There are tender ways to memorialize your deceased relatives - and then there are ways you should not! I recently read an obituary that included information that would make most people cringe - but most genealogists would probably value it for the backstory. Check it out here.
This is a contemporary example of the Famous - or Notorious? post I wrote a few months ago. If the survivors had just listed names and dates, no one would ever know the sad past of this older lady. Nor might one descendant ever understand why he/she never sees Uncle Peter at family gatherings. It's these elements of a story that make a family story come alive - but it might be a hundred years before members of the family could read it without fighting...
The saying goes: "May you live in interesting times" - but I'd change it for my fellow genealogists to read "May your family be filled with interesting people." Happy hunting!
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Overcoming Obstacles
If you've had success with something like the 1930 US Census and you then begin to work backwards in time, you may be surprised (or really disappointed) when you get to the 1890 US Census: it doesn't exist anymore (lost in a fire). Similiarly, if you've been finding all kinds of great things in the Census of Ireland for 1901 and 1911, you may be horrified to learn that there are almost no censuses from earlier than that that survived the struggle for Irish Independence. These are just some of the obstacles that you will need to overcome as you conduct your family history research.
Another dilemna often is that vital records weren't required by the State or National government before a certain year. This can be especially aggravating if your ancestor was born just before the start of compulsory record keeping.
Of course, you could get lucky and find your family on the other side of such gaps (cemetery stone, family bible, etc.). Maybe you already knew where the family lived in the "Old Country" and just need to visit that town to see the family farm. But if you aren't that fortunate, you can sometimes still find some alternate sources to fill in blanks. I've listed a couple below:
(1) Census Substitutes: Ancestry.com has created a resource that allows you to search 1890s era city directories from around the United States and, possibly, locate an address where your family lived. You can find a head of the household but probably not much more than that. However, an address could be helpful if the state where the person lived conducted a census +/- five years from the lost Federal records. Don't forget, you actually don't need to search Ancestry if you have some other means to access a city directory...
(2) Parish Records: Catholic Priests usually kept records of the sacraments they performed. These could have survived at a specific church or diocesan records archive. They are often much more detailed than a birth certificate from that era could be. Be prepared for a requirement to translate from Latin or another language. Some parishes will prepare an un-official baptism, marriage or death certificate from data in their old books - kind of a nice item to have if you are preparing an official family history.
More gaps and obstacles are out there. Don't give up! You may need to find some really creative ways to search the Web to locate a source - but your persistance should pay off. Happy hunting!
Another dilemna often is that vital records weren't required by the State or National government before a certain year. This can be especially aggravating if your ancestor was born just before the start of compulsory record keeping.
Of course, you could get lucky and find your family on the other side of such gaps (cemetery stone, family bible, etc.). Maybe you already knew where the family lived in the "Old Country" and just need to visit that town to see the family farm. But if you aren't that fortunate, you can sometimes still find some alternate sources to fill in blanks. I've listed a couple below:
(1) Census Substitutes: Ancestry.com has created a resource that allows you to search 1890s era city directories from around the United States and, possibly, locate an address where your family lived. You can find a head of the household but probably not much more than that. However, an address could be helpful if the state where the person lived conducted a census +/- five years from the lost Federal records. Don't forget, you actually don't need to search Ancestry if you have some other means to access a city directory...
(2) Parish Records: Catholic Priests usually kept records of the sacraments they performed. These could have survived at a specific church or diocesan records archive. They are often much more detailed than a birth certificate from that era could be. Be prepared for a requirement to translate from Latin or another language. Some parishes will prepare an un-official baptism, marriage or death certificate from data in their old books - kind of a nice item to have if you are preparing an official family history.
More gaps and obstacles are out there. Don't give up! You may need to find some really creative ways to search the Web to locate a source - but your persistance should pay off. Happy hunting!
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Biographies
Genealogy successes often require a certain amount of luck. Perhaps you've travelled extensively and made numerous visits to libraries and archives - but how often do you have a "Eureka" moment? The famous/infamous reputation of your relatives may pay off with a newspaper article now and then - and, if you are lucky, you may find it. Vital records, censuses and directories may also yield a number of key details about your family history. But to truly hit the jackpot, you need to try to find a published record of your relative's life story.
Biographies can include surprising amounts of information about a person. You might find birth and marriage details, names of children, occupational pursuits and memberships in fraternal or professional organizations. You might even find a photograph of the person. But you might be surprised to learn that a biography may also contain, as Paul Harvey used to say, "the rest of the story." I've seen examples where the story doesn't even focus a lot of attention on the person it is purportedly written about - it can tell about the difficult immigration of his parents from the Old World or business successes.
Some great examples of sites that post biographies:
American Genealogical-Biological Index
Archive.org
GeneaBios
Google Books
You may have to take your search for biographies off-line. Many books are available only in printed form and at certain libraries. It may take years to track those down. But you should never give up looking - finding a bio of your relative may be the best genealogy discovery you ever make. Happy hunting!
