Advice from Genealogists / Historians

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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.

[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!

[EagleJCS]

Sorry for the double post, but another thing I just thought of. If you decide to publish your research online at some point, be sure to remove any living relatives you've put in, and possibly their parents (even if they're deceased).

It's a privacy issue more than anything else. They might eventually be discovered through searching public records (just as you did), but why make it easy for anyone who wants to scam them?

[Jack Daw]

It's nice to get information that may have already been researched by others. But, many get sloppy and draw connections without adequate support that are just not true. So, I highly recommend that if you happen to start with information that others have already done the leg-work for, it would do you well to confirm as much of it as you can. Confirmation does not take as long as the initial research (if it was done), so you're still saving time.

[BoldHighlander]

It's nice to get information that may have already been researched by others. But, many get sloppy and draw connections without adequate support that are just not true. So, I highly recommend that if you happen to start with information that others have already done the leg-work for, it would do you well to confirm as much of it as you can. Confirmation does not take as long as the initial research (if it was done), so you're still saving time.

Exactly! I've been fortunate that a lot of my genealogical work had already been done for me by extended cousins, but I had to go thru, reveiw & "clean it up" in places

[gilmore]

It's nice to get information that may have already been researched by others. But, many get sloppy and draw connections without adequate support that are just not true. So, I highly recommend that if you happen to start with information that others have already done the leg-work for, it would do you well to confirm as much of it as you can. Confirmation does not take as long as the initial research (if it was done), so you're still saving time.

Very true.

However, after going back far enough in time, say a few hundred years, there just aren't any primary records, or those that still exist are on the other side of the world, so we are often forced to rely on secondary ones. Also, some primary sources, such as the Elizabethan and Stuart heralds' visitations, the Battle Abbey Roll, etc, are not always accurate.

Remember Oscar Wilde's "You should study the Peerage…It is the best thing in fiction the English have ever done."

Y DNA testing can sometimes verify or prove false some longstanding assumptions.

[Kilted Rogue]

Thanks for the Google reminder. i just did a quick google books search, And found a relative that was recently a dead end! sorry for the mini hi jack. Google is truly your friend

[SteveB]

A few interesting thins to note:
The Photocopier is ONLY 50 years old. Before that all records had to be transcribed, thereby bringing in possible error from the hands of the transcriber.

Getting a load of family tree work from someone else is always helpful for the direction it can take you, but verify each step of the way. The internet and modern digitisation has made it possible to sit on my fat backside here in the U.S. and read very auld source records in the U.K.. This has sped up the process of doing genealogy by quite a bit. The research that I did on my family tree forty years ago and cost me well over a year to do can be done in a day on the internet. I have been busy with others family research for so long that I had not worked on mine until recently. I drove through several earlier "brick walls" with ease because of records now being available that were not known to exist fifteen years ago.

Good luck and keep trying.
Slainte