Start Searching for your Ancestry Today and Discover your Family Roots
Sources Help to Verify your Family History
Find sources to back up your family stories and build a reliable family tree. Sources
can help fill-in family ancestry information, for example: who were my relatives? What did
they do for a living? How many children did they have? Where did they live? What
religion were they? What kind of life did they have? When were they born? When did
they die? Where are they buried? Who were their relatives and friends? Family stories
can be found and recorded.
Set a Goal and Follow a Research Plan
What relative and event information are your looking for? The more refined you can
be, the better your chances are in obtaining what you are searching for. Start with
a task list and take into consideration what you already know. Keep track of your
ancestry research results so you can analyze your efforts as well as keep you from
doing the same research in the future.
Decide which Ancestry Record(s) to Look for
Now that you have a goal, decide which records will help you fill in missing family
ancestry information and start your ancestry research. There are multiple records
for each type of event. If you are trying to find the age of an ancestor, you might
try looking at census, military, or vital records, as well as obituaries and cemeteries.
Follow this link to find a table of record types you can use to discover your family heritage.
Do Records Exist for your Ancestor?
Some of your research will be easy, and some will be hard. What makes many searches
difficult is the data you are seeking may not exist either due to natural disasters
or the local government agency didn’t start to document the data for the year you are interested in. If the source does exist it is like going on a treasure hunt to locate it and find
the information you are looking for within the source. As a guide we have put together
popular ancestry information and when the data started to be collected. It does
not take into account all counties or destroyed information, but it is a good starting
point. We have created a separate table for Census Records.
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