C o n t e n t s Preface............................................................................................................ 7How to Start.................................................................................................... 9Step 1.Family Interviews..................................................................... 9Step 2.Contact Other Relatives...........................................................10Step 3.Get the Death Certificates................................................... .....

11Step 4.Follow up Death Records........................................................12Step 5.Federal Census Search.............................................................15Step 6.Billions of Names Find One..................................... ............17Step 7.Family History Library Catalog Search...................................19Where to Find More......................................................................................21 Search for Book Titles on the Internet..................................................21Important Genealogy Websites to Bookmark.......................................22Lineage-Linked Sites............................................................................24Genealogical Software and GEDCOM Utility.....................................25Find More at the National Archives......................................................26Regional Archives and Other Facilities................................................26Genealogy Resource Centers in the States....................................................29Research Help for the Addicted....................................................................51 Professional Researchers.......................................................................51Genealogy Magazines...........................................................................52 Online Genealogy Newsletters & Blogs...............................................52The Top Twenty Reference Books for Genealogists............................53Master Forms.................................................................................................57Family Data Sheet.................................................................................58Pedigree Chart.......................................................................................60Family Group Sheet..............................................................................62 5 Books by William Dollarhide Published by Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., Baltimore: Map Guide to the U.S. Federal Censuses, 17901920 (with William Thorndale) (1987) Managing a Genealogical Project (1988) Genealogy Starter Kit (1st ed., 1993; 2nd ed., 1998); also published under the title Getting Started in Genealogy (2001) New York State Censuses & Substitutes (2006)

Getting Started in Genealogy ONLINE (2006)Published by Heritage Quest, North Salt Lake, Utah: Seven Steps to a Family Tree (1995) Map Guide to American Migration Routes, 17351815 (1997) British Origins of American Colonists, 16291775 (1997) Americas Best Genealogy Resource Centers (with Ronald A. Bremer) (1998) The Census Book: A Genealogists Guide to Federal Census Facts, Schedules, and Indexes (1999) Grow a Family Tree! (2001) 6 P r e f a c e P r e f a c e 7 If you ever wanted to trace your American family tree, this book will help you do it.Genealogical research is a process of discovering where written facts about your an-cestors can be found. It has been said that over half of human knowledge is knowingwhere to find it. But that was before the Internet. Now we know where to find it.The object of this book is to reduce the process of genealogical research to its mostbasic elements, enabling the raw beginner to be brought up to speed in no more timethan it takes him to read a handful of pages. At the same time it is a one-stop resourcebook for the practicing genealogist, providing in one convenient place the names andweb addresses of essential record repositories.This book begins with a How to Start section outlining a unique seven-step systemfor gathering facts essential for any genealogical project: interviewing family mem-bers, contacting relatives, writing for death records, following up on death records,census searching, name searching, and Family History Library searching. These arethe building blocks of genealogical research, the only prerequisites demanded of theresearcher.A Where to Find More section follows, giving the websites of the most importantgenealogy look-up sites, lineage-linked sites, genealogical software/GEDCOM sites,and a list of the various branches of the National Archives and their web addresses.A comprehensive listing of Genealogy Resource Centers in the States comes next,giving the websites of the most important genealogical collections in libraries, archives,and genealogical societies for all states, followed by a Research Help for the Ad-dicted

