Researching Your Genealogy: Start with Living Family Members

A number of resources exist which can help youobtained my mother's father's death certificate
research your family heritage. If you're lucky, one(he had died at the relatively young age of 37)
of the best resources is close at hand: your ownand discovered that his father had signed his own
family. Stories passed down from generation toson's death certificate - as "Frank R. Barrott".Once
generation contain nuggets of information that canyou've gleaned as much as you can from living
help you begin your search. Names of yourrelatives, it's time to access public records. Birth
parents and grandparents, and their parents, canand death records, deeds, and military records are
take you back three or four generations. Don'tamong those available for research, as are U.S.
ignore spouses of family relatives; not only doCensus records, from the years 1790 up to 1930
their personal stories add to the flavor of family(by law, census records cannot be released to
history, sometimes the spouse of a familythe public for 75 years). When searching census
member - particularly the wife of a male relative -records, start with the latest census and move
knows more about your family's history than thebackward; this way you may be able to track the
relative does.Interview your family members tochanges in family circumstances back through the
see what they know about family history. Theyears.Searching public records has become a lot
older members in particular may have knowledgeeasier since the introduction of the Internet. A
of your family tree for generations, as well aspopular software program available online,
what these ancestors did for a living, where theyAncestry.com, allows you to build your family tree
lived, when and how they died, and personaland search U.S. Census databases and other public
stories they're more than willing to hand down torecords.A lot of books are available to help you
another generation. If you have birth or deathon your family search. One of the best is
certificates among family records, you're in luck;Genealogy 101: How to Trace Your Family's
birth certificates will contain a birth date, name ofHistory and Heritage, by Barbara Renick in
parents, and location of birth. The place of birth inassociation with the National Genealogical Society
particular will give you a clue as to where to look(Rutledge Hill Press, 2003). Renick offers an
for further information.Be aware that familyorganized approach to genealogical research that
recollections can be wrong. A couple personalwill save you a lot of false starts.If you've been
experiences: My middle name is May, which wasthinking for a while about beginning a serious
given to me in honor of my father's aunt whosearch into your family's background, don't put it
raised him. My parents ended up being upsetoff. Your best resource, your older family
when they found out later that my aunt's namemembers, is a finite resource. Once they pass on,
wasn't May, it was really Mary. But it doesn't stoptheir knowledge is gone forever.Aldene
there: while I was researching my aunt's death IFredenburg is a freelance writer living in
came across her obituary in the local newspaper,southwestern New Hampshire and frequently
and it turns out her name wasn't May or Mary - itcontributes to Tips and Topics. She has published
was Ruth!Meanwhile, on my mother's side of thenumerous articles in local and regional publications
family, it was well known that her grandfather'son a wide range of topics, including business,
name was Francis Isaac Barrott, that he had livededucation, the arts, and local events. Her feature
and died in Worcester, Massachusetts, and thatarticles include an interview with independent
he had actually worked as a maintenance man atdocumentary filmmaker Ken Burns and a feature
City Hall. I contacted the records department ofon prisoners at the New Hampshire State Prison
the city of Worcester looking for any records ofin Concord.
Francis Isaac Barrott, and found nothing. Later, I