AboutMichael Troy Expertise I can help with the following:
How to get started with family research.
Resources on the internet to help with research.
Experience I have been researching my own family history for several years. My focus has primarily been in Pennsylvania, but have also done research on family from New York, Canada, Ireland, Germany, and the Ukraine.
Organizations Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania
Publications View my own family tree at:
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~mtroy
Question I have a lot of information. I am not sure how to organize all of the information. I am having a problem of what to put in a research journal. I belong to ancestry.com. Are there any others out there that could give me more information?
Answer Hi Judie,
My short answer is to "record everything." I keep extensive notes on all research that I do, even if it leads nowhere. Sometimes I determine people whose record I find have the same name but are not part of my family. I keep notes on these in case I stumble across records years later and don't want to make the same mistakes. I also sometimes am in contact with other researchers searching the same family names who may be interested in the person. Sometimes I find that this wrong person is a cousin of a direct relative and the information is of some use later.
It is also hard to know what information may be useful later. For example, at one point early on in my own family research, an elderly relative was telling me about my great-granduncle who had lived with her when she was a child. She mentioned that he never knew exactly when his birthday was, but had to find out to apply for Social Security in the 1950's. She remembered it was in January.
This meant little to me at the time, but I wrote it in my notes. Later, when trying to find this person's parents (who would be my g-g-grandparents) I came across some birth records which showed a person born in January with my great-granduncle's name. This helped me to isolate this person as a possible relative from several other people with the same name born around the same time in the same area. Since I new he had applied for Social Security, I sent away for a copy of his application, and it had the names of his parents on it. Also, the fact that he did not know his own birthday helped to explain why he and many of his siblings seemed to use many different birth dates on official documents. They just did not keep track of their own and made them up. So little clues which mean little at the time, can be quite helpful later.
Many times, there are lots of records with a person's name in them, but there is no way to tell if that person is your relative or someone else with the same name. Additional identifying information, such as birth or death dates, religion, type of employment, addresses, sibling names, spouse names, etc. can all help to narrow down a record to determine if it is the right person. So the more information you have about a relative, the better chance you have of identifying him/her properly in other records.
Of course, recording everything can be tedious. I keep a page profile on every direct ancestor I know about. I list what I know about them in detail and where I found the information, and how sure I am that it is correct. I also keep notes on each surname in my family where I list all the research that I found and where I found it. This is also where I list my research that led to dead-ends.
As far as sources, Ancestry.com is probably the best single source out there right now. But there are lots of other places to find things. The Mormons do a great deal of family research and have huge amounts of records, much of which is unfortunately not online yet. Their site, familysearch.org has proven useful to me. I also find that the family name forums at ancestry (also available on the free rootsweb.com) have helped me to get in touch with distant cousins also doing research and having valuable information.
Another tool I have used is Google. If I type in a couple of family names, say a husband and wife from several generations ago, I can often find web sites made by other researchers who are distantly related to me. I have found a lot of information that way.
Unfortunately, a lot of materials simply are not online at all. I have spent time walking through old cemeteries recording tombstone names and dates. There are often historical societies in many small towns where my family lived which have paper or microfilm records that prove very useful. If you live near a large city, there are often genealogical libraries where you can spend a day for a small fee and have access to huge amounts of family research.
Mormon churches also often have family research centers associated with them. You can get microfilm sent from a central depository in Salt lake city, to a neighborhood church, where they have microfilm readers for you. I have used this on a few occasions. It is available to anyone. I am not Mormon and not interested in becoming one, but have found their family research services very useful. You can find more details at the familysearch.org site I mentioned above.
Much of this is admittedly tedious and time consuming, and I often don't have the time to get to as much as I want. The first thing I always recommend people do is talk to your older relatives. Get as much information as you can from them. This will help you to confirm written record info later, and these sources may not be around forever. It is also a great way to connect with older relatives who sometimes feel isolated and that younger relatives are uninterested in anything they have to say. Sometimes these people also have old family pictures, bibles, or other documents that can be a great help to you. I always take a laptop and a small digital document scanner when I go on these visits. I have gotten a great deal of info that way. Many relatives do not want to let these valuable family treasures out of their hands for you to borrow, but are more than happy to let let you make a copy of them while you are there.