section, with a listing of research firms, genealogy magazines/newsletters, andthe most important genealogy reference books.In the back of the book are Master Forms used to keep track of the information gath-eredspecifically a Family Group Sheet, a Pedigree Chart, and a Family Data Sheetall designed for making photocopies as needed.In a world choking on information, where prodigious feats of learning are required just to function, where explanations turn into textbooks, isnt it a relief to find all theright stuff in just 64 pages! What Do You Know? In the back of this book is a form called a PedigreeChart. Sketch a similar diagram on scratch paper ormake a photocopy of the chart and then try filling inthe blanks with names, dates, and places. Write in thenames and details using your memory only. Afterdoing this you should have a pretty good idea of whatyou know and, more importantly, what you dontknow about your ancestry. What Do You Need to Start? There are three things you need to know about some-o n e t o p u r s u e h i s g e n e a l o g y. T h e y a r e t h e t h r e e Ws:1 . W h o ( a n a m e ) 2 . W h e n ( a d a t e ) 3 . W h e r e ( a p l a c e ) Who? A full name, including a maiden name for awoman, is important. When? An approximate datefor a genealogical event (a date of birth, death, mar-riage, residence, etc.) is needed to locate a personsomewhere within a certain time period. Where? This is the most important oneit is the place wherea person was born, married, lived, or died.If you know all three items for an ancestor in yourpedigree you can obtain much more information. Forexample, if you know that your father was born inAlabama in 1932, you can send for a copy of his birthcertificate. (You would have to know the place hewas born to know where to write.)Or, if you know that your grandmother died in Cali-fornia in 1984, you can get a death certificate, thena funeral record, a tombstone inscription, a cemeterys e x t o n s r e c o r d , a c h u r c h r e c o r d , s o c i a l s e c u r i t y record, and on and onall because you know theplace of death. H o w t o S t a r t H o w t o S t a r t The place is the key element in doing genealogy,because that is where the records are stored today.Finding genealogical references to a person beginswhen you discover the jurisdiction where a writtenrecord was first recordeda record of birth, mar-riage, or burial, for example; or when you find evi-dence of residence, such as land records, tax lists,voter registrations, and so on. Online: Have you tried a Google search of yourname? See what happens when you use your fatherssurname and mothers maiden name together. If someone in your family has ever done genealogicalresearch, there is a chance that you can find the re-s u l t s o f t h a t research on the Internet. Go to:

www.google.com . The Internet is going to be your main source for col-lecting information, but it can be an overwhelmingexperience without going through some steps to re-fine your research project. Therefore, before jump-ing into the billions of names listed on the Internet,start with these steps: Step 1 Family Interviews The first step is to find clues by interviewing mem-bers of your family. Start with your immediate fam-ily membersin person, by telephone, or e-mail. If you receive and save Christmas cards from relatives,you may already have their postal addresses. Com-pare your memories with the memories of your broth-ers, sisters, parents, grandparents, or any other liv-ing relatives. You may discover that others in yourimmediate family have different stories to tell.In a large family, for example, the experiences andmemories of the oldest child may be quite different 9 10 Getting Started in Genealogy ONLINE from those of the youngest child, yet they share thesame parents. Cousins sharing the same grandpar-ents may have completely different memories andimpressions. Online: Can you locate phone numbers or e-mailaddresses for your close family members? How abouta White Pages look-up. Try www.msn.com fortheir free directory look-upbut there are many oth-ers. Use the key words white pages directory in aGoogle search to find them. Interview questions. Are there family photo albums?Are there old letters sitting in a trunk somewhere?Are there any family papers of any kind? Insurancepapers? Think of things that are in your home or closer e l a t i v e s h o m e s t h a t m a y g i v e D a d s n a m e o r Grandmas recipes; perhaps theres an old journalfrom the family farm business. Who ended up withGreat-Grandmothers old Bible? Has the family everbeen mentioned in a book? Maybe an old history of Jefferson County? Is there a famous person to whomyou are supposed to be related? And be sure to ask everyone in your family if they know of anyone whohas ever done genealogical research on any part of the family tree.Always ask about the places where people lived.Remember, understanding the place is the key tofinding any written evidence of a persons life. Asyou gain more information, keep a record on thePedigree Chart. Note taking. Collect and record any information youlearn from the interviews. Start keeping notes onstandard sheets of paper that can go in a standardloose-leaf notebook. If you tend to scribble and takenotes on napkins or scraps of paper, jot things downin such a way that the notes can be copied later onto8 1 / 2 "

