More Family History research questions

[pjlla]

I decided rather than hijack the other thread, I would ask some questions here.

Okay... I have read that you can't get census records beyond the early 1900's (can't remember the exact date). So here is my MAIN question...

since I still frequently travel to the town where most of my family's records would be kept, do I REALLY need this somewhat expensive subscription to ancestry.com ??

If I keep the ancestry.com subscription, what kind of things should I be looking for?? How can I find DOB, DOD, etc on there?

THanks in advance........................P

 

[piratesmate]

Census records can't be released until 75 yrs after they're taken...so the most recent ones available are 1930. We still have another 8 yrs to wait for the 1940 records.

Many local areas have records available online. I'm researching several lines that stayed in the Schuylkill County PA area for multiple generations and there is a great deal I can get for that county online. However, another line stayed in Montgomery County PA for even longer, but there isn't much online for that county...at least not what I need.

Have you tried your county archives? Montgomery County PA may not have much online, but their archives are well organized & very accessible in person. Marriage certificates have DOB and parents names & you can browse through those registers & copy info to your heart's content. For DOD, I've looked through the index of Wills and they'll pull them for you to look at. There's great info there when you find a will.

In all honesty, I've found that Ancestry was better for tracking down people who aren't in my immediate area...either out of state or far enough away that I don't drive there often. Over the past 5 years their records have gotten better, but it's still pretty slim pickings at times. I've gotten DOB & DOD from other people's family trees that they've posted, but you can never really be certain if the info is accurate. Some people just post info they've gotten from the LDS site - and I don't know about you, but there are huge, glaring errors in that info for people in my family. I know the info to be wrong as they have them dying before I was born & I knew these people until my early teens...that kind of thing.

My Dad & I shared a subscription for about 4 yrs and then I let it lapse when he was moving from his house into a senior living apartment. I'd pretty much exhausted its resources. However, last year I did pick it up again during a sale. I thought they'd added quite a bit of new stuff - especially newspapers - but I was quite saddened to find that the papers for the areas I'm working with were not available.

Have you exhausted to WWI and WWII enlistment records on Ancestry for your families?

 

[Lisa]

ancestry.com will have good enlistment, census, SSI, and immigration records, beyond that, it is limited. I subscribed for awhile and save to a jump drive what I could find while I first started to do my research, then let it lapse. When they have a good sale for a month subscription, I renew for a month and see what new info I can get. They also have some interesting pictures, ie I got one of a person going to a house for the census. Thought I would put that in where I have the census record for 1930.

Pjlla, check with your home town for what they have available since you do visit. Either the town hall or public library. The MA archives will have everything you want too.

http://www.familysearch.org./Eng/Search/RG/frameset_rg.asp?Dest=E&Juris1=341

Check on familysearch.org for a family center near you. The closest one to me in CT is run by a very knowledgable woman who do not belong to the church. If you need copies of birth or death certificates, they can get you copies for a fee, ie $5.

 

[pjlla]

Okay... I decided to make best use of my "14 day free trial" and I have been sitting here clicking away for over three hours now and I am SO excited about how much stuff I have found! My grandfather and his parents and grandparents are on the 1900 and 1930 census records. I finally feel like I have made some progress! .........................P

 

[Princess Tink]

Another website that might be useful, one of my friends turned me onto recently: rootsweb.com
After putting your search in the SEARCH Rootsweb , you will get a list of databases that found the name you are searching....WorldConnect has been most informative thus far.

I have traced my ancestors back but got stuck after finding my Great-Great Grandparents (Mexico). My Grandmother & her siblings her the first generation born in the US. This is when the trouble begins, I wish I knew how to get past this point. I know one set of my Great-Great-Great Grandparent were originally from Spain the other set from Mexico, but this is only from memory of conversations with Grandma (which is no longer with us).

