Tracing Heritage

Genealogy is the process of researching and tracing back ones ancestor’s from them selves back to a particular ancestor or all their ancestor’s that they can find.  It’s not necessarily a hard task to do.  But it is a time consuming task and can take some digging to get it completed. 

 

This process is best done by using documentation as you go to verify the persons that you are finding to be the correct ones belonging to that particular family.  There is a book out called “Genealogy Investigating your Heritage” which covers many of the documents out there and where and how to obtain them.  So I will not be double writing the information in that book here.  Instead, just touching on some of it as needed.  Purchasing certified certificates can be costly, but it’s easier if you obtain them as you go if you can or as you need to.  However, it is not always necessary to obtain these certificates unless it is the only way to verify someone’s age or parents or the fact that they are the actual ones that you are looking for.

 

It is not a good idea to jump around generations if you haven’t confirmed that person for sure as being the one related to a certain family.  It is, however, okay to jump around documents to verify that person as being the one you are looking for.  For example if you   decide to go straight to your g-grandmother and start there, well what might you be missing in between?  Are you sure that the one you find is for sure the ancestor of the three generations prior?   Can you make those connections for sure first before heading right to her?  Jumping documentation, if you have a Death Certificate but can’t find a Marriage Certificate then you look to see if you can find a Birth Certificate on that person with the information you know off of the Death Certificate.  And if you can’t find it that way then look for other types of documents out there as listed in the book that was mentioned above and see if there’s any other way to connect this person to the family that you are researching.

 

Here is a good example of what I am talking about here:  we were looking for the one person.  Their parents were married after they were born and so their children weren’t for sure if that person’s father was their father or if it was someone else.  The children had the Death Certificate which listed both parents on it and his birth date and where he was born.  This person had been married more then once and the children weren’t sure when or where he was actually married.  So we first wanted to verify from his Birth Certificate who was actually listed on his Birth Certificate to be his parents.  We contacted the county where his Death Certificate stated that he was born.  They had no record of his birth being in that county or city that was listed on his Death Certificate.  We tried to track down his Marriage records based on what the children had been told when they were growing up and what they actually could remember.  We couldn’t find a Marriage or Divorce record on him either.  So now where do we go?  Do we give up?  No way, it’s out there somewhere it just has to be found another way through digging and finding the right record to help us verify the information.  Their father was never in the Military so that wouldn’t help us.  But he did have a Social Security number and it is possible, being that he’s deceased now, to obtain a copy of his original Social Security Application which should tell us a lot more.  So we ordered those records and when they came in we found out a lot about their father.  It told us where he was living at the time he applied, his age, who he worked for, his parents names and where he was born.  On the application is stated a totally different county and city of his birth then what his Death Certificate said.  So we contacted that county to find out and yes they had his Birth Certificate and the father that his children knew of was in fact listed on his Birth Certificate as being his father.

 

So before you go on and jump to another generation just because you don’t think you can find documentation proving one ancestor.  Look around and see what else is out there that might verify what you are looking for.  It will make things a lot easier for you and less confusing too.