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Digging for Your Roots
Before you get to know your ancestors, let’s start with the person and the people you know best—you and your immediate family! The answers you find here will start you on your genealogical trail.
HOW TO DO RESEARCH
Finding out facts about your family involves research. The first and easiest way to get some answers is simply by asking yourself some questions, or by interviewing your parents. This is called using primary sources, primary meaning “first.” These are the people in your immediate family: your parents, yourself and your siblings. Start by finding out the basic facts—names, dates, places. Later on, when you’ve figured out who everybody is, you can go back to people and collect family stories, called recording “oral history.” In the meantime, if you do need to get some quieter relatives talking, asking a few of the questions on pages 84–85 (taking oral histories) might help to draw them out.
You may be surprised to discover just how much important information about yourself you already know, and how much you need to find out. You probably know where you were born. But maybe you don’t know the exact time of your birth—a fun thing to know. So ask your parents to help you make a copy of your birth certificate. Certificates are official records used in keeping track of what happens in people’s lives. There are certificates for birth, baptism, marriage, and death. Each of these certificates can offer a wealth of information about you, and about the people in your family tree.
As you research and do your interviews, keep an eye and ear out for these great sources of information:
1. Marriage license—where and when a family member was married.
2. Diploma—where and when someone went to school and earned a degree.
3. Death certificate or newspaper obituary notice—where and when someone died (sometimes how or why they died). Also, where they are buried, and what family members survived them.
4. Family Bible—births, marriages, and deaths may be recorded and the Bible handed down from generation to generation. A wonderful family heirloom.
5. Personal diaries and letters—names of family and friends (who could have important information), places the family might have lived (look at return addresses on envelopes), important details of daily lives and wonderful stories of the times in which the people lived.
6. Internet—all manner of information.
BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING
Birth records generally include the name of the child and the parents, and the exact date and even time of birth. The name of the hospital is there, too, and the signature of the doctor in charge. You might find some funny things, too, such as a footprint taken right after the baby was born, or a few strands of hair stuck to it.
Look at your birth certificate and you may notice that the name you’ve always used isn’t exactly the one you were given at birth. If people call you Harry, your birth name may actually be Henry or Harold. Peggy is a common nickname for Margaret, but Peggy could actually be the name given on the birth certificate, not Margaret. Someone called Max might have been named Maximilian, after a long-ago Roman emperor, or Maxine!
As you search out old birth certificates, you might be surprised to find a person’s last name isn’t the same as on their birth certificate. It could be a simple spelling mistake, or that the person disliked the name and changed it. Sometimes, a name was simplified or changed when an immigrant moved to a new country with a different language and culture For example, Sandlovitz might have been shortened to Sands, while Roi (in French) was translated to King.
Time out for a holiday photo with visiting cousins.
LET’S TALK
Now that you’ve found out some basic family facts, you’re ready to learn about interviewing. But asking questions, even of people you know well, isn’t always easy. You’ll need to know what questions to ask and how to ask them to get the answers you will find the most useful. Where do you start?
Think. Now that you have some information on family members, who do you think might be the most helpful? How about some of the oldest? Do you have several relatives who are about the same age, in their 60s or 70s, or maybe older? Lucky you! These are the family members you want to talk to and interview, because they could be a great help to you in your genealogy research. Their stories of who their parents and grandparents were, where they came from, and how things were when they were kids are waiting to be told.
But people are different. Some are willing to talk about just anything for hours, while others need to be put at ease before they will open up to you. During an interview, one person will answer questions with only a word or two, so you’ll need to ask follow-up questions to get the information you’re looking for. Another person will ramble on with a long involved story instead of telling you what you want to know. You need to take control of the interview and bring the talkative ones back on track.
It’s nice to have the family dog in the picture.
SETTING UP AN INTERVIEW
To get ready to interview, before you sit down to ask questions, you’ll need some way to catch and keep the responses people give you, and whatever else they may say. A good way is to use a tape recorder or a cell phone, if you have one, and don’t forget to use fresh batteries and keep your phone charged. That way, you’ll have a record of any valuable information and be able to listen to it again and again to refresh your memory. After the interview, you’ll want to transcribe, or copy, the words onto paper or type them up to have easy access to it. If someone objects or is clearly uncomfortable being recorded, go back to that old standby of information-gathering—a notebook and a few pencils or pens.
ASKING QUESTIONS!