 

[PrincessNancy96]

yes, rootsweb.com and ancestry.com are awesome..
I can't type what I know because I get so excited and remember some other stuff that I can't get what I want to say out...
What the girls have told you so far is great!!!
I love to search the census sheets.. watch for the many variations in spelling... MY gosh... we have some crazy spellings to some of our family names..and keep in mind..sometimes the kids were listed with their nicknames not their given names...
I also have been able to find a lot of info at our State Library.. contact you local library too and see if they have ancestry.com free for their members.. some library I think access can be granted through their websites...
Some local libraries have some genealogical information on their sites.. especially indexes where you can look things up and than go in and find them quickly.. I do that all the time..
OOOH! Another thing.. utilize the message boards.. post a question and most of the time someone will respond and have the answer or point you in the right direction for the answer.. Some of them do volunteer work and will go look up an obituary or newspaper article for you. I have a great lady offer to look up DH's great-grandfathers Obit.. and she found it.. I also answer a post about a family member and found a cousin that my aunts had lost contact with!!!

I love genealogy research!!!

 

[pjlla]

Thanks for all of the replies/suggestions. By the end of my free time yesterday, I had printed census pages from 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900, 1920, and 1930... with family information on all of them! It was so darn exciting! (I actually teared up at one point, I was so moved to see info about my grandmother that I never knew.... a census from when she was about 3 years old!)

PrincessNancy.... I see what you mean about the names! I had an aunt named Olive.... she showed up on the transcribed version of the census as "Clois"..... when I looked closer at the original hand-written page, I could understand why they thought it said Clois instead of Olive. I also have an uncle Marvin who showed up as Marion. And waaaaaay back I found a relative listed twice as "Jonas" but once as Jonah.... but it appears his Dad's name was Jonas, so I am going with the thought that Jonas is correct.

Since I know where many of these family members lived, I was actually able to page forward on the census and determine what direction the census taker was traveling in! It was SO COOL!!

THanks again for all of the helpful suggestions!....................P

 

[tinkerrn]

I love genealogy work!!! I am so addicted to it. I have been able to go back to France in the 1600's to find some of my ancestors. The kentucky death certificates were put on line a month ago; I was able to find what my gggg-ma &fa died of. It was so fascinating, just from the pure medical aspect. I have discovered that in many lines that they passed of pretty much the same disease. Good stuff to know when they ask your history at the doctors office.

I can do look ups for anyone if they need some help! Just PM me.

 

[PrincessNancy96]

I love genealogy work!!! I am so addicted to it. I have been able to go back to France in the 1600's to find some of my ancestors. The kentucky death certificates were put on line a month ago; I was able to find what my gggg-ma &fa died of. It was so fascinating, just from the pure medical aspect. I have discovered that in many lines that they passed of pretty much the same disease. Good stuff to know when they ask your history at the doctors office.

I can do look ups for anyone if they need some help! Just PM me.

Aren't the KY death certs the best to gather info from online... MY gosh! The wealth of info I have found on my family through those have been amazing....

 

[Lisa]

Tinkerrn, where did you find the KY death certificates? On ancestry? DH's family line was from there.

 

[piratesmate]

I don't know if the KY records are online anywhere else, but I noticed them last night on Ancestry. Sadly I don't have anyone from KY and the PA records aren't online.

But if you have some names you'd like checked, send me a PM (to keep them private) and I'll see what I can do for you.

 

[tinkerrn]

Yes, the KY Death certificates are on line there. It has to be the best find yet for my research. I have been able to confirm birth dates, death dates, their spouse's name, where they were born, their parents names, where their parents were born, when they were buried, where they were buried, what funeral home was used, their age, their address, where they died (if at home, hospital, etc..), the cause of death, how long they were treated for the disease, if surgery was done, etc...

Ancestory.com is expensive, but if you are going to do genealogy work, it is a fantastic investment. It sure beats spedning hours in a library going through microfiche. My sister and her husband started doing our genealogy back in 1977, and I have found many errors from their work. Thanks to the internet and ancestory.com, I have been able to document all my sources.

