Genealogy

[lensue]

>Welcome back, Len<

Judy, while up in Boston with members of the family questions came up regarding the history of the family. Could you recommend a good but not too complicated website for me if I decide I want to do some Genealogy? Regards, Len

[Judy G. Russell]

while up in Boston with members of the family questions came up regarding the history of the family. Could you recommend a good but not too complicated website for me if I decide I want to do some Genealogy? Give me a little more info -- where's your family from?

[Judy G. Russell]

I realized reading back over my response that it may have seemed like much of a non sequitur. But there are general sites like Ancestry.com or Genealogy.com that cover the US and beyond, and regional sites that might be better if your family is basically from one area such as New England. Most sites that are really worthwhile carry some cost along.

[lensue]

>Give me a little more info -- where's your family from?<

Judy, thanks, the people I'm interested in are on my father's side of my family. The grandparents came from Poland or Russia--I myself never really spoke with those grandparents except when my father would take me to their Bedford Stuyvesant house and they spoke Yiddush--I never had any idea what they were saying. In talking to alot of older cousins they seem very hazy on a lot of the details--any website that could help me a little would be very much appreciated. Regards, Len

[lensue]

>Most sites that are really worthwhile carry some cost along.<

Judy, could you give me a general idea of what kind of cost we're talking about? Regards, Len

[Judy G. Russell]

You probably need to do a bit more homework before an online site would be really helpful. Gather up all the information you have on the grandparents: names, where they lived and when, where they died and were buried, death certificates, etc. Then you can start working back through the census records and Ellis Island records (Ellis Island stuff is online (http://www.ellisisland.org/) free). If they were naturalized citizens, a veritable treasure trove may be available by making a Freedom of Information Act request for their records.

[Judy G. Russell]

Ancestry.com and Genealogy.com are the big guys in this business and both have several levels of membership. For US records only, Ancestry is $155/year; for world records, it's $347 a year. At Genealogy, it's $199/yr for the Gold membership (which is the only one I think is worth getting), then $99 and $69 for two more limited memberships.

[lensue]

>Gather up all the information you have on the grandparents: names, where they lived and when, where they died and were buried, death certificates, etc. <

Judy, this sounds like it may be hard to retrieve but I'll see what I can do. I'll definitely try that Ellis Island site. Regards, Len

[lensue]

>Ancestry.com and Genealogy.com <

Judy, thanks, I'll have to think about whether I want to make that kind of commitment. Regards, Len

[Lindsey]

Judy, thanks, the people I'm interested in are on my father's side of my family. The grandparents came from Poland or Russia--I myself never really spoke with those grandparents except when my father would take me to their Bedford Stuyvesant house and they spoke Yiddush--I never had any idea what they were saying. In talking to alot of older cousins they seem very hazy on a lot of the details--any website that could help me a little would be very much appreciated. Regards, Len
I agree with Judy; you need to lay the groundwork before you're going to be able to get much out of online resources. You need to know enough to recognize when you have found relevant information.

Find out everything you can while you can from living relatives, and then set about trying to document what they have told you, reconciling contradictions, and filling in gaps. Try to find all of the family members you know about in every US census they'd have been in, starting with the most recent (1930 is the most recent census that has been made public). And let the information you find there suggest to you where you might find more.

Jewish genealogy is a specialty all of its own. There's a web page here (http://www.genhomepage.com/jewish.html) with what appear to be lots of good links to helpful sites, but put off doing the Internet searches until you have some good solid information about your particular family. Otherwise, you're going to find yourself lost in a sea of names, and that's nothing but frustrating.

--Lindsey

[Dan in Saint Louis]

a general idea of what kind of cost we're talking about?Don't subscribe to ANYTHING for at least six months. There is so much free data on the Net that you can learn what to search for, how to search for it, and where to go for more without buying a subscription. Save your money until you have been through "prep school".

[Judy G. Russell]

It may be easier than you think. First, interview family members and gather all the information they have. Then check public records in that area -- death records, city directories etc. There are a lot of resources out there. But they do take some legwork.

[Judy G. Russell]

I am 100% with Dan on the idea that you should wait on these big dollar items: do NOT subscribe to these services until you've done your basic legwork and then checked the free sites on the web. (I also agree with Lindsey that you should do your homework before you try too much on the websites.)

[lensue]

>First, interview family members and gather all the information they have. <

Judy, yes, I've sent a few emails to try to get better info. Regards, Len

[lensue]

>There's a web page here with what appear to be lots of good links to helpful sites,<

Lindsey, thanks for the site and the other useful tips. Regards, Len

[lensue]

>Save your money until you have been through "prep school".<

Dan, thanks, I'll follow your advice and see what I can do for free after I get some better family info. Regards, Len

[bob(mc)]

>Save your money until you have been through "prep school".<

Dan, thanks, I'll follow your advice and see what I can do for free after I get some better family info. Regards, Len

And check (and double check) wherever you can. I have a great uncle shown as dying the day he sailed for Australia, where he lived for a LONG time :) MAybe the fact that he left his homeland (Scotland) was enough to commit his memory to the grave ;)

[Lindsey]

I am 100% with Dan on the idea that you should wait on these big dollar items: do NOT subscribe to these services until you've done your basic legwork and then checked the free sites on the web. (I also agree with Lindsey that you should do your homework before you try too much on the websites.)
Not to mention that many public libraries will offer access to HeritageQuest and/or the library version of Ancestry.com for free to their patrons, and possibly other databases as well, and at least some of those may be available through the library's web site.

But any of them are going to be overwhelming if you don't know enough to recognize what you are looking for when you find it.

