Would you like to find the roots and fruits of your family tree; the Who, the Where and the When of your ancestors? To make this journey, you’ll need to investigate where and when they were born and died, who and where they married, but also perhaps the Why (why did they move?) and the What (what did they do?). Then what about all the children and their descendants - the fruits? I call them ASDs (Ancestors/Siblings/Descendants). They are your ancestor’s brother’s and sister’s children, down through the generations. They could be anywhere in the world; it is important to find them, especially if they are researching the family history too.
Now, using the Internet, there is a good chance that we can do this. Before you pick up your tickets and buckle your seat belt, you need to know where you want to go. That’s easy; we want to find the person your grandmother talked about - “your great great grandfather landed in Auckland in the 1840s... came from Ireland... had to leave England and lost his inheritance...” We call this ‘wishful linking’.
It doesn’t matter how fantastic the latest techniques are or how marvellous Web pages can be; to know where you want to go, who you want to look for and where, you have to start with what you know. You need a Pedigree Chart. Go to www.genealogy.org.nz , click on Resources>Forms and Charts, then Pedigree Chart. Print this and start with yourself as #1 ( 'Tips and Links') and fill in as much information as you can.
CLOSE RELATIVES
Now you can talk to other family members – make phone calls, write emails. To save money on tolls, use Skype (see 'Tips and Links').
Here’s a hint: let's create a travel diary. Buy an A5 hardback notebook and a packet of coloured adhesive circles – there’ll usually be at least red, green, blue and yellow in a packet. Leave 12 pages free for an index, count the number of pages left and divide by four. Now look at your Pedigree Chart and find your grandparents. These four families form the basis of your research. Colour code as you choose. Always work with the male line first. Take the coloured circle for your father’s father and place this on the edge (near the top) of the first page after the index pages. Stick a second circle behind the first. What you have done is to make a tab to this section of your book. Count through the number of pages for each division and place the colour for your father’s mother in the next section. Do the same for your mother’s parents. You have now separated your research into four divisions in your notebook and you can find each family easily with the coloured tabs.
This is your travel diary. Carry this with you all the time. Note anything you find, or think of, eg: to-do’s: ‘phone cousin Nellie re Grandma’s photo’. Print and paste from the Internet, make notes from phone calls, emails, etc. Note who has a family bible, family scrapbook, autograph book, lots of photos and/or certificates, and who has already started researching (always ask this question). Try to remember to note the day’s date as you add information.
Let’s look at the ticket - your Pedigree Chart. This is a very important travel document; your itinerary, really. This is where you see where you need to travel to fill in gaps, or where you don’t need to travel because you have the information.
I strongly recommend that this is when you start to use a genealogy computer program because it can be quite tedious entering hundreds of names. However, you really need to enter sources - every piece of information on a document needs to be entered and sourced back to that document. The document should be scanned and the image added. And finally, the document needs to be filed and the reference also entered into the program. It’s much easier to do this as you begin, instead of later when you have piles of documents to process. It’s also easier to send up-to-date files to family members. A caution: don’t send information on living relatives unless they have agreed to this and never to ‘strangers’ - anyone who might be tempted to put this information on the Internet.
Don’t be worried that you might choose the wrong genealogy program. All programs will do what you need, and all programs can export and import .ged files (Genealogy Data Communication = gedcom =.ged). So, if you discover a different program that does exactly what you would like, you just export a .ged file and import this into the new program. However, you can try most of the programs.
COMMUNITY REPOSITORIES
Now you have your Pedigree Chart, your family notebook and your genealogy program. Your next mission could be visiting Community Repositories (museums, libraries, etc.), reading and searching through anything that may mention names. You would pore over microfiche and microfilms. You would plan visits to towns where your family once lived. Yes, you still have to do this sometimes. There will always be a mixture of the two, because not everything is on the Internet.
You should make your first visit to your Community Repositories via their Web pages, to check what records they hold, their access policies, online indexes and databases (see 'Tips and Links'). However, nothing can compare with walking down the high street of your village, sitting in a pew your family may have sat in, wandering around the cemetery where they may be buried, and checking the records in the local record office or museum.
But let’s look at how you can fill those gaps on your Pedigree Chart, find ASDs, discover just where your ancestors lived and get a feel for life as it was. I will concentrate mostly on UK research, but do remember that families left footprints throughout their lives, no matter where they were living (see 'Tips and Links').
CONTEMPORARY RECORDS
There are lots of signposts to help on this journey. The first gap on your Pedigree Chart is often in your great grandparents’ generation. You may have no idea what your grandmother’s forename was, let alone her maiden name! Help is at hand. Your first signpost says ‘Civil Registration’. You need to understand the starting dates, the information collected, the reports you can read and the cheapest and best way to access this information. You should always look for a tutorial or good background reading on any of the signposts mentioned (see'Tips and Links').