I also caution those who use familysearch.com, it is a wonderful site; however, most of the info is submitted by researchers and there are alot of mistakes. I found that my FATHER was listed as deceased! He is alive!
Also, some of the family trees on rootweb.com and ancestory.com have alot of mistakes also. You have to be sure that when youare using their info that it is sourced. They should have census records, etc.. to back up their info. I made the mistake of adding others family trees to mine, and found way too many mistakes. I like to do my own research; you learn soo much about your family and can provide sources. Those 2 sites also have a community board similar to the DIS, you can get alot of info and can help break down a 'brick wall' in your research. I have had several emails from ancestors that I had no clue even excisted! They have sent me documents that have helped confirm clues that I had about certain relatives. I warn you it's very addictive!

If any of you are looking at KY, especially in Louisville, and they were catholic; you can email Calvary Cemetery. I ordered records on 3 families, about 100 names, and it only cost me $9.00. It gave me their name, date they passed, their age, which cemetry, the exact plot, section, and grave they are buried in, the parish they belonged to, and the funeral home used.

I have gone out and found many graves that way, unfortunatly, many of mine do not have markers. It's a great resource to use!

As a matter of fact, I have several pictures of their monuments and it does help with the connection of my ancestors. I am planning on making a CD/DVD at some point for my mother and siblings.

If any of you have questions or need a look up, especially in Louisville, Ky or Southern Indiana, let me know.

Happy hunting!

 

[holycow]

I'm just subscribing to this thread for future read..looks informative!

 

[pjlla]

Just wanted to let you folks know how my search is going.

I have made terrific progress on my Dad's side of the family. Since they are mostly from the same area of MA, it was somewhat easy. The only "wall" I have hit is my great-grandfather who came over from Scotland in 1872 or 1873.... can't find any immigration info on him. But that's okay.... I still have other sources to check. And I was able to "connect" to another tree on ancestry.com that actually brings me back to the 1600's... and I was able to confirm at least most of the information is correct, if not all!! So that saved me a great deal of work.

It has been a bit slower on my Mother's side.... they were mostly from Maine, so I didn't grow up knowing a great deal about the family, but I have had some success with the Maine Census records.

But my Mom saw one of her cousins from Maine earlier this week and told him what I was doing and he gave her a box the size of a suitcase (so she says) of ancestry research he has done in the past and told her that I could use it! I can't wait to see it (hopefully in a few weeks).

The geneology research is TOTALLY addicting! For a few days there I was on ancestry.com every available moment!! I have always wanted to be a detective and this type of thing is right up my alley! If I can get a full tree just three or four generations back, I will be happy!

I actually got my husband "sucked in" to the excitement. We were able to find his grandfather and grandmother, his Dad and siblings on an immigration record from Sweden! So cool! ............................P

 

[piratesmate]

You have people from Scotland? Good luck with that! LOL DH has a grandfather who immigrated in 1905 and tracing them in Scotland was really interesting. I just looked to see if I could find the article I read about naming conventions in Scotland but can't find it. Bascially, it was something like 1st son is named after paternal grandfather, 2nd after maternal grandfather.... The problem arises when there was a large family & each son had a large family...all following the same naming convention. So if they didn't move out of town, you could have 5 or 6 Hugh McPherson's all around the same age...living next to each other! LOL

I was fortunate in that we found a birth certificate from Scotland for DH's grandfather. It had his parents names & their street address. From there I was able to use the Scotland census.

If you remember me saying that there were some issues with familysearch.org - about the researchers who input info & how difficult it was to weed out the info that was from actual transcriptions? Well, someone from a Scotland discussion board directed me to the following site:
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~hughwallis/IGIBatchNumbers/CountyAyr.htm

That site allows you to look for transcribed records if you know the town and is broken down into ranges of years. I hope that it helps you as much as it helped me!

