10 COMMON SENSE RULES WHEN STARTING TO TRACE YOUR FAMILY TREE

10 COMMON SENSE RULES WHEN STARTING TO TRACE YOUR FAMILY TREE

By Mike Harvey

Rule 1

Don't try to trace your connection down from some historical figure you may
be told you are related to. (Like I did...fool)
Always start with yourself and work backwards. Interview EVERYONE in the
family and see what documents and photos you can obtain or copy. Be careful
with family stories, they tend to be sugar coated and sometimes connect the
wrong event to the wrong person or generation. Interviewing Relatives is
cross-referenced with Lies and Date Discrepancies!
Economies with the truth are rampart.
(Surprise! surprise! Paternal Great Granny and Great Grandpa weren't quite
the paragons of virtue that I was led to believe. And Maternal Great Grandad
wasn't an "English Emigrant". He won an all expenses paid trip to Australia
courtesy of the Old Bailey which he repaid with 14 faithful years in
Government service! Oh, and Maternal Great Granny won one too! Some
favouritism shown with her...she only gave 7 years of faithful Government
service. )

Rule 2

Remember to record all women as who they are when they are born, not by
their married name or known by in later life.

Rule 3

Don't be a chauvinist - your father's line is only a twig, not a tree. The
name you are born with falls either way of the wedding ring. Many babies
born before marriage are recorded under their mother's maiden name. Always
remember your mother's line is more accurate than your father's. Think
"Mother's baby! Father's maybe?" After all, your father's line is only as
good as your mother tells you.

Rule 4

Trace the lines of least resistance, those that are not German if you can't
sprechen zie deutsch, those that are not Irish if you want instant success.
Do the easy ones first, i.e. those who are born where they said they were
born.

Rule 5

Don't look for a marriage date nine months before the birth of the first
child. Many children were born within a few weeks, months or hours after
and before the parents were married or if ever married.

Rule 6

You will need to check the indexes to Births, Deaths and Marriages for the
appropriate State and look up your ancestors' entries. In some States the
reference numbers means cheaper certificates. Death certificates may be
informative in Australia but they are the least correct.
Never rely on a death certificate to be accurate.
For NSW use a transcription agent rather than the NSW BDM's site
for copies of certificates.... They are a helleva lot cheaper and are typed
out for ease of reading. They can also be 'cut and pasted' into your notes
file in your computer program or just put in your family history files.
And if they stuff up the details you have no trouble getting a replacement.

Rule 7

Get organized from day one. You'll be killing a lot of trees with the paper
trail you'll be gathering. Get the correct stationery or computer program
to handle recording the data you will be collecting.

Rule 8

Make sure you take good notes stating what you read, when you read it and
whether it held any information crucial to your search. This will save
duplication of genealogy and keep you organized.

Rule 9 (Mine)

Check to make sure someone hasn't already traced your family tree. You can
search through a series of books called the Genealogical Research Directory
(GRD). These are annual publications showing who is tracing whom in the
family tree. They can be found at most genealogical libraries, LDS Centres
and major council libraries. The Internet also provides a wealth of sites
for free advertisement of names you are researching.
Use Roots web's World Connect but remember that there is a lot of 'fantasy'
there purporting to be 'factual family trees'. Same goes especially for
Ancestry.com
The first rule of genealogy research should be applied to all data from
these sources:
'Accept all data...Believe none until you have checked it for veracity
yourself.'
Lots of ego trippers lurk on those sites.

Occasionally revise your work.

Your mantra should be ...Revision...Revision..Revision.

You will be surprised how often you pick up obvious clues that you missed

the first time around. And then kick yourself for suffering from tunnel 
vision.


Rule 10 (Mine)

Lastly, invest in TV dinners and take away, you won't have the time or
inclination to cook, garden or do anything but dig up your roots. As one
husband bemused, "I used to have a wife until she started genealogy." Or as
my wife was heard to mutter, quite often, "He's disturbing the dead and
irritating the living, again."



