The Year of Doing Genealogy: What I've Learned

I've spent most of the last year pursuing my passion for family history research, while job hunting. Fortunately, genealogy research is a terrific way to keep up record-keeping skills! It's great to find more streamlined ways to research, and I've discovered a few methods that have helped me find ancestors, and connect with others researching the same family lines.

Here's are a few:

Name Drop - Meaning drop the first name, last name or both names of your ancestor in your search criteria on Ancestry, Family Search and other fielded search engines. As so often happens, names may have been misspelled, indexers may have transcribed the record in correctly, etc. If we're married to an exact spelling as we think we know it, we often miss records.

Try entering info in non-name fields: put a date of birth which you know is exact, and a location, for example. In searching for records in a Texas death certificate database, at times I've dropped everything but the exact birth date and parents' first names with success.

Location, Location, Location...then Browse - With this handy method, I've found several families when searching on their exact names was not successful. I recently found my husband's great, great grandfather Stephen H. Casey in the 1940 U.S. Census. I narrowed down the family's possible location from a record taken around the same time, in this case, the city of residence noted on his original Social Security application dated 27 Oct 1941 - in Haskell, Oklahoma. Diving into the 1940 census, I narrowed my search to the census pages for Oklahoma, then Muskogee County, then Haskell Town. Only 43 pages to browse. Within a few pages, there he was. The last name had been transcribed incorrectly as Stephen H. "Carey," not "Casey."

Portion of 1940 United States Census for Stephen H. Casey family, in Haskell, Oklahoma.

Know the Creator - The creator of the record, that is. This is a great strategy I've used twice with success on the Find A Grave website. Viewing the memorial for my great, great, great grandmother Catherine Munnelly Dyer, I noticed a birthplace of Killala, County Mayo, Ireland that I hadn't seen before. Where did this info come from? Scrolling down to find the creator of the memorial, I figured there could at least be a chance that he was related to me, so I sent off a message to ask. Sure enough, he is descended from the same family and had a trove of info to share with me on this line. Never hurts to ask!

A friendly FBer took a photo of this beauty for me in Scranton's Cathedral Cemetery. Photo: K.H. Donaghey

Join a Facebook Group - Facebook genealogy groups are one of my favorite resources. Genealogists are nothing if not helpful and generous. I've received guidance, translations, tips, advice, and outright answers to my dilemmas and research problems. One FB friend took photographs of my ancestors' graves in Pennsylvania (I'm in Texas!) in the cold of winter. Another located baptismal records on Family Search from Croatia for my Kozlina ancestors, going on nothing more than a few obituaries I had. I've joined FB genealogy groups for most all the areas I've researching - from Ohio to Texas, Ireland to Slovakia. Check out the FB groups for your geographic areas at this website, there are over 11,700 of them on a PDF.

Read the Fine Print - All databases on the big websites will include information on where the records came from, or further info where the original documents can be found or images ordered. Read it! I obtained the marriage record image for my husband's 3x great grandparents J.H. Stephen and Elizabeth Kite by first finding them in the "Texas, Select County Marriage Records, 1837-2015" index on Ancestry. But there was no image. But I did learn where I could write to obtain a copy of the document. A quick email to the courthouse later, I had all the info I needed to get a copy.

Similarly, the Ancestry database "U.S. and International Marriages, 1560-1900," had an entry for James G. Gilbride and Mary Hart, my 4x great grandparents. Reading the database info, I found that the information came from Yates Publishing, and represented records extracted from family group sheets collected over decades. For a mere $7.50, I obtained a 2-page PDF of my family's sheets (prices vary by number of pages) from Yates. While not considered a primary source itself, these family group sheets had valuable clues to follow up on.

Educate Yourself - The adage is true: "You don't know what you don't know!" But that doesn't mean you can't educate yourself with the plethora of resources out there. A few of my favorites are:

• Family History: Genealogy Made Easy, podcasts by Lisa Louise Cooke - Download these beginning genealogy steps to your phone or other device, and learn while you walk or commute to work. 40+ free episodes of terrific resources, interviews and step-by-step guides.
• Future Learn's online free genealogy course: Genealogy: Researching your Family Tree, presented by the University of Strathclyde. This self-paced, six-week course covers lots of ground, in videos, exercises, handouts, etc. 
• Get local - Google local genealogy groups. Check out the libraries in your area to see what resources they have. Find your local LDS Family History Center. And then go visit. Again, genealogists are friendly folk and willing to climb your brick walls with you.

Until next time, happy hunting.