Starting from scratch ... if I had only known ...

I've been receiving a lot of correspondence lately from people, both in letters to the newspaper and to the e-mail lists on the Internet, who fail to give enough information to even begin a genealogy search. This is frustrating to me and, I am sure, to them.

It suddenly dawned on me last week that there appears to be an influx of new genealogists on the Internet since Christmas. Well, that makes sense. Many people probably got a new computer for Christmas and have begun doing genealogy research online.

Those of you who have been doing genealogy for years probably won't get much out of this column, unless you'd like to comment further on what I'm going to say. What I'd like to do is go back over my own beginnings and tell you what I'd do differently, now that I know the ropes. The purpose is to save you some time and frustration in getting started.

I think I was prompted into this subject by two things: a letter from a lady who wrote and gave me four generations of names, but no dates or locations; and an instant message from my grandson telling me that he was working on a Boy Scout merit badge in genealogy (man ... talk about a thrilled grandma!). Since his birthday was earlier this month, I ran right out and bought him the latest version of Family TreeMaker for his computer. If you have a computer, do that now. It will save you hours of paperwork. I recommend Family TreeMaker if you have a PC (Windows) and Reunion if you have a Mac (that's me).

The second thing you should do is sit down with your oldest living relative and get family information from them, including family legends and stories. These may or may not be true, but may give you a clue to a long-lost fact later on. Talk with your parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and get all the names, dates and locations you can put your hands on. Find out where your ancestors are buried, where they lived, where they went to church ... all this information may not be available, but get as much as you can.

For now, forget about books, family trees on the Internet, and Web sites which are said to list your family back to Richard the Lionhearted or Atilla the Hun. You have no idea whether or not these are your relatives until you trace the steps back from the present to the past. And false leads are hard to shake off, once you get started on them. When you get your research really solid back three or four generations, you may be able to make a connection. But, forget it for now. If you have a personal family history book which lists your parents and grandparents by name, hang on to it. You will be able to use it later. Don't trust anyone's research but your own. Use the book for a guide, but don't believe every word you read.

Although I was not doing genealogy back then, my paternal aunt (my father's sister) had told me stories about my father's family since the 1970s. Thank goodness I wrote most of them down. And, this is unusual, but, so far, she is running at almost 100 percent accuracy on everything she told me. She passed away a couple of years ago so now I am on my own. I miss her stories and still find myself reaching for the phone to give her a call when I hit a snag. Old habits die hard.

Make a trip to the cemetery where your grandparents are buried and take pictures of their gravestones. That will give you their dates of birth and death. Start a notebook with all your genealogy information in it (including your interviews and the dates on the gravestones). You will go through several of these and refer to them for years, believe me.

Take the dates of death for your grandparents or great-grandparents and try to find them in the last census they would have been recorded in. The Fayette County library has all censuses for all counties in Georgia. If you are looking out of state and live too far away, the LDS Family History Center can order them for you. Also, Ancestry.com has online census images for all counties in every state beginning with 1790. This will cost you about $40 for a year's worth of searching, but is well worth the price. The Web site is at www.ancestry.com.

Make notes in the "Notes" section of your computer genealogy program on where your ancestors should have been every ten years when the census was taken. If he or she was born in 1849, he or she would have appeared for the first time in the census for 1850. Make notes to yourself on where they might have been.

For instance, my great-grandfather was born in 1849 (I knew not where) and died in 1919 in Cleburne County, Ala. I found his gravestone along with many other Fowlers in Ranburne. This means he would have been in the censuses for 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900 and 1910. I should have immediately checked the Cleburne County, Ala. census for 1910 to get the names of some of his children ... but I didn't. Had I done that, I would have found him there in 1910, 1900, and 1880 (there is no census for 1890). He is not there in 1870. But his birthplace was listed as Georgia so I would have known to backtrack to Georgia. I didn't do this. Going on my aunt's family stories, I wasted months looking in South Carolina for him. They may have come from South Carolina originally, but he was born in Gwinnett County, Ga.

Check the location of your family's burial places (county) for a local history book that may contain your family. I didn't do that either. Had I checked, I would have found him in the "Heritage of Cleburne County, Alabama" and discovered the name of his parents and where he was born. (Can you tell that I'm kicking myself for my stupid, time-wasting mistakes?)

He was in the Gwinnett county census in 1850 and 1860, but not there in 1870. Okay, now I know when they moved, even if I didn't know where. So now I was only missing one year of the censuses ... 1870. Checking the Georgia Census Index for 1870, I found him in Campbell County.

In 1850, 1860 and 1870, the census told me both his parents were still living. But by 1880, when he was in Cleburne, his mother was a widow. Okay ... now I knew his father died between 1870 and 1880.

I put all this information into my computer program and printed out a report. I take it with me wherever I go and update it monthly. Do you see how quickly your information can come together if you just take the logical steps to do it right? Always work from the present to the past. If I had only known ...

Next week, I'll give you some more tips on getting started, and tell you how you can find details that will help put more than just a name and a date on your ancestors.

If you're looking for your Georgia ancestors or have a local family history to share, write to The Citizen, Drawer 1719, Fayetteville, GA 30214; E-mail jkilgore@thecitizennews.com or jodiek444@aol.com. I'll be happy to share it with others and maybe help you "find your folks."

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