Regards
Mike Harvey
Merewether NSW
mj_harvey@dodo.com.au

"Shake any family tree and a few nuts will fall out"

Holding a Family History Event

Did you get an April copy of the NASW Temple and Family History Newsletter?  Click Here!





here are lots of events that can help you further the work by encouraging others to attend and learn how to document the lives of their families.  Here are a few successful ideas we have used.

Have a Linger Longer  or Open House Event with your Ward 

Takes place after the 3 hour block.

TACO OR BAKED POTATO BAR - fun ! just have everyone bring 1 bowl of their favorite topping.  cheese, tomatoes, onions, lettuce, chopped olives, 


Invite everyone to bring their favorite topping to tacos or have a  baked potato bar
We supplied

• 3 crock pots of taco meat (3 family history members donated), 
• 12 dozen tortillas from Smart N Final (3 family history members each brought 4 dozen - about 4.00 each)
• and a cake from Costco (1 family history member donated 16.00)  
• We used the Wards supply of paper plates, cups for water and forks/napkins

Members bring:  pen/paper for notes; laptop - would be very helpful

Stations:  We set the food up at one end of the cultural hall with about 6 round tables and chairs in the middle.  In a U shape at the other end of the Cultural Hall were different stations:

1 - Ward Clerk with his laptop and ability to give people their member numbers.

2 - Table for Family Search to sign up for a family tree





3 - Table for Partner Access - to sign up for $700.00 of free software.

4.  Have a table of scrapbooks to look at for ideas

4 - Table for Research - help finding a name or name of cousins using Puzilla.org

5. Learn how to index properly

6  Learn how to scan pictures and documents (need a color printer here)

7- Table for Consultant Planner - to meet with a consultant and quickly find some opportunities to easily add to your tree.

8. Have a printer for printing names and if possible one for printing their fan charts.  We use HP7610

Overflow:  One long kids table and chairs - we put a Family History Game "Find a Name..." on the middle, along with Family HIstory Coloring books and crayons.  We also put card stock and an embosser that embosses the stock in a puzzle shape.  After they color a picture of their family, they can break it into puzzle pieces and put it into a zip log bag to take home - fun to put together and take apart.

Have an Open House for your Family History Room

 Display this poster in the foyer for several weeks prior to event and put in bulletin every week for 3 weeks prior.

 The new Area Seventy for the Scottsdale Coordinating Council is Elder Raymond Heyman

Raymond S. Heyman, 60, Chandler, Arizona; Partner, Snell & Wilmer; former bishop, high councilor, mission president, and stake president; wife: Diane Heyman, five children.

We look forward to coordinating the Reports from our Stake Presidencies to ensure continuity and success with Temple and Family History.

There are a few sites that have been helpful we wanted you to know about:

Gatherers in the Kingdom

https://www.lds.org/topics/family-history/leader-resources/family-history-training?lang=eng&old=true

Please note that there are three presentations of this slide deck for 3 different meetings.  One for Leaders, one for Temple and Family History Consultants, and one for Ward Members.

Thank you Br. Carruth for letting us know that slide 5 was different in the leader's deck than what has recently been published.   Another new slide shows that Area TFH Consultants advise Stake Presidents and this one does not.  The slide is intended to show the Priesthood channel and the Family history channel. It is not an indicator of where support and help/training comes from.  This was done to emphasize the chain of leadership

Please let us know when you have shared these with your Wards so we can report back on the success of the project.

MEDIA STOP!  Here you go - how to work with Ward Leaders when you are a Temple and Family History consultant.

https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/family-history/family-history-callings?lang=eng 

https://www.lds.org/tfhcallings

https://www.lds.org/fhcallings


MY FAVORITE NEW WEBSITE FOR TRAINING CONSULTANTS
My favorite new website for training consultants is:  The Family History Guide or thefhguide.com

It's pretty amazing.  If you don't have any computer skills, it even teaches you about the computer.
However, let's say you are fair to middlin' in your experience.  Once you experience a login and password, you can log your proficiency in each area of learning and monitor yourself for success.

Why do People do Genealogy?

Here is a link to our other blog - this was a very popular article we did! Enjoy!

HOW TO USE THE FAMILY SEARCH WIKI - by Ted and Karen Meyer

This is a great little short video on how to make the most of your resources.  A lot of people will come to us and say I need to find this person.....that's all.  In order to do this correctly, we need more information so that we can maximize on our resources and minimize on our time.