11" sheets. Begin your note-taking with theidea that someone besides yourself may read themsomeday.You may be better at keeping notes in your word pro-cessor. But whether you write it by hand or type theinformation into a computer file, try to organize thenotes in some logical order. These notes will proveinvaluable as you gather what you know about yourfamily. Suggestion: start a file with notes for one sur-name. Include notes to yourself about the research,when you did the work, who you contacted, etc. Record the family data. Another form in the back of this book is a Family Group Sheet. For each mar-ried couple shown on the Pedigree Chart, a FamilyGroup Sheet should be started. Here is the place youcan identify all of the children of an ancestor.An important rule that should be followed as you fillin the charts is to treat the brothers and sisters of yourancestors as equals. This is because they share thesame parents. Thus, they are branches of the tree thatmay lead you to a common ancestor (they all sharethe same ancestors as you). While the Pedigree Chartonly identifies direct ancestors, the Family GroupSheet is a place to identify your ancestors as parentswith all of their children.Try to obtain the names, dates, and places for eachbrother or sister of your parents, grandparents, great-g r a n d p a r e n t s , a n d s o o n . I n c l u d e t h e n a m e s o f spouses of these siblings too, along with their mar-riage dates and places. This is how we have successin genealogy. We identify a complete family group,with all of the facts about each member of that fam-ily. Moving back to the next generation will be mucheasier if you have more than just your direct ances-tors to use for records and sources.The Family Group Sheet is a very important tool. Byshowing the brothers and sisters of your grandfather,for example, you will have a worksheet for a familygroup. The dates and places where brothers and sis-ters were born will show the movements of the fam-ily. Again, the place is the key. By understandingwhere each child was born, married, lived, or died,you will have more places (towns, cities, counties,states, countries) to find written evidence relating tothe parentsyour ancestors. Step 2 Contact Other Relatives Your homework should reveal names of other rela-tives. These may be distant cousins or a great-auntyou really do not remember that well. Your cousinsare sources to you now. You need to contact them,either by writing a nice folksy long-time-no-seeletter, using your telephone, or sending off an e-mailmessage. See if a reunion is possible. See if you canvisit cousins in person, and see what kind of family H o w t o S t a r t 1 1 memorabilia they may have. Offer to share any in-formation you learn with them, such as copies of photographs of their very own grandfather (who hap-pens to be your grandfather, too).Each generation back in time should reveal morerelatives. You are related to someone because youshare one person as a common ancestor. Identifyingrelatives, however distant, is a valuable way to addmore details about your own ancestors.An unusual or uncommon surname (your last name)is a benefit. You can find other people with that nameusing phone books or city directories. Today the bestway to look up someone is to use the many WhitePages available on the Internet. You can create aletter or e-mail message that you copy and send outto those you can locate with that name, giving someinformation about your ancestors, and asking if theyknow of a connection to themselves. This can reallypay off. Many successful genealogical projects werestarted by just contacting people with the same name.But if your name is Johnsonhave you consideredgoing into stamp collecting? Sorry, just kidding. Evenwith a name like Johnson, you can have success writ-ing letters and

sending e-mail messages. To makecontact with a person with a surname like Johnson,add full names, time period, and an exact place whereyour own Johnson lived. Add the names of a spouse,children, parents, grandparents, etc., so that a querycan be recognized for any possible connection. Step 3 Get the Death Certificates After you have gathered everything you can fromyour relatives, your Pedigree Chart should have a fewmore details than when you first started. It is nowtime to send for copies of death certificates for anyof your parents, grandparents, or close relatives whohave died. If you know the state in which the persondied, this is an easy thing to do. Statewide registra-tion of vital records started during the period 19001920, and all but a few states have vital records fromabout 1910 forward. Before that, death records maybe available from a county courthouse. Online: Go to www.vitalrec.com, where detailed in-f o r m a t i o n a b o u t a c c e s s i n g d e a t h r e c o r d s c a n b e found. This is one of the best free-access websitesanywhere, supported by most of the state vital sta-tistics offices with frequent updates. All fifty statesare represented, plus the District of Columbia, andall U.S. territories or possessionswith links to vi-t a l r e c o r d s o f f i c e s i n m a n y c o u n t r i e s a r o u n d t h e world.You will be able to find the vital records office of interest, the date the records begin, the fee for ob-taining a birth, marriage, divorce, or death record, anda direct link to a website. Most of the state vitalrecords websites give you the means of ordering acopy of a vital record online, with secure online pay-ment using a credit card.You do not need to know the city or county where aperson died; however, you may have to pay extra tohave the state vital records office search a span of years for a person who died. Usually, knowing aname, approximate date of death, and any other information you can add, such as parents, spouse, orchildren, should be enough to locate a persons deathcertificate. Generally, death records are open to thepublic if the request is from a direct descendant of the person who died. For other relatives, there maybe restrictions based on the length of time since thedeath occurred.The standard death certificate form for all states includes important information about the deceased. Besides the cause of death, the certificate includesthe name of the persons father and maiden name of the mother. The exact date and place of birth anddeath should also be on the certificate. In addition,you may learn the name of the persons spouse, thefuneral director, the cemetery where the body wasinterred, and the informant (the person who pro-vided the information for the death certificate). Onmore

