family heritage

wyogal
Sun, 18 Dec 2005 18:34:37 +0000

Celebrian, the very best source of this kind of information is the Mormon church. They have geneological information on virtually everyone in this country who has a native US ancestor more than 2 generations back. Your great-grandmother fits.

It’s really quite astounding–it doesn’t matter if no one in your family was Mormon, and they are so helpful. You don’t really need to know the tribe, if you have some geographical idea of where she was when she married, chances are that will narrow it down quite a bit. (Tribal records are not really the best for this sort of thing anyway as they are rarely complete, systematic recordings. A majority of the tribal histories before 1900 or so were completely aural.)

You can find their site on the web, but the database is absolutely HUGE and incredibly complex. Really the best thing to do is to visit the LDS temple closest to you and ask them how to get started. If you’re lucky, there will be someone there who knows the system. But even if there isn’t, they’ll put you in touch with someone who does.

Most of the other sites on the web are based on surname, which can vanish pretty fast when you’re dealing with women.

PS. to both OP and Siren: you should gladly claim ALL of your varied and “colorful” ancestries. There’s really no such thing as a “pure” anything in America anymore, unless they just got off the boat, and even then probably not. You are the generation who needs to get rid of all this foolishness. Now my ancestors were “colorful” in the less complementary, euphamistic sense of the word, don’t you know!.

PS. to dmd–so what? you think celebrian can’t fight off those Mormons? I KNOW he’s got enough courage for that! :D