Genealogy: Finding Your Folks

So you think you’d like to try genealogy? Part 2

Judy Fowler Kilgore is the religion editor and genealogy columnist for The Citizen. She regrets that time does not permit her to do personal family research for others. She may be reached at jkilgore@thecitizennews.com or jodiek444@aol.com.

I hope you had fun exploring your genealogy on the Internet all last week. With all that’s out there, I’m sure most of you found family information right away.

The Internet has come a long way in a short time and now contains more information than ever before. And it’s growing every day.

This week I’d like to point you to a site where you can find official records online — sites where people have actually transcribed wills, deeds, family Bible records, cemetery records, family history books, and marriage records among others, and put them on the Internet.

The U.S. GenWeb Archives has sites where people from all over the world have shared their research information. There is a site for every state, and a site for almost every county in every state. I have explored sites in Georgia, Alabama, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia — every place my ancestors plopped down for any length of time and may have left records of their stay.

The companion site for the Archives is the U.S. GenWeb, where there are sites for almost every county in every state. These have more local information than the archives sites and you will find names of others researching in that county, usually a history of the county and other records people have shared. This site also links to the message boards at Rootsweb for queries.

Another site which has more local county information is the American History and Genealogy Project (AHGP), which is similar to the GenWeb pages. You may find official records on all these sites, but the Archives site is the only one which carries records exclusively.

I keep stressing counties because that’s where all the records are kept and that’s where you go to find information on your ancestors. If they married, the record will be at the county courthouse — not city hall.

If you are not using the Internet for research, that’s where you’ll start — at the county courthouse, seeking records on the earliest ancestor you have found in discussions with your living relatives. You also want to check genealogy libraries and public libraries for family histories and county information.

But, back to the Internet. How do you find these research sites? Well, a Google search (www.google.com) will help you find them but I’m going to give you the Web addresses too.

The U.S. GenWeb Archives site may be found at http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/.

The U.S. GenWeb site is at http://www.usgenweb.org/.

The American History & Genealogy Project is at http://www.ahgp.org/.

Once you get to the home pages for these sites, scroll until you see the state you are looking for and click on it. When the state page comes up, find the county and click on it. Most sites are searchable so you can plug in your surname to the search engine and find all the references on the site to that particular surname. Don’t forget to use variations in spelling just in case.

Family trees which individuals have submitted are at Rootsweb’s WorldConnect Project, Ancestry.com’s Ancestry World Tree and Gencircles. The WorldConnect may be found on Rootsweb’s home page (www.rootsweb.com), the Ancestry World Tree is at www.ancestry.com, and Gencircles is at www.gencircles.com. Although Ancestry is a paid site, access to family trees is free. But, as I said last week, be forewarned. All of these trees are not correct and may lead you down the wrong path.

In addition to finding your ancestors in courthouse records, genealogists also track their ancestors through census records. The census began in 1790 and the latest available is 1930. Some of these are available online for free, but they are few and far between. Ancestry.com and Heritage Quest, two paid sites, also have censuses.

The Fayette County Library has all Georgia censuses on microfilm, as does the Georgia Archives in Morrow. There are indexes for some years and censuses are available by county, so, once again, you have to know the county where your ancestor lived before you can find him or her. However, census records can be wrong also, so tread carefully and double-check everything.

As I said last week, don’t stop with Internet research. Use it as a basis for further searches in courthouses and libraries. Start with one line (surname) to begin with — the one you have the most information on — and branch out to others as information becomes available. When you hit a dead end, go to another surname or search for siblings and their spouses. Persons often married into the same families several times.

Your biggest help will be people you meet on the Internet and people with whom you correspond via letters. They may have the missing link you’re looking for, and you may have theirs.

A lot of your genealogical searches will be just plodding along, step-by-step, until you finally find the right links. When you finally find something you’ve been searching for, the “high” that comes with it makes all the frustration worth it.

I apologize to Mike Roberts for not getting his family in this week. Obviously, I’ve run out of space.

However, in addition to Mike’s letter, I received another in response to the column on Wilkins Stone. I promise I’ll run both of them next week.

I welcome all letters and e-mails about genealogy and info on south metro Atlanta families. Send them to The Citizen, P.O. Drawer 1719, Fayetteville, GA 30214; e-mail jkilgore@thecitizennews.com or jodiek444@aol.com. Any letters and/or e-mails I receive are subject to being used in the column.

Until next week, happy hunting!