recent death certificates, you will learn thedeceaseds social security number.Remember the rule of treating brothers and sisters of your ancestors as equals. That means you should at-tempt to get a death certificate for uncles, aunts, greatuncles, and great-aunts, in addition to parentsand grandparents. If you take these steps, you willlearn more information about your own ancestors.

12 Getting Started in Genealogy ONLINE Why a death certificate? Becauseitis the startingpointfor learning an exact place of death, particularly if allyou knowisthestate wherea person died. Evenif youhave exact death information for a person from fam-ily sources, you still need to get a copy of a death cer-tificate. You need a document that you can cite as thesourceofthe information, and youneed morethanonedocument (for every genealogical event) if you everwant to have the proof of relationship. Next. Since there are several types of records relat-ing to a persons death, the next step is to follow upwhat you have learned from the death certificate. Step 4 Follow up Death Records When Grandpa died, he had very little to do with theinformation written on his death certificate. Some-one else did it. Someone else may not have knownall the facts. It is estimated that 20 percent of all deathcertificates have a mistake on them. Since the onepiece of information you can count on is the placethe person died, you need the death certificate to getthe other evidence relating to a persons death. Put-ting these other items of evidence together is how youprove something. One document, one memory, or justone source is not enough.With a death certificate in hand, you will now havesome very specific and necessary tasks to do. Foreach death record, you need to follow up any cluesyou learn and get some other records: Get more vital records . If the death certifi-cate gives a date and place of birth, you can send fora copy of a birth certificate. If the date of birth pre-cedes statewide registration (about 1900 1920), abirth record may still be available from a countycourthouse near the place the person was born. At thispoint you may have enough information about amarried couple to obtain a copy of a marriage record.And, the same office is the keeper of divorce records. Online: Go to the www.vitalrec.com site and locatea state. Under that state will be listings of all coun-ties with the local vital statistics registrar (countyclerk, recorder, etc.), most with direct links to thelocal website. Get a funeral record .

A death certificatemay mention the name of a funeral director. You cancontact a funeral home and ask if there are recordsconcerning a persons death and funeral service.These records may have details not found anywhereelse, e.g., you often pick up the names of relativesto the deceased not mentioned in other records. If thename of a cemetery was not mentioned on the deathcertificate, the funeral director will have this infor-mation, including the exact location of the plot.Funeral directors are usually very easy to talk to andcooperative (they want your familys business). Toget an address and phone number for a funeral homeanywhere in the U.S. or Canada, call or visit a fu-neral director in your area and ask to use his direc-tory of funeral homes, The National Yellow Book of Funeral Directors . This directory gives the name,address, and phone number of every funeral home inNorth America, and it is updated every 12 months. Online: The National Yellow Book is published byNomis Publications of Youngstown, Ohio. Nomisalso publishes a directory of active cemeteries in theU.S. (those where burials are still done). Both of these directories are online at the Nomis website: www.yelobk.com/directories/online_directories.html . Nomis wants you to register to use the website, andthey limit access to those involved in the funeral in-dustry. (It may be a stretch, but if you designate your-self as an Educational Professional you will beaccepted.) If you answer Consumer in the regis-tration form, you will be taken to another free funeralwebsite: www.funeralnet.com . This site has thesame database of funeral homes supplied by The National Yellow Book, plus a search for active cem-eteries and a limited supply of newspaper obituaries.Funeral directors are well versed on other funeralhome businesses in their area, including those thatmay have changed their names since a death certificate was issued. So even if the name of the funeralhome from a death certificate does not appear in anymodern listing, a funeral director in the immediatearea can probably tell you what happened to therecords of that old mortuary. (Funeral homes rarelygo out of business completely; they are more oftentaken over by another.)