Biographies can include surprising amounts of information about a person. You might find birth and marriage details, names of children, occupational pursuits and memberships in fraternal or professional organizations. You might even find a photograph of the person. But you might be surprised to learn that a biography may also contain, as Paul Harvey used to say, "the rest of the story." I've seen examples where the story doesn't even focus a lot of attention on the person it is purportedly written about - it can tell about the difficult immigration of his parents from the Old World or business successes.
Some great examples of sites that post biographies:
American Genealogical-Biological Index
Archive.org
GeneaBios
Google Books
You may have to take your search for biographies off-line. Many books are available only in printed form and at certain libraries. It may take years to track those down. But you should never give up looking - finding a bio of your relative may be the best genealogy discovery you ever make. Happy hunting!
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Connecting the Dots...
When you've finished the traditional family tree (with little circles for each person, vital facts enclosed), you may be proud of your progress - and may even impress other friends and relatives with your pedigree. Still, I hope you won't ignore the nagging feeling that people's lives are more than the sum of their life milestones. You may even have begun to wonder if your own life would mean anything if it was portrayed simply as a branch on the proverbial family tree.
While birth dates, death dates and marriage dates are all important elements of your project, you should try to expand your search beyond those simple data points. If you make only vital statistics the focus of all of your research, you may miss out on an essential component of the process: truly getting to "know" your relatives. Beyond being born and getting married, they also got in trouble with their parents, failed classes in school, won the blue ribbon for watercolor painting at the county fair, got a speeding ticket, won election to the City Council. For many life events, someone else in the family (or, if you are lucky, a reporter!) was an eye-witness. Your job, as a conscientious family history researcher, is to find records of these life lessons.
Admittedly, the news isn't always good. As we've discussed in Famous - or Notorious?, you may find that one of your relative's lives is very well documented for reasons that might make some people cringe. But other people lived quietly in the shadows - and their stories will be much more difficult to discover. You should start with the things that are found in the Attic or Basement: old Bibles, photo books, keep-sakes, programmes from graduation ceremonies. After that, you can expand your search into the public record arena (tax records, directories, military service records, etc.).
Online genealogy provides a unique opportunity for you to conduct your research when most libraries and archives are closed. This allows you to add "flesh" to the "skeleton" of your family history when you actually have the time to browse records without feeling the pressure of other family members (who want to leave the records office)! If you check out the links at Virtual Genealogy, you should be able to make some significant progress in building a framework for your overall project.
But don't forget: There are also facts and anecdotes in the minds of our older relatives, as we discussed in Conducting an Interview. Never undervalue the memory of people who lived before television and the Internet "melted our brains." You should try to learn all you can from them about everyone in the family they can remember - even if you don't know the BDMs. You can always (later) visit the Web to see what they have on dear old Uncle Frank...
The lesson here is that you should always develop a life-story for individuals - not just collect names and dates. Your own life will eventually be summed up in an obituary, written (hopefully) by someone who knew you well. Try to create a biographical sketch for the members of your family you research. Happy hunting!
While birth dates, death dates and marriage dates are all important elements of your project, you should try to expand your search beyond those simple data points. If you make only vital statistics the focus of all of your research, you may miss out on an essential component of the process: truly getting to "know" your relatives. Beyond being born and getting married, they also got in trouble with their parents, failed classes in school, won the blue ribbon for watercolor painting at the county fair, got a speeding ticket, won election to the City Council. For many life events, someone else in the family (or, if you are lucky, a reporter!) was an eye-witness. Your job, as a conscientious family history researcher, is to find records of these life lessons.
Admittedly, the news isn't always good. As we've discussed in Famous - or Notorious?, you may find that one of your relative's lives is very well documented for reasons that might make some people cringe. But other people lived quietly in the shadows - and their stories will be much more difficult to discover. You should start with the things that are found in the Attic or Basement: old Bibles, photo books, keep-sakes, programmes from graduation ceremonies. After that, you can expand your search into the public record arena (tax records, directories, military service records, etc.).
Online genealogy provides a unique opportunity for you to conduct your research when most libraries and archives are closed. This allows you to add "flesh" to the "skeleton" of your family history when you actually have the time to browse records without feeling the pressure of other family members (who want to leave the records office)! If you check out the links at Virtual Genealogy, you should be able to make some significant progress in building a framework for your overall project.
But don't forget: There are also facts and anecdotes in the minds of our older relatives, as we discussed in Conducting an Interview. Never undervalue the memory of people who lived before television and the Internet "melted our brains." You should try to learn all you can from them about everyone in the family they can remember - even if you don't know the BDMs. You can always (later) visit the Web to see what they have on dear old Uncle Frank...
The lesson here is that you should always develop a life-story for individuals - not just collect names and dates. Your own life will eventually be summed up in an obituary, written (hopefully) by someone who knew you well. Try to create a biographical sketch for the members of your family you research. Happy hunting!
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