 

[hopemax]

It is exciting. My aunt has done some research on my father's side of the family. Unfortunately, they immigrated fairly recently (my great-grandma was like 6 weeks old when they came) and didn't have much luck finding information in Poland. There was one uncle who remembered coming over, but refused to talk about what he remembered from Poland.

I did some investigating for my Mom's side of the family, and found a tree for my grandfather's family. It's a HUGE tree, originally settled in Berks County, PA and was well known at the time. So there is tons and tons of info. It was quite a shock to my Mom to learn that her family was one of early American settlers that you might read about in a history book.

On DH's side, his great-aunt had a lot of records and had traced back to a doctor back in the 1700's in Ireland. DH posted on an internet site looking for more info. A couple years after that post, I was at my parent's house and the phone rang. I happened to answer it, and it was someone from Australia who had read DH's post and realized that DH and his wife were related! Way back when, the Doctor had a wife and several children. The wife passed away, the doctor remarried and had several more children. DH is descended from the first wife, and the lady in Australia was descended from the second wife! They had searched for DH, found a trip report from our honeymoon. I had a long polish name so they easily found my parents phone number, and called. They are more interested in the geneology stuff than we are, and pass along any info they find. Unfortunately, they found out the records from the area where the doctor lived were destroyed in a fire. So I don't know how much more we will learn. Although, I periodically search the databases, and I think I found some info about the doctor's wife, and can trace her back a little farther.

 

[ellenb29]

are all here on this forum! I don't actually post that much, but love to see people falling in love with their roots. However, remember that for every family you find, you find 8 more grandparents to potentially look for! I named my first daughter Sarah (died at age 2) and started doing genealogy mid-1990's. Apparently my father and aunt did not know their maternal grandmother was named Sarah, I found that out on a census. Don't know what happened to her after 1910 but her husband and one daughter are buried with HER parents!
Ellen

 

[PrincessNancy96]

Yeah! Ask my DD about all her grandparents.. we are up to 8 generations now for her 4H project... and we have 300 tabs (dividers) to make for her books.. We are up to 5 books..but I forsee another book by the time we are all done.... What we have done..is divided for each grandparent..and then we add an extra divider for the "family of" and included any info we have in regards to their immediate family.. I'll have to post photos of the tabs we have done.. one section we even have a photo of 4 generations!!!!!

 

[tinkerrn]

Yeah! Ask my DD about all her grandparents.. we are up to 8 generations now for her 4H project... and we have 300 tabs (dividers) to make for her books.. We are up to 5 books..but I forsee another book by the time we are all done.... What we have done..is divided for each grandparent..and then we add an extra divider for the "family of" and included any info we have in regards to their immediate family.. I'll have to post photos of the tabs we have done.. one section we even have a photo of 4 generations!!!!!

The books you are making, tell me more about them...please. I am trying to find a way to digital scrap our genealogy. I want to include the charts, etc..

 

[piratesmate]

The books you are making, tell me more about them...please. I am trying to find a way to digital scrap our genealogy. I want to include the charts, etc..

Good question! When I first got into scrapping it was because I wanted to make a book about all my genealogy research. I'm no closer to starting that project now than I was then...in fact, maybe further away since I've accumulated more stuff and what few ideas I had for displaying them are no longer viable.

As a matter of fact, I have several pictures of their monuments and it does help with the connection of my ancestors. I am planning on making a CD/DVD at some point for my mother and siblings.

Have you given any thought as to how to put the info on CD/DVD to share it? DH's siblings are getting really antsy to see what I've got, but I don't have a clue on how to share it! I use Family Tree Maker (an older version - maybe 8.0??) but none of them has the program. I'm not happy with the reports because you have to do each line separately. I recently ran a report to send to someone working on one of my "shorter" lines & it was over 100 pages!!

Does anyone have any good ideas? I have quite a few old photos, tons of census records, a few ship manifests, etc, etc.