re researching can be googled.  Put the name in quotes to reduce extraneous results.  Add the spouse’s name to further reduce the results.  For example, the Mikel immigrant was Christian Mikel.  His wife was Maria Barbara Eisenhauer.  Entering the following brings up relevant pages:  “Christian Mikel” “Maria Barbara Eisenhauer”.  Of the pages that will typically be returned for an ancestor who has already been researched, here is my opinion:

• Good results are:  Rootsweb’s WorldConnect Project, Familytreemaker.genealogy.com (aka Genealogy.com), Genforum.genealogy.com (aka Genforum), and other individual sites.
• Bad results are: Search.ancestry.com, Mytrees.com, Search.ancestry.myfamily.com.

Your experience may vary, but I’ve never found anything worthwhile when clicking on the latter after googling an ancestor’s name.  The good Ancestry.com data is gotten by searching for your ancestor from the Ancestry.com website, not from the manipulated results delivered to Google.  Mytrees.com and Myfamily.com have inferior data entered by beginner genealogists.  What you aim to find online is the data of experienced genealogists.  Things change fast on the internet.  By the time you read this, maybe the “bad” sites above will offer better quality.   After all, Ancestry.com’s user-submitted data was originally junk and is gradually improving in quality.

Another way to search Google is to enter the county in which an ancestor lived along with the word “genealogy”, eg:

“Callaway County” Missouri genealogy

This will result in pages which pertain to genealogy research in that county.  Good results often include Rootsweb, county libraries, or county genealogical societies.  There is no single great website for genealogical information organized by county.  Every county varies.  Sometimes an industrious volunteer has created a comprehensive website at the library.  Sometimes the same was created by the local genealogical society.  Where these sites are hosted depends on what was available at the time of their creation.  The bottom line is look at the address, go to the website itself, search around and see if you can find comprehensive and fresh data.

6.  Family Tree DNA

I submitted DNA to Family Finder at FTDNA.com.  My objective was to find information on my “brick wall” ancestors.  I have not done that.  What I have been able to do, though, is validate research on the known lines.  Most of the people I match are very distant, third cousin being the closest matched relative. Know that once your results are posted online, you have to ferret out how you match each individual in your list of relatives.  Some people post their trees to FTDNA.com.  Most do not.  For those who do, it is sometimes easy work to look at their tree and see where you and s/he likely link.  Most often, it requires more research, either by emailing them to find out if their tree is on Ancestry.com (or online elsewhere) or googling their ancestors to find out more.  Once you establish the likely link between yourself and a few of the closer relatives, you can see which other matches you and they have “in common”.  With that information, you can begin to look for patterns of relationships and be more sure about the likelihood of the common ancestor being the link.

7.  Southern Campaign – Revolutionary War Pension Applications

Will Graves has put online transcriptions of Revolutionary War pension applications.  This database is limited to those soldiers who served in the Southern Campaign.  If your guy served while a resident of a southern state, you’re in luck.  The beauty of this resource goes beyond the obvious, which is looking for your ancestor’s pension application.  I’ve found details of several soldiers’ service by searching on names of soldiers who either died before they could apply for a pension or those who were not indigent and, therefore, would not qualify for a pension.  These men’s service was referenced within other people’s applications. Applicants’ imperfect memories and spellings of other soldiers’ names are often listed with potential corrections based on historical data.

8.  Fold3

Civil War Records.  Fold3 includes the original images of the records.  This helps with context.  For example, one of my ancestors, Richard Chandler, was older than one would expect for a person serving in the Civil War.  There was a man named Richard Chandler in a Civil War soldier database at Ancestry.com.  His location fit (southwestern Missouri), but his name was fairly common.  I was unsure, given my ancestor’s age, that this record was my ancestor’s service.  Through the records at Fold3, I was able to discern that Richard, his brother, and his son were all listed in the same Company, having enlisted on the same day, for a short-term duration.  His son later enlisted with the Union for a longer duration.

9.  Google Newspaper Archive

This database is in its infancy.  It is best for ancestors who lived in the larger cities.  Newspapers having larger circulations are more likely to have been added to this database.  The transcriptions are of too poor of quality to be depended upon to find search terms.  At this time, paging through the original images to locate the data you’re seeking is the only way to go.  That means you need to have some idea of the date the ancestor’s name is likely to appear in the paper.  For one potential couple (who turned out to not be ancestors), I paged through several months of archives of a Pittsburgh newspaper, one day at a time, until I came across the record of the application for their marriage license.  I did find it, but this is very time-consuming research.  (You’ve been warned!)

10.  eBay

As I find references to a genealogy book written about an ancestor, I search for it on eBay.  These books are almost never available on Amazon, as they were usually a small print run and currently out of print.  They can often be viewed at genealogy collections (“closed stacks”) at larger local libraries.  You go in with your camera or a lot of quarters and either take photos of relevant pages or photocopy them.  You hope you get photos/copies of all of the pages you need but get home only to wish you’d copied more.  Having the book on your own book shelf is wonderful.  On eBay, I create a “followed search” for the book title.  When one becomes listed on eBay, I will receive an email notification and can then bid on it.