--Lindsey

[Lindsey]

And check (and double check) wherever you can. I have a great uncle shown as dying the day he sailed for Australia, where he lived for a LONG time :) MAybe the fact that he left his homeland (Scotland) was enough to commit his memory to the grave ;)
Well, you know, in Ireland, villages used to hold what they called an "American wake" the night before one of their own left for America...

But yes, anything that you find, no matter what the source (but especially when it is a product of no more than human memory) needs to be verified against everything else that you find. Obituaries can be wrong, tombstones can be wrong, official records can be wrong, family bibles can be wrong. No record made by humans is absolutely free from the possibility of human error.

--Lindsey

[Judy G. Russell]

Not to mention that many public libraries will offer access to HeritageQuest and/or the library version of Ancestry.com for free to their patrons, and possibly other databases as well, and at least some of those may be available through the library's web site.I keep forgetting about this, but you're absolutely right. (Len, FYI, HeritageQuest and Ancestry both have the US census online, among other things.)

[Judy G. Russell]

All family stories will have info that's just plain dead wrong. My mother carefully wrote in my baby book that her great-grandparents (Gustavus Boone Robertson and Isabella Gentry Robertson) were born in Wales and Ireland, respectively. That turns out to be true only if Wales and Ireland were relocated to Mississippi, where both actually were born!

[Lindsey]

I keep forgetting about this, but you're absolutely right. (Len, FYI, HeritageQuest and Ancestry both have the US census online, among other things.)
The Library of Virginia (the state library) offers Ancestry.com (as does the local LDS Family History Library); the Henrico County library offers access to HeritageQuest.

--Lindsey

[Lindsey]

All family stories will have info that's just plain dead wrong. My mother carefully wrote in my baby book that her great-grandparents (Gustavus Boone Robertson and Isabella Gentry Robertson) were born in Wales and Ireland, respectively. That turns out to be true only if Wales and Ireland were relocated to Mississippi, where both actually were born!
Sometimes things like that end up being compressed into earlier generations than was actually the case, and that's especially true when the same name is used in successive generations. My mother had always given me the impression that her grandfather was from England. He wasn't; he was born in Richmond. But his father was from England, and they both had the same name: John Lindsey. The same on the other side of her family; it wasn't her great-grandfather Valentine Engle who was born in Germany; it was her great-great grandfather, also named Valentine Engle.

Last week I found the same sort of thing on my father's side of the family. My aunt had said (based, I think, on what my great-aunt had told her) that her great-grandfather (my great-great-grandfather), William Ford, was born in England. I haven't yet found William Ford in any census, but all of the census listings I have found for his daughters say without exception that their father was born in New York. Last week I found William Ford's death certificate at the NYC municipal archives. That, too, says that he was born in New York. But it also says that his father (whose name I don't yet know, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that he, too, was William Ford) was born in England.

--Lindsey

[Judy G. Russell]

Yes, well, the Robertsons may turn out to be Welsh in origin and Isabella Gentry's maternal grandfather was Irish, but that's as close as it gets! Sigh...

[Judy G. Russell]

The Library of Virginia is a place I'd like to spend a couple of months at, personally. I really want to nail down my Bakers...

[Lindsey]

The Library of Virginia is a place I'd like to spend a couple of months at, personally. I really want to nail down my Bakers...
I drove up to the Library of Congress today to spend some time in their microform reading room. It made me appreciate what a wonderful facility the LVa is.

--Lindsey

[Judy G. Russell]

I drove up to the Library of Congress today to spend some time in their microform reading room. It made me appreciate what a wonderful facility the LVa is.The collections in the Library of Congress are fabulous. Getting access to them is a nightmare.

[Lindsey]

The collections in the Library of Congress are fabulous. Getting access to them is a nightmare.
In the catalog they're fabulous. I found an awful lot of microfilms missing out of the drawer I was using, and I don't think it was because anyone else in the room was using them. Also, quite a few had the front part of the film broken off. One of the city directories I was looking at had nothing on the film before page 89.

Besides which the facilities were horribly cramped, with no place to put down your paper to take notes -- I had to balance mine on my lap. And the chair was so low I had a hard time seeing the top of the projected area. The LVa's facilities are a lot nicer, but they have the advantage of being in a relatively new building.

--Lindsey

[Judy G. Russell]

The LVa's facilities are a lot nicer, but they have the advantage of being in a relatively new building.Considering what this administration is spending money on, keeping and maintaining records and having good facilities for records ain't gonna be high on the list...

[Lindsey]

Considering what this administration is spending money on, keeping and maintaining records and having good facilities for records ain't gonna be high on the list...
Yeah... I heard something just the other week to the effect that fully one third of the holdings at NARA had been re-classified in the last few years. That number sounded staggering, and maybe I misunderstood what they were saying, but still...

(Oh, OK -- I think I see what it was that was being said: over one-third of the documents in NARA's holdings that have been reclassified since 1999 were wrongly reclassified. That sounds much more plausible, but it's still disturbing.)

--Lindsey

[Judy G. Russell]

The reclassifications are appalling, frankly. So many of the documents are utterly irrelevant to anything going on today...

[Lindsey]

The reclassifications are appalling, frankly.
Agreed. Not to mention foolish -- if it's really something they don't want people to know, what better way to call attention to it than to suddenly yank it off she shelf?

--Lindsey

[Judy G. Russell]

Agreed. Not to mention foolish -- if it's really something they don't want people to know, what better way to call attention to it than to suddenly yank it off she shelf?And to do it when loads of researchers already have copies of it and are using it for articles, books, studies etc. ...