Advice from Genealogists / Historians

[davidlpope]

...along with Y-chromosome DNA analysis and comparison to an ongoing project of my surname that is already in place on both sides of the ocean.

Has anyone else had experience with this Y-chromosome mapping stuff? I'm intrigued by it, but just don't know enough yet to justify the expense. I'm all ears.

David

[gilmore]

Has anyone else had experience with this Y-chromosome mapping stuff? I'm intrigued by it, but just don't know enough yet to justify the expense. I'm all ears.

David

I tested my Y DNA and found the results surprising and extraordinary helpful. www.familytreedna.com has the largest database and is therefore more likely to have matches than the other companies.

Genetic genealogy is in its infancy, and I suspect that it will become more useful in the years and decades to come, as the databases grow larger. Now, it would be wisest to rely on it as an adjunct to primary sources, that is, well-documented research following the paper trail backward in time from yourself and your parents.

It can be especially helpful if you are at a brick wall in narrowing down areas where further research is likely to be helpful, and eliminating areas where it wouldn't. Unfortunately quite a few people test in hopes of riding on some one else's coattails and profiting from research others have done without having done much or any themselves, but that's the way it is.

If you find DNA testing confusing, there are two or three Yahoo groups on it, with members who are very well-informed, if often opinionated, and who are good about answering queries.

The expense of Y DNA testing isn't all that great, I think it's US $100 for a 7 marker test, which won't tell you very much in itself, but if you have matches, you can upgraded to a finer test. Most people get the 25 or 37 marker tests for US $200 or $300 or so.

LDS, as well as Ancestry.com and other online sites are often great sources for authoritative primary sources, such as census records, ships lists, etc, but I would not rely on family trees posted online, as well as those kept by the LDS. They don't do quality control at all, and accept whatever is submitted to them, bad research and all. And mistakes can be repeated there over and over again until they have the appearance of fact.

[SteveB]

Sorry to be late in the advise department.

As said previously:

1.) Start with yourself and work back one step at a time and get documentation for every event.

2.) The most popular software is Family Tree Maker. It works on Winows. Mac, and Linux.

3.) Use the "trees" on Ancestry.com, familysearch.org, etc. for GUIDANCE ONLY. They will help you find direction, but be sure to document by original sources each "fact". The LDS accepts whatever has been submitted, and many are full of serious errors. Examples are children born to a female four years after her death, children born within seven months of each other, and children born before the mother was eight years old. In early times a person may have gone through two or three spouses. Sometimes a child is credited to a father that was dead over twenty years. (Long before sperm banks).

4.) Ancestry's Census records and other source documents are quite helpful, and best when you are pursuing an uncommon name.

5.) Your friendly local library is the next stop. Many will have a section for genealogy that will contain published Vital Records, and local community histories with a genealogy section in the book, as well as published family genealogies. If you are on track for a Mayflower ancestor, many libraries have the Mayflower "Silver" books covering five or more generations of descendants from the original passengers. If you are on track for someone who served in the colonial, revolutionary wars, or the conflict amongst the states, there are numerous military records that have been published that may include some family data. While you are at the library, you should see if they have subscriptions to Ancestry.com, Heritage Quest, or NEHGS. The pay side of Ancestry has a lot more data than the stuff that is available for free. Heritage Quest is a site loaded with many genealogy and history books that have been digitized, and master indexed. NEHGS is The New England Historic Genealogy Society. Its website is loaded with digital images of many documents for New England research as well as family works and manuscripts from around the United States and Canada. All of the Massachusetts Vital Records before 1915 are digitized and online.

Should the local library not have these resources available the librarian will generally be able to direct you to a library in your region that can help. For specific books, most libraries can obtain them for you on inter-library loan.

Should you hop across the pond to Scotland, Scotlandspeople.gov.uk is the official site for Vital Records. One warning is that you should have a very good idea of where and when before searching, as you can use up a tenner rather quickly.

Good luck and happy hunting,

Steve Brown,
Research Genealogist
The Scottish Genealogy Society
Edinburgh.

[Bugbear]

I tested my Y DNA and found the results surprising and extraordinary helpful.... And mistakes can be repeated there over and over again until they have the appearance of fact.

Darth Gilmore! I was worried a giant baobab tree had eaten you!

Hope all is going well on your visit; nice to see you posting again.

Unfortunatly, the interesting parts of the family history are not so directly recorded, or talked about in my case. Doesnt keep me from wondering, though; guess one can only guess.

[gilmore]

Darth Gilmore! I was worried a giant baobab tree had eaten you!

Hope all is going well on your visit; nice to see you posting again...

Thanks for the kind regards.

All is well here. Though I haven't worn pants in months, I haven't worn even the one kilt I brought with me since I left the US.

[Lyle1]

I agree that you should start by getting as much information from relatives as you can. However, be prepared to find that sometime of what they remember isn't exactly correct, though it can still lead you to the correct information. Also check out any bibles that your family members might have; a lot of people record family events in bibles.

I think Ancestry.com is a great tool. You can access a lot of official records, and you might find that someone else has included some of your ancestors in their tree. Always look for documentation of facts on other trees. I found one of my great grandfathers on another tree, and, as well, I thought, a missing daughter; on that tree unfortunately, the supposed daughter was born in Pennsylvania before my great grandfather came to the USA. On the other hand, I traced one of my German lines back to the 1500's in about three hours. I contacted one of the owners of a tree to which I kept being led, and found a 3rd cousin living in the ancestral town in Germany. She has given me a lot of documentation, and I have found data on an American line of her family. Ancestry.com also has message boards where you can make inquiries of anyone who might have information on your family.

The second the advice to use Google. I searched on a decidedly Italian name in my German line from the 1600's and found a few history books (on Google Books) that confirmed that he was an Italian living in Germany, and I found a very good website containing a very large and well documented family tree of a noted German industrialist who lived in the same area as my ancestors. I've found information for about a dozen of my ancestors in that tree.

[macwilkin]

I should have mentioned that many public libraries have subscriptions to Ancestry and Heritage Quest, which means that their patrons may use them for free.

T.

[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.

[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.