So - Here are some questions we need the answers to?

This person's name____________________
Where were they born?_______________________
What was the first Census they appeared on?
What Census data have you already searched?
What county/City/State did their Parents live in as Children?
What county/City/State did they Marry in?
Do you have corroborating certificates of his parents - and or/grandparents?
i.e., - birth certificates, death certificates, baptisms, census data, any county records,

In other words, what have you already done so that we don't reinvent the wheel?

What do you know about this person's heritage? Language spoken?
When did they immigrate?
Who was the first person in your family to immigrate to the US?

It may seem like a lot, but in these few sentences is a wealth of linked information and we can guide you to success.

Do you have a Family Search Account?  May we analyze it for you?

Here is a video to the WIKI block of research site - you will love it as an additional help.

Let us help you get past your brick wall!  naswfamilyhistory@gmail.com

Did your Ancestor fall off the edge of the Earth? Can't find him?

 Why is it sometimes hard to find our Ancestors?

I used to make a trip to Los Angeles from a little town up the coast once a month to go to a special Family History Library.  It was an hour away and it was pretty magical; just filled with vital information.   I was determined to find the answers to the stories I had heard my whole life so the hour trip was not a big deal.

 At 27, I would go to the local Church Family History Library and request microfilm.  I would pay the 3.00 and then go home and wait.  The Librarian would send off to Salt Lake City for the little box of miracles.  When it arrived, I would get a call to come to the Library and put the film on a large machine with a big crank.  Turning the crank and advancing the film, thousands of names would flash through the light until you slowed it down and focused on the page that supposedly held the names of your people.

It was always a puzzle if I had chosen the right box of microfiche.  Once I wanted to believe it was the right one, I thought about changing  the data to match what the film said.  "I hope there aren't people who really do that out of desperation, but I almost understand if they did".  Your imagination does crazy things when you don't feel like you have any other options than what is before you in that little box.  But, what good would it do to cheat?   Changing your family story to match what is on the microfilm is absolutely r i d i c u l o u s!   

Now, we have billions of records and we can have access to them from the comfort of our living room from our laptops.  But what happens when we still can't find what or who we are looking for?  We need to understand WHY, then it's easier to understand HOW to find them and WHERE to look!

First - go to FAMILYSEARCH.ORG and get a free family tree account!  

Reasons why you can't find your relative....

1.  in 1790 Census takers had to read and write.  They received 1.00 for every 150 people (in a rural setting) and 1.00 for every 300 people in a town or city.   That was a lot of money then so if you read and wrote well, yes there was a handwriting test, you could get the job.  However, money is a motivator to short cut the answers or get it quickly from someone but not necessarily thoroughly.
(1)

2)  Census takers tried to be neat, but the writing implements, paper were quite coarse and unrefined.  

3)  Not only was it hard to read because of the medium, the handwriting was sometimes difficult to read.  The different styles were varied - not like reading a typed census.

4)  Misspellings occurred because Census takers just wrote what they heard and did not verify the spelling of names by reading them back.  Now, a census taker would read it back to the customer before documenting.

So on the premise that the Eneumerators/Indexers from this time period either just wrote what they heard or what someone told them, it may become problematic.  So if you are struggling try different spellings by phonics:  Smith, Smythe, Smithe, etc.,

You can also click the SOUNDEX button which will return all varieties of the same name.

5)  Name changes.  Females married early.  If a census happens every 10 years, you only have one real chance to find her before she is out of the home and married with another name.

6)  Who did she marry?  Think about proximity.  You married a boy from your school or a neighbor.  What kind of neighbor?  In the 1800s a high percentage of the United States public were farmers.  They had a lot of children to help on the farm.  They lived on large plots of land and other members of the family - like Grandparents, Uncles and Aunts, and cousins.

a)  1st cousins could marry prior to 1865 in 13 States

b) Check the margin of the census on the left side to read the street name and the house numbers.