To make your research easier (and for organizing the information in your workbook later on), it helps to have a form that can be filled out. That way, you can be sure to ask the same basic questions of everyone you interview. For relatives you can’t talk to in person because they don’t live nearby, you can send the form in an email. For your relatives who like snail mail better, put your questionnaire in an envelope and send it along with a self-addressed stamped envelope so they can get it back to you quickly and easily. Explain what the genealogy project you’re doing is and that you’d like each family member to fill out the form for you. Politely request that they send back the completed form by a certain date (allowing two weeks or so is about right). That way the form is less likely to be put aside and forgotten or mislaid.
Copy this form, or make up one of your own:
1. Full name (first, middle, last)
2. Date and place of birth
3. Parent A’s name
4. Parent B’s name
5. Current address
6. Previous addresses (years, when moved)
7. Education (when, where)
8. Health concerns
9. Employment history
10. Married (name of spouse, date, location; include multiple lines for multiple marriages)
11. Children (names, dates, places of birth)
12. Divorced date, place; include multiple lines here, too)
13. Military service (date of service, branch)
14. Awards and honors received
15. Memberships (club, church, organization)
16. Pets
17. Special talents
Is there anything else about yourself that you would like me to know?
Who else should receive a copy of this form (name, relationship, address)?
Asking these last questions might get you some information you wouldn’t have thought to ask about and could lead to family members you don’t know. As you discover relatives you didn’t know, add their names to your list of people to be interviewed or sent a copy of the form.
It’s a good idea, too, to leave space at the bottom of your form for any “Comments” or “Stories.” If the form appears to have very little blank space, indicate to your relatives that they can add any additional information they would like on the back of the form or on a separate sheet of paper. Note: Remember to ask each relative to email or send a nice close-up photo (a head shot) that you can keep.
How far back can you go?
It’s thrilling to have all that information coming in! As the forms are filled out or returned, use a three-hole punch along the left side and put the pages into your loose-leaf binder. Or scan them into files on your computer. Add only basic facts (such as birth date) to your working family tree. Later, you’ll use a lot more of this helpful and interesting information in making up your family history scrapbook. For now, keep the forms all neat and safe in one handy place, your loose-leaf genealogy workbook or in neatly organized files on your computer.
BE PREPARED!
Even when you’re not planning to interview anyone, keep your phone or a small notebook and a couple of sharp pencils or pens with you at all times. You never know when you might need them! At a family dinner, your father might start talking about the time his uncle won first prize in a yodeling contest. Or you could be driving home with your mother when she starts telling you about how her grandfather won a lot of money in a lottery. Remember, when you record the information, write down who told you it and where and when you got the information. Later, if you need to, you can go back to that person (“primary source”) and ask for more information about a particular ancestor. Like the detectives on TV cop shows, whip out your notebook and jot things down. You can refer to them later, to jog your memory or your source’s.
Genealogy work has its own language. Here’s a list of vocabulary words that should help you in researching your family history:
Ancestor—your ancestors are the people you are descended from—your parents’ parents, their parents, and so on.
Archives—a collection of historical records and items: birth and death records, land deeds; back issues of old newspapers.
Autobiography—a life story, told by the person writing or speaking it.
Biography—a life story, told by someone else.
Census—an official count of residents (who they are, where they live) taken at certain times, such as every ten years.
Descendant—someone younger than you in your family lineage—your children, and their children; someone you are an ancestor of.
Emigrate—to move from one country to another to start a new life elsewhere.
Fraternal twins—siblings born at the same time, but not from the same egg. (Compare to Identical twins.)
Genealogy—a “mapping” of family members, from the farthest-back ancestor to the living members of the family.
Generation—family members on the same “step” of family history (great-grandparents, grandparents, parents).
Genes—biologically, what makes you who you are (DNA code).
Head(s) of household—the adult(s) responsible for a family group.
Identical twins—siblings born at the same time from the same egg. (Compare to Fraternal twins.)
Immigrant—a person who enters a country to stay and live permanently.
Maiden name—Surname of an unmarried woman, which may change at marriage.
Maternal—“from the mother.” Relatives on your maternal side are directly related to your mother.
Paternal—“from the father.” Relatives on your paternal side are directly related to your father.
Pedigree—a person’s record, in chart form, of parental and ancestral information (similar in meaning to genealogy).
Relatives—people related to you.
Sibling—brother or sister.
Spouse—husband or wife.
Surname—a person’s last or “family” name.