As a rough guide, Civil Registration is a government process whereby information is collected on the births, deaths and marriages from a particular date. Often there are changes to the information collected, and you need to be aware of these changes, eg: from 1876 in New Zealand, much more information was collected for births and deaths, so you would purchase the registration for a sibling of your ancestor if they were born after 1876 and your ancestor was born before 1876.
Note that I use the term ‘registration’ instead of ‘certificate’ because a certificate is only one way to see the information given when an event was registered. It is often typed from the original entry; what you want to see is that original entry so that you are looking at what was written at the time. But remember - these registrations are only as accurate as the people giving the information at the time knew or wanted to give. You may find a lot of family information or very little. NB: You do not have to purchase the registration for each of your ancestors and all their descendants. You need the registration to read the information given at the time - to help you move back to the next generation, or to confirm information you already have.
Sometimes you can download an image of the original registration, or purchase a printout (see 'Tips and Links'). You don’t need the (usually) more expensive and sometimes less informative certificate for your New Zealand research.
The next signpost is ‘Church Registers’ and the first stop is www.familysearch.org Click Search>International Genealogical Index. Here are some 800 million names, many extracted from Parish Registers, many from England, Wales, Scotland and fewer from Ireland. There are millions of entries for all other countries too. Remember, these entries are from an index; you need to order the original film into a Family History Centre (look for Find a Family History Center near Your Home, type New Zealand). Read the film of the Parish Register and see all the extra information not included in the index. Many of these films are being digitised and will be available online sometime. Also go to www.genuki.org.uk , click on United Kingdom and Ireland (upper left), scroll down and click on the country, then click on Church Records. There’s a lot to read here about what records are available for your place. Also at www.familysearch.org click on Library Catalogue, then type your place. Click on Church Records.
‘Census Returns’ is our next signpost. At www.ancestry.co.uk and www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk you’ll find the census records for 1841-1901. These mostly cover England, Wales and Scotland. Try www.familysearch.org for the 1881 British and Canadian census and 1880 United States census. www.freecen.org.uk is growing (try for the 1841 census for Scotland).
The last signpost to contemporary sources is ‘Cemetery Records’. All around the world the information from headstones has been transcribed, checked, indexed and made available. Search for your town+country+cemetery.
COMPILED RESOURCES
Always while you are researching, as you find new information, go to your favourite search engine and check for others researching your family. Even as you begin, if you have some unusual names, you could check. It can take a long time to create an effective ‘search string’ - the string of words you will need to put together which will be the instructions you give to the search engine. You have to tell it which words must be found, which words you do not want, which words must be on the same page, which words must be close together, which words that need to sound like or be similar to others. Put a + sign in front of each word you want and a – sign in front of those you don’t want (see 'Tips and Links'). Always click on Advanced Search to see what else is available. Something genealogists need, but search engines don’t offer, is case sensitive searching - so we can search for “Rose Bush” or our Born, Husband, Priest, Grave, Web, etc. families. This is how we find Compiled Resources - family trees, indexes, database lists and previous research. To find others already researching your family, attend local meetings of the New Zealand Society of Genealogists (www.genealogy.org.nz). Click About>Branches. Check on all the local Societies for your places. At www.genuki.org.uk at the top RH side, click on Contents & Search, scroll down to Genuki Search Engine and type Societies.
Add your surnames to any research list. A search string would read: Your surname+surname+index &/or Your surname +surname+~genealogy.(Caution: when registering your interests, don’t give personal information on living people).
The Guild of One Name Studies (www.one-name.org ) researches the genealogy and family history of all persons with a particular surname and its variants. While you are researching, always keep track of what you are looking for, what you found and how you found it. Remember that search engines 1) search 25% at the most of available Web pages and 2) they are continually reindexing. This means you need to search often, frequently and precisely. You need to keep a record of your searches. Go to www.treepad.com TreePadLite is free - do try this. You can also keep a record of what you found - highlight, copy and paste the list of Web sites in TreePad. As you look at each site, give it a rating so you know if you should spend more time looking at the information.
What’s new? Well, you just never know, so you have to keep checking what is happening in your countries and places. For instance, recently online is www.nzobits.co.nz/obits featuring recent events and all sorts of offers. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the New York daily paper from 1741-1902, is online at www.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/eagle At www.wisconsinhistory.org/vitalrecords there are pre-1917 BDMs and newspaper articles for Wisconsin, USA, etc. A site for South African research is at www.genealogyworld.net
Also, I must mention DNA. The female mitochondrial test has made me look at my research from a different angle, as has the Y test. I am looking to see who I can approach to look for matching markers. I use www.relativegenetics.com
So, our quest to find the roots and fruits of our family tree has so many opportunities now. The greatest hurdle is the space between our B and our D! Will we have time to research, record and recall all our information? Will we have time to fill the gaps? Let’s get cracking!
TIPS AND LINKS
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WRITE TO JAN
Mail your genealogy problems and questions to jansletters@yahoo.co.nz