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As a result, you
will get a lot of hits that don’t even apply to your family – tedious work that
sometimes pays off. This is an issue with most web sites out there, not just
usGenWeb. Just to compound the issue, most sites don’t save your search criteria
so that when check back to see if they have more information in a year or two,
you have to go through the same long list again. Sigh. One of the brighter spots
on the Internet is at EllisIsland.org – a great site to search if your ancestors
immigrated to the US via Ellis Island.
There are a lot of networking and bulletin board sites available where people
leave information about who they are looking for. The best ones will allow you
to search specifically for name, date and location; others only allow you to
search by keyword which usually gives you too many results to read. If the site
you find is one of the latter, compose a short message about the person you are
searching for and include the exact name, the exact location, and the exact time
frame when you know they were there. Make the subject information very specific
with name, date, and location so that people who are browsing will know if they
should read it or not. Subjects like ‘My family’ or ‘grandma’ are just not very
useful and almost nobody will read it. If the site you find allows you to search
specifically enough, search it and read some of the posts there to see if you
can contact a distant relative who can help you.
Join your local genealogical or historical society: Even if you are not
really looking for relatives in your immediate area, the local society is a
great place to learn, to network, and to give back to society. You will meet
wonderful people with vast amounts of experience who can mentor you and make you
a better genealogist – and a better person.
Publish you work: Nothing is more satisfying than helping someone else
find their roots and one of the best ways to do that is to publish your
findings. If you selected the right software, publishing your tree should be
relatively easy – still a learning process for many of us. Make sure that you
don’t publish information on the Internet about people who are still living. If
you are not sure if a person is still living, you can assume they are still
living if they were born less than 100 years ago and don’t have a death date in
your software. The best programs will do this for you automatically once you set
your preferences.
Another good thing to do is to publish your sources – the backup paperwork from
your ring binder. This consists of birth certificates, deeds, census records,
etc. Sites like usGenWeb and your local society are good places to consider when
publishing records like these. Again, you should avoid publishing information
about living people for security reasons. If you are interested in reaching a
world-wide audience or in donating to your society, you should consider
http://www.familytrackers.com. You can charge for your information, distribute
it for free, or donate proceeds to your favorite society. As you work through
your family, go back in time one generation at a time documenting everything as
you go. Once you have followed a branch as far as you can, start searching
forward in time from the oldest person you know about.
Brick walls: When you can’t find any more information about a person to
determine their parents or other relatives, it’s called a "brick wall." When
this happens to you – and it will – don’t give up. It is just a matter of
patience, skill and luck. The best advice I can give you about a brick wall is
to go back to the basics; look at the last place and time where you know this
person was and start from there. Also, try to find genealogists who link to this
person from a different line – your cousins. Even though you may not be able to
prove a direct father/son relationship to your ancestor, you might be able to
prove father/son/brother through one of your cousins.
About the author:
By Gene
Hall
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