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In the Beginning . . . How to Start Your Family Research
By Kathy Jones-Kristof | January 28, 2008
To begin, start with yourself. Your name, birth date, where you were born. Now you have your first person in your family file. That was pretty easy. Next step, your parents and grandparents.
Maybe you don’t know your grandparents’ names. Don’t be embarrassed. I thought I knew my grandmother’s name until the day I was hunting through a birth register in a courthouse in WV and came across her birth record. She had a different first name! Not Elva, as the entire family knew her as and is even on her tombstone. Her real name was Elvira. When I told my mother this shocking fact, she laughed and said that explained why whenever her father wanted to aggravate her mother, he would call her Elvira. Apparently Grandma didn’t like her real name, but the fact remains that her actual name was Elvira and that’s what I had to list her under in my genealogy file. However, I put her preferred name of Elva right beside it. I do this with all nicknames and it’s something you should do, too. Many people are only referred to by a nickname even in legal papers. Listing them only by their actual name in your family file may cause you to miss vital information in your research.
If you don’t know your grandparent’s name, look on your parent’s birth certificate. If you don’t have a copy, order it from the courthouse in the county where your parent was born. Google the courthouse or call to ask what information is required to order a copy. And remember, the people at the courthouse don’t want to know about your genealogy quest. Ask your question, be polite and thank them for their time. If they ask what the certificate is for, I tell them it’s for my family file, which is true. Everyone should have copies of their family’s vital certificates.
Birth certificates contain all kinds of lovely information. Place of birth, date of birth, and—best of all—the names of the parents. Sometimes, in those special moments that genealogists love and long for, it might even tell you where they were born. Once you know your grandparents’ names, if you find out where they were born you can contact that county courthouse and request their birth certificates, which will then give your great-grandparents’ names. If not, then you’ll have to start looking for death certificates—if your grandparents are dead. Their death certificates should have their parents’ names. You can request the death certificate the same way you did the birth certificate.
Now you can see the pattern to follow. Find the birth or death location and date, request the appropriate certificate, obtain information needed and keep requesting certificates as far back as possible. This easy quest will end the year the state required births and deaths be officially reported, usually in the early 1900’s. Before that date it takes a little more creativity to find vital information. I’ll discuss this in other posts.
In genealogy, everything depends on knowledge. Knowing where something occurred. Knowing when it happened. So start asking questions. Ask everyone in your family. Ask family friends. Ask old neighbors. Look for family records. Check family Bibles. Look for papers stored in old shoeboxes. Look for obituaries, which people are constantly cutting out of newspapers without supplying dates and locations, but may have the name of a funeral home you can contact. You have to be a detective.
After all the digging, when you put together the bits and pieces of information and complete your family history, what a treasure you’ll have! There’s nothing more valuable. Okay, gold and diamonds would be great to find in that old shoebox on the top shelf of your grandpa’s closet, but that’s pretty unlikely so I’d settle for my gr-gr-gr-great-grandpa Jones’ name and history. You try researching the name Jones in Virginia in the late 1700’s and you’ll see what I’m up against. Until next time, start spelunking through your family’s closets and see what you find in those old shoeboxes!
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Topics: Beginning Genealogists |
June 10th, 2008 at 11:42 am
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