Advice from Genealogists / Historians

[starrelectrician]

By all means pursue the info your father has. If you can find primary data like family bibles and records kept by earlier generations in your family, it can give you a huge leg up in doing online searches.

Also, if the LDS church has a genealogical library within driving distance of you, it will be worth the trip. They have exhaustive records gleaned from primary sources all over the country. They often participate in "loose records" projects, scanning and recording old paper records in churches, courthouses, etc. Just tons and tons of genealogical info in microfilm... and, if there's something in their index that isn't physically in their local library they will often send to Salt Lake to have a dupe made and sent at no charge... a way to build up each local library.

Happy hunting!

i also agree with this. as i was raised in the LDS church my family has always been very big on geneolagy. i have many aunts and uncles, along with my parents who have traced some of my family lines back to the 1600's. Ancestry.com is a very good site to use, and LDS.org has family history information. if you find you need some help try contacting the local LDS church and ask them to put you in touch with their geneolagy person. they usually have someone that is proficiant in doing searches and family tree's and can usually help you. as i said my family has gone back real far and it is loads of fun to find out who you are related to. good luck

[longhuntr74]

I've recently begun to care a great deal about this...so I think I might be embarking on my mission very soon. This is for a couple of reasons. Firstly...my father is an only child and I'm the only son with my surname....I have male cousins...3rd or 4th cousins...but I'm the only one from my particular branch. Three of my four grandparents are deceased and the fourth has Alzheimer's and dementia. Most of my great aunts or uncles are also deceased. So while my father still has most of his faculties about him, I figured I need to get as much info out of him as I can. He's probably forgotten a lot of what he once learned and that's not likely to get better as he approaches 70 and on. In short, time is of the essence if I don't want to start from square one.

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The first thing you may want to do is purchase a program where you can keep all of your records. I use Family Tree Maker, but there are a few that you can download for free on the Internet, such as Legacy and Rootsmagic.

These programs let you print off charts and narratives.

If your family came from Scotland, the best site to get birth, death and marriage records is www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk

Good luck with your research.

Ina

[Inchessi]

This may not be of much help now, but it is an odd place to look and had great information.

None of my family heritage followed the Mormon religion, however, my Aunt was able to find a good deal of information through them. I think she had to actually go to Salt Lake City.

[skauwt]

i gathered what data i could off my family from dates ,names ,records ,anything at all to be honest when i went to speak with older member's i wrote it all down for future reference even the family stories that might have been misinterpreted later in the years each pad contained data from each surname
my grandmother suffers bad alzheimers so i gathered what i could before it was too late she was the one i spoke to first ,sadly now she doesn't even remember whose is who in the family these days

i then went through the dates and names given by family and starting cross referencing the information from the actually records i managed to get

even though you don't want to go from the start again it might be for the best to cross check all that's been done before and chances are youll have more connections with other family from records online in the past 100 years than say 2-300 years ago,
someone else may have found that data your father never got round to discovering that can push you further back ,
im not sure what it would cost for that type of search abroad but i traced over 400 years of some family for less than £50 from the scotlands people records and genes reunited
for me it was easier to start from scratch mentally than redo someone else work

[MacBean]

LDS records are pretty helter skelter as most do not cite sources, which are vital.

The other disappointing news will be to discover how rare it is to be able to cross the Atlantic back to one's origin for those who arrived in the New World before immigration records were kept. If the family came through Ireland, it's even harder because many Irish records were lost in fires.

That said, it has been done. I can point at an ancestor from Croy and Dalcross parish and claim him as my own based on birth year and lack of further records after the time the family left Scotland, but there is really no proof at all.

I think what we are really looking for is stories, not names for a tree.

[longhuntr74]

Lots of mention of LDS here...my mother was ex-communicated from the LDS church...she wanted to marry a baptist...shame on her! I've got nothing against the Mormon church...as a Boy Scout, I have been friends with many...it's just a story I like to tell.

Secondly, my wife has a 75 page typed family history that her dad acquired somewhere that traces her fathers lineage back to Mary Stuart (sp?)...I think her status as a royal heiress has gone to her head...she thinks she's a general too...barking orders all the time! :-)

On a serious note...somebody mentioned software programs, etc. Anybody have recommendations for some that are better than others? What's the best free one? I'm willing to buy something, so what's the best one at your local Bestbuy?

[Tim Little]

On a serious note...somebody mentioned software programs, etc. Anybody have recommendations for some that are better than others? What's the best free one? I'm willing to buy something, so what's the best one at your local Bestbuy?

If you're a Mac user, I recommend Reunion.

[dutchy kilted]

The LDS also has a site that will at least help you get started

http://www.familysearch.org/eng/default.asp

I wad able to go back about 8 generations without trying real hard. You of course have to cross-reference some of the information but that is the fun part. If there is an LDS church near you can visit there as well, but I know the LDS is trying to put as much of what they have in their archives on this site. The best part is that it is free!

[EagleJCS]

Whichever software you wind up using, I recommend it have the ability to produce files in the GEDCOM format. That's a common format for a lot of different genealogy programs and databases to be able to quickly share information.

At one point, Ancestry.com allowed people to download a past version of their FamilyTreeMaker software for a free trial (nearly full features for 14 days). You can then purchase the upgrade if you want to continue with the full features (or you can just reinstall the trial version to 'refresh' the features you've been using).

I also highly recommend doing a generation at a time, as completely as possible. Rootsweb may be a place to start, just to get some names. ("Trust, but verify" is the watchword with these records. Sometimes people have copied erroneous information from other sources, just because the names and dates sort of fit.) Also, keep in mind that with your female relatives, their death certificates will likely carry their married name and not their birth name (I found a couple of 'false positives' in the online records of my line like that).

Some states now have some of their Vital Statistics indices online. You can get certificate numbers and some basic info, then write to the state office for a certified copy of the full record. Some libraries may have duplicate archives on microfilm. They won't be 'certified' copies, but it's a starting point.

For example, Kentucky has birth and death indices from 1911 to present and marriage/divorce indices from June 1958 to present online. Prior to those dates you have to go to the county of record, if you can determine what that may be. A copy of the KY archives is in the Louisville Free Public Library, which is where I got copies of some certificates in my line. They're not certified copies, but I got a lot of information from them, and I can now write to the state office and pay a fee for any that I want certified copies of (proofs for petitioning for a grant of arms, for example). I can also point other researchers to these certificates to refute the 'false positives' I came across.

Good luck, and have fun!