**********

Here's a great idea - go to maps.google.com and input the address of a Great Grandparent's home (or whomever) then look at the streetview and print it out as a surprise for someone you want to get excited about Family History.  When they see the homeland where their family walked and lived, they will fall in love with their family roots, heritage and yearn to know more!

**********

7)  Check neighboring counties or States for marriage records in case the young couple eloped because their own county had an age rule about getting married.

8)  What if one girl has been married to two different Sons or their Father?  Sounds strange right?  Well back in the 1800s and before, that was how families took care of their women when a Son would die.  So look for marriages in that direction.
9)  Poor indexing - sometimes we don't train people as well as we should.  When you have a picture of a document, no one can find it online, unless it is indexed and the names on the document are added so that now the picture becomes searchable.  The problem occurs however, when people are careless and spell a name incorrectly.
10)  Change of name.  When soldiers got a taste of a horrific war, sometimes they deserted then guilt or the need for money would cause them to go to a recruiter in the next town and change their name just enough to be able to answer naturally when called and qualify for a weekly stipend. So when searching War of 1812, Civil War or World War I and II, make sure you check a variety of spellings.  Now with our National Databases and the Social Security System, a deserter could not jump back in and keep going but then, it was much easier.

11)  If your relative lived on a Reservation, the Native Americans may have changed his or her name, but they did allow the Census takers to come onto the Reservation and take their census'.

12)  If your relative was a Nun in a Convent, prisoner in a jail, patient in a tuberculosis hospital,  or in an insane asylum, they will be merely referred to as an "inmate",.

13)  If you still can
t find her, check and see if someone in desperation just added her as Mrs. John Smith instead of her name,  Jean (sample maiden name:  Jones)  Though it fills the blanks with an answer that would fool the search engine into keeping it going,

14)  If you run across a misspelling on a census form, it could still be your relative.  This is why.  In census' leading up to the 1940, they all had the inference that the answers were at least given by someone in the family (head of household, or his wife).  If the Father gave the census taker the information, he would have certainly spelled his name correctly.  But consider this possibility.  Before 1940, a census taker did not have to list where she got the information from.  She could have spoken to a neighbor or someone close by who still new her as a friend.

15)  Most people stayed put.  Moving was just difficult logistically.  However, if you find two for the same year and it seems to have all the same children with the correct ages, they could have been processed by two different census takers, that's all.

16)  Census takers had to make copies of their records which, one went to the County, and one went to National.  When they made copies, they very carefully alphabetized the list of names.  That is how you will know it is a copy and not the original document.  If there are errors, it was made during the copy making.

17)  Prior to 1860 the names of the children were not listed, so you will have to work backwards, so you know what the age of the children were from the 1860 and 1870 census data, then very carefully make a note of how old each child was and the number.  It will just be a tally mark next to the age bracket like this:

males	females	males	females	males	females
0-2	0-2	3-10	3-10	11-18	11-18
1	11	111	11	1	1

18)  Very few husbands can get birthdays of their kids right.  If the head of house gave the information, he sometimes guesstimated.  In Genealogy, because the enumeration took from 6 months to a year, there can be up to a 2 year difference which is acceptable a proof if other records validate.

Hope this helps you.  If I think of anymore, I will add it here.

(1)https://www.census.gov/history/www/through_the_decades/census_instructions/1790_instructions.html

Find Take and Teach Helps for Genealogy Consultants

This moves slowly however when we do it as a live

presentation, the Power Point is only about 17 minutes long.

After the Presentation, we answer questions and individually can

show everyone how to Merge files, avoid duplicate entries, add a record, source your documents, add a memory, add a picture.

We discuss what real documentation is in the presentation.

Some people will source a document, "Because she is my mother" or "Because I was there".  that is not appropriate any longer.  Let's try to find

Birth Certificates, Death Certificates, Marriage Certificates,

Property, deeds, Obituaries and Millennial Files or Census Data.

Prior to 1710, Census Data that is approved is from roll call at town meetings and church attendance.  These are called Compiled Census Records, Electoral Registers and Quaker Meeting Records, etc.,

Who's on first? What's on Second? Learning the best way to Start Family History

How to start your family history

More to come!

You can also view our other blog at Genealogymama1.blogspot.com