Posts tagged "ancestor"

Pointers When Seeking Death Records In Genealogy

When creating a genealogy, death records can be one of your biggest assets. Along with birth records and marriage records, death records can provide extremely valuable information about an individual ancestor as well as his family. When creating a family tree, designs and included information may vary from tree to tree. However, a family tree will always account for births, deaths and marriages. It is important to make sure that these dates and locations are accurate.

Modern death records for the United States can be located through the Social Security Death Index. This Index is fully searchable online at no charge. From the Social Security Death Index you can find the birth date, Social Security Number and state of issue, death date and last residence of your ancestor.

To search the Social Security Death Index, simply input as much information as you have. It is possible to search only by last name, thereby finding the death records of everyone who shares a particular surname. This can be useful in starting research on a possible ancestor about whom you know very little or finding a whole new branch of a family tree.

If you are seeking death records from another country or pre-1960s United States death records, you will have to go through alternative sources. If you know the town and approximate year in which your ancestor died, try contacting that town’s offices. You may be able to get information on how to proceed. Also try contacting genealogical societies both locally and online. Some societies publish their own databases of death records and other vital records. These sources are generally based on the members’ research and may not be 100% accurate,  so use caution and document your sources carefully.

You may also want to check military, probate and even prison records to find the death records of a particularly elusive family member. Women’s records can be particularly difficult to find as during some eras, women were considered the property of her husband or father.  Some lives of many women were never at all.

It is possible to use guesswork to fill in the blanks if you simply cannot find certain death records. This is often necessary in the case of persecuted peoples such as Jews or Gypsies as well as slaves. If you cannot find death records for one or more of your family members, then fill in as much information as you can and move on. It is possible that the death records will surface at a later date or you will be able to estimate the approximate time of death with a reasonable degree of accuracy as you obtain more information.

Free Family Genealogy: Searching For Your Ancestors

Knowing who you are where you came from is very important. A lot of people around the world spend hundreds of hours searching for family members without getting anywhere. Some of these people eventually resort to hiring expensive consultants and researchers to find some information about their family lineage. Fortunately, there are new technologies that can help you learn more about of family tree without spending a lot of money. There is a number of genealogy software that you can use to trace your family’s bloodline. Free family genealogy records are also available online. Most of these free family genealogy records provide important information about certain families for many generations. To use these free family genealogy records, here is what you need to do.

Searching For Your Family

Talking to your parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts about your family history will give you some ideas about your family bloodline. Unfortunately, your family members many not be able to provide you with all the information that you need. Remember that these people are not historians so whatever knowledge they have about your family history will be limited to their own experiences and observations. If you want to make a scientific and systematic research about your family background, you need to go through public records such as those free family genealogy records kept by well known organizations and research institutions. Accessing these free family genealogy records is that difficult. You can find some of these free family genealogy records online. You may also find some of the free genealogy records in your local libraries and civil registers.

Using these free family genealogy records to find out some information about your family can quite tricky. Remember that those free family genealogy records are general in nature. To get accurate information about your family bloodline, you need to know the right questions to ask. You need to provide specific information about your family to find what you need. When launching a search for your ancestors, you may type the name, place of birth and date of birth of your oldest living relative. Since there are a number of people who have the same names and family names, check the spelling of the family names of your relatives and their dates of birth first before you hit the submit button. You may also use a variation in the spelling of your family name when you do your research. Spellings of family names have evolved over time so make sure that you use spelling variations to get the kind of information that you need.