Finding your Great Grandparents

Question #2 from the previous post was a poll on how much do you know about your ancestors revealed that 19% of the surveyed people did not know information about their great-grandparents. In order to find them, this requires knowledge about your parents, and your grandparents.  Hopefully you know your parents.  Knowing facts about them is the foundation of your family tree.

How to find your Great Grandparents

If you don’t know your grandparents, hopefully someone is living that can answer your questions of their names, birth and death dates and places, as well as other family tree information. Depending on the generation of person that you are researching, and how much you know, will contribute to the amount of effort needed to find your answers.

Start your Family Tree Research with one Question

In trying to find any ancestor, start with one person, and one question at a time to fill in the gaps.

Start with the place of the event.  If you don’t know where the event took place, you need to piece together possible places based on what you know about the person and their immediate relatives.  Look through: census records, old telephone books, residence directories, and church records to help narrow down your search for “where”. 

Once you know the “where” then you can discover the “when”

Start by using an average age of when the event could have taken place and exhaust all reasonable possibilities for a match. 

Types of Historical Events to Figure Out

Depending on what you are trying to figure out, you should use the following sources to help answer your question.  Using more than one source is always a good idea to help build a reliable family tree that is built with sources.  The following sources are always useful for genealogy research:

Death Certificate – you can find the names of the person’s parents, when and where they were born, as well as the ancestor. It will also tell you where they were buried and when.

Obituary – can have countless information about the person, depending on who wrote the announcement and how detailed it is.

Church Records – if the person was religious, you should seek out the possible records that exist for their church.  Many churches have records about a family that can extend your family tree quickly.

Bible Records – See if a relative has an old family bible.  Many times, they have recorded important family tree history facts with dates and places.

Newspapers – check them for birth, marriage, and death details.  Often they have enough information to give you the right direction for your quest of “when” and “where”.  As well as, help confirm relationships.

Social Security Records – find possible matches using the social security death index.  Then order a copy of the original social security application, SS-5. This will give you insight about the person’s birth, where they were living, and, details about their parents, including the mother's maiden name.

Cemeteries – find headstones with your ancestors birth and death facts.  You can also discover their spouse, as well as, other immediate relatives.

Funeral Homes – often have records that they can search to help produce death and burial details.

Create a Research Log for your Family Tree

Make sure you are recording all your finding, positive and negative.  This will help you from doing the same research again in the future, if you are stuck trying to find something.  Sharing your research with another family member or fellow genealogist can also help you possibly try a new approach or technique that may help to unravel your brick wall and help build another branch of your family tree.

Ancestry Poll Results Reveals the Pursuit of Family Genealogy

With Mother’s Day right around the corner, and Father’s Day shortly behind, I reflect on the messages that people have shared (through the many places this poll was posted).  Several people have had touching stories with great discoveries, while others have had heartache from tragic events that touched their ancestors’ lives.

All of us hobbyists are in pursuit of finding something about our family for various reasons.  Some people are just beginning their journey, while some have research experience, we are all still trying to find answers.

Two things to remember:  be patient with your research and document everything.  You might not get too far with one ancestor, and decide to go on to another, and one day you may what to start the research process again for that elusive relative.  Knowing what you have done in the past will save you from doing the same research all over again. 

For those of you just popping on by, we recently conducted a short poll to get feedback from genealogy hobbyists to see where people were with their pursuit in discovering something about their family history.  Based on the answers, over the next couple of postings, we will try to give some guidance to help people with finding documents and uncovering their family stories. In the meantime, below are the results.

Family Genealogy Poll Questions and Results:

What is your genealogy experience?

Do you know the names of your great grandparents? (including the maiden names of the 8 females)

How many PRIMARY sources do you have for people in your tree? (copies of original marriage, birth, or death certificates, last will and testaments, Social Security SS-5 applications, naturalization documents, or military applications)

Do you know where 10 or more of your ancestors are buried?

For your deceased ancestors do you have photographs of their tombstones?

We find it interesting that people have the same amount of tombstone photos as they do of the relatives in their tree.  In our experience, people tend to have less photos of tombstones. A tree with 200 people would need 20 tombstone photos, and a tree with 1,000 people would need 100.

What percentage of the people in your tree do you have a profile or family photograph for?

What time frame is hardest for you to find family documents?

What place is hardest for you to find documents?

If you could interview a deceased relative who would it be? (answer with the relationship)

Of the people who added comments about wanting family information, people were slightly more interested in their maternal side vs. their paternal side. But are more interested in interviewing men in their family.

Of the people to be interviewed, most people would like to talk to their great grandmothers.  They would have been born between 1860 - 1890.   The 3rd great grandfathers would have been born between 1820 - 1850.  These years fall directly in line with the question about, what is the most difficult time frame to find documents.

Finding Documents for your Ancestors

Research is time consuming and should be only attempted when you are alert, otherwise you might miss a detail that helps to uncover some family history.  If you are new to research, and need a guide to when birth, death, marriage divorce, taxation, probate, and wills were recorded, click on this link to find out those answers.