H o w t o S t a r t 1 3 With the exact modern name and place of the funeralhome, see if that business has its own website. Do aGoogle search for the name and place, e.g., JernsFuneral Bellingham. Such a search will bring up thewebsite itself, as well as any reference to that funeralhome from some other source (such as a genealogi-cal report that lists names of people, place of death,funeral home, cemetery, etc.).If you can find a website for a particular funeralhome, you should be able to find its e-mail addressas well. Send off a message asking for help. If youwrite to a funeral director, include a selfaddressedstamped envelope (SASE) as a courtesy, and to makeit easy for him to return something to you.Funeral directors are also experts on the location of cemeteries in their area, which leads to the next item: Get a cemetery record . If the cemetery ismentioned on the death certificate or found in the fu-neral directors records, the cemetery is now a sourceof information. There may be a record at the office of the cemetery, and the gravestone inscription may berevealingas well. When youcontactthe funeral home,ask about the cemetery where the person was buriedand whether they have an address or phone numberfor the cemetery office, or at least know who mightbe the keeper of records for the cemetery. Online: check the directory of active cemeteriesl i s t e d a t t h e N o m i s s i t e at: w w w . y e l o b k . c o m / directories/online_directories.html .Or visit the www.funeralnet.com site to find an ad-dress. With the modern name and address in hand,do a Google search to see if that cemetery office hasits own website.Obscure inactive cemeteries, including small familyplots located on old homesteads, can be located in adatabase provided by the U.S. Geological Survey.The place names taken from the USGS topographi-cal maps and indexed in the Geographic Names In-formation System (GNIS) are the most complete andcomprehensive of any place name database. Includedare named features found on the maps, includingtowns, streams, mountains, etc.and over 100,000named cemeteries.Go to:

http://geonames.usgs.gov/ . At the MainPage, click on Domestic Names and then SearchGNIS to go to the query form. All you need is thename of the cemetery and the feature (cemetery) toinitiate a search for that name.Try a surname from your Pedigree Chart: many ru-ral cemeteries were named for the first family donat-ing land, and this database is how you find the exactlocation. From this database it is possible to print adetailed USGS topographical map of the area, includ-ing the exact latitude/longitude location of the cem-etery. Use the map to find other genealogical resourcecenters near the cemetery, i.e., the nearest church, thenearest courthouse, the nearest school, etc. Get an obituary . A newspaper obituary wasprobably published soon after the persons death. Oldnewspapers from the town where the person died areusually available in the local library. They may beon microfilm. Go to your own library and ask for the American Library Directory , p u b l i s h e d b y R .R . Bowker, Inc., of New York. Every library in the U.S.has this book. Get the address for the library nearestthe place your subject died and write a letter request-ing a copy of that persons obituary from a local newspaper. Provide the full name, date of death, andplace of death (from the death certificate). Most li-braries will do this type of look-up for you, but if not,they may provide you with the names of local re-searchers who will do the work for a fee. Online: A special website that provides direct linksto libraries is the Libweb site (Library Servers viaWWW) http://lists.webjunction.org/libweb/ . Mostlibrary websites have a place to e-mail questions tothem.There are many old obituaries extracted and indexedon the Internet. If you believe your subject died inOregon, try a Google search using the key wordso b i t u a r y i n d e x O r e g o n t o s e e wh a t c o me s u p . (Google says there are 387,000 entries meeting thatkey word criteria.) Also, look for websites for news-papers; many include obituaries, although most of these cover only a short time in the recent past. Get a Social Security record . If a persondied within the last 30 years or so, the death certifi-cate includes his social security number. If so, youare in luck. You can immediately send for a copy of the

deceaseds original application for a social secu-rity card, called a form SS-5. For any person who was