family heritage

hayden
Mon, 19 Dec 2005 23:21:40 +0000

celebrian - I agree with most of the advice you’ve received, but I would add a couple of points (which the other posters may be assuming, but thought I should mention). First, look at your own birth certificate, then get copies of your parent’s birth certificates, marriage certificates, and (if applicable) death certificates. In genealogy, we work backwards - you can’t assume any biological connection unless you have probative documentary evidence. (Remember - Bill Clinton wasn’t born Bill Clinton!!) Work backwards, one step at a time. Otherwise, you might find yourself researching someone else’s family, and never know it. You can’t assume even your own grandparents unless you have the documentary evidence. You may not believe this, but Luke Skywalker is not the only one to be surprised by his family !

The Family History Centers are extremely helpful. They maintain huge amounts of original and secondary source documents. They also have data bases of lineages, but it’s a good idea to treat these as guides, not proofs. [The Mormons devote time and energy to genealogy because they feel it is the obligation of the Mormon to baptize their ancestors retroactively into the church of the Latter Day Saints. Therefore, they can be fairly, shall we say, inclusive in who they decide to baptize. In other words, if they baptize too many, that’s better than baptizing too few. So be very, very careful in how you use the lineage data.] The documents and the local histories and compilations, however, are fantastic.

You actually have a lot going for you. Since the black side of the family goes back very far, you may be able to follow it for a good distance. Slaves are usually named in antebellum wills, since they were property that needed to be described in order to specify inheritance. If your ancestor escaped, there would often be a reward listed in the newspaper describing the escaped slave, so local newspapers can be helpful too. Census records are wonderful once you get to 1850, when full names were listed.

There are a lot of published materials to help people searching for black ancestors. And the same with native american ancestry. In fact the native americans are enumerated in many places, since the US gov’t wanted to identify them. Once you go past the last mention between the Europeans and the native americans, though, you’ll hit a brick wall.

The last thing to note is that many new genealogists focus on the ancestors who carry your own family name. We always have to remind ourselves that we descend from our mothers, too, so don’t forget that some of the most fascinating stories can come from the maternal side of the family!

Ancestry.com and genealogy.com have lots of material, but both require a subscription - in fact, one subscription per type of database. But if you use the message boards, you can get a lot of free help. Genealogists are the most helpful group of people you’ll ever run into, and very generous with their time. When using the message boards, you can look into different ones: state and county, family names, subjects (civil war, revolutionary war, etc.). So try a bunch of them.

I lied when I said the above point was the last one. This is the last one - most genealogists are not snobs about our ancestors. We don’t search for just the famous or rich. We just search for our families. Sure, it’s fun to unearth a connection to someone famous, but that’s not the reason for the search. There’s even a society that you can only join if you can prove one of your direct ancestors was convicted of a felony - I think it’s called the Black Sheep Society.

Best of luck to you. It’s an incredible journey. We are never finished until we documented all the way to Adam and Eve, so you can see we never really stop!