[ SECRET POST #1959 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #1959 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 085 secrets from Secret Submission Post #280.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[childings.livejournal.com]

If you're talking about that DNA thing that National Geographic is doing, it doesn't really tell you what your ethnicity is, it just traces your DNA back to your oldest ancestor, which can be a lot different than your recent ethnic heritage (recent being like, within the last thousand years)

I've always heard that if you want to find out anything about your ancestry that the Mormons have a lot of genealogical information on EVERYONE (in fact I've heard from Jewish people that they're basically your best bet for researching maternal ancestry)

[(Anonymous)]

Even non-US citizens?

[childings.livejournal.com]

Oh, you meant the Mormon thing. I'm not sure but I think so. LDS is a global religion you know, they have missionaries all over the world

[kateshort.livejournal.com]

The Mormons have indeed scanned a heck of a lot of church records from all over the place. Part of the religion is connecting your ancestors to yourself and sealing them to you so they and you can both be in heaven together (or something along those very broad lines). So genealogy is a Really Big Deal.

Most of the records they have tend to be from European church records, and some South American records, though they also had lots of Jewish records.... except that many of those have been removed due to controversy over baptizing people of non-Morman religion who are not direct ancestors of members of the Mormon faith. Ditto some Catholic church records.

Other areas are less well represented. And there's a big difference between scans of original documents (the bestest sources), transcriptions of original documents (good, but not perfect), and the "Ancestry File" and "Family Group Sheets" which I think are both member-submitted but I can't remember and I can't find the definitions anywhere right now. :P So you do need to be careful in looking at the records, just as you'd need to be careful assuming that someone in the 1920 census has to be your ancestor just based on the name and location.

You can look in the indexes online, though, and you can often request microfilms be sent to a local Family History Center. Some public libraries are also able to request these images via inter-library loan. My parents did a lot of this-- my husband searched https://familysearch.org/ to find good leads, then my parents would request the films by calling a Family History Center near them (yay retirement!) and drive up there once they were notified that the films had arrived. They saved copies of the images, and we later were able to check whether the images did have the info we needed and whether it turned out to be the ancestor we needed.

[childings.livejournal.com]

I just started working with the State of Texas (weird I know) today and their state archives are like, literally a few blocks from where I work now. Since my mom, maternal grandmother and great-grandmother were both born in Texas I thought I might find something that way -- do you have any tips for using state archive resources for genealogical research? I haven't the slightest idea how to go about doing that except I do know that tracing your matrilineal line is really difficult because of marriages and so forth. I've been in archives several times to do research in college but never anything like that before

[kateshort.livejournal.com]

Best thing you can do is call them up and ask to talk to an archivist. :) They may have tips about using their archives for genealogical research, or may be able to point you in the direction of other resources. I know that for our research on my dad's side, the county historical society and the county courthouse had lots of local records that were useful [land deeds, cemetery records, etc.]

We've most often had luck in using census data, but we also subscribe to ancestry.com... your local public library may or may not have a subscription. It's also likely that you'd need to go to the actual library to get access, if they have a subscription. But some of the census records, if you can find an ancestor, sometimes you'll have the mother listed living with the family as "mother in law" to the [male] head of household.

If you can get your hands on marriage licences or marriage certificates, those can also be useful for getting parents' names. Even if there's only an index, it's a starting point. Ditto for birth and death certs... those vital records are indeed VITAL primary sources.

[childings.livejournal.com]

Also this is kind of non-sequitur but I find it pretty strange that when I googled my great-grandmother's name I found her grave (along with birth and death dates) listed on http://www.findagrave.com/ by some completely random stranger who just likes to list birth and death dates from cemeteries ... and that was the only way I found out where she was even buried, since my mother didn't even ask me if I wanted to come to the interment and wouldn't tell me where exactly she was buried

ETA: AND her maiden name is different depending on which site I check which is confusing like it's one thing on the grave site I linked to, and that familysearch.org has it listed as a separate name. The names are similar though, so ... it's just so confusing

[kateshort.livejournal.com]

The maiden name could be two different people or two people who got conflated. We have several instances of that with our family trees. Jane Smith and Janey Smith [fake example names, lol] both married a Hank or Henry Jones, but they aren't the same person. However, some people thought they *were* the same people, so now a lot of the records are tied together. This is why it's important to source every detail you find! Every time we see a new spelling or a new date, we list the exact spelling and the exact source, so we can figure out whether they're two separate people and someone made big mistakes, or whether it's the same person.

Best bet for great-grandma is to take the info from the grave and try to find a matching death certificate. You can use that to cross-check the burial info (often found on the death cert), residence info, birth date, death date, sometimes parents' names, sometimes parents' birthplaces, etc. You can also ask your mom, assuming she's still living. "Hey, I was doing research and it looks like great-grandma is buried at _____ cemetery. Is that correct?" Gives her a point of info to confirm or refute.

Familysearch.org records come in all flavors, just like ancestry.com trees-- some are very well sourced, and some are full of typos and horrible research errors.

[searabbits.livejournal.com]

Haven't done any gene tests, but I did have someone call from Scotland a couple years back asking for our family tree because he and another guy were competing to see if they could track everyone who had left Scotland...

Gene tests might be easier, because looking at my family tree, our last name switches between a common one and an extremely uncommon one every generation.

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks! I think that I just found my grandfather (whom I never knew) was born at sea. I need to recheck, but the general dates would match!

[(Anonymous)]

ancestry.com is run by mormons. Those folks are creepy stalker levels of knowledge, but I gotta admit it comes in handy now and then.

[childings.livejournal.com]

You have to pay to use that site though :/

[pimpmytardis.livejournal.com]

We recently did the free 2 (or is it 3?) week trial and found some interesting things. The trial is limited to US records, but from immigration records we could do more general internet research on one branch of our family going back quite a few more generations. Luckily the UK kept good records so that's my Scottish side traced- the Greek, Croatian (Austro-Hungarian empire at the time), and especially Jewish ancestors, not so much.

The key is that you have to remember to say "no, I don't want to get the full ancestry.com shebang" when your 2-3 weeks runs out, or they'll start charging you hoping you forgot you gave them your cc# for the trial. It's also kind of nice that they retain your account and trees- you can still access them after deactivating payment, especially when they have free events, like they recently put up the 1940 US census and anyone could search it for free for a few weeks.

[kateshort.livejournal.com]

Local public library! Local public library! See if they have a subscription. :D