And you can move that around or turn that on and off.
However, that helps you, the recording will be available at some point we're kind of new to this for the beginning class.
So we'll keep you all posted, and with that I'll turn it over to you. Lori.
Alright. Hello! And I'm glad you're here.
This is crazy.
I'm going to share my screen.
And I'm gonna try to figure out how to not see myself.
All I'm talking.
And see my notes. Okay, I'm gonna try that over in this corner.
We'll see how that goes. Okay, we are really glad you're joining us.
That is shery. That's doing a tech support tonight.
And she also helps with a lot of interest groups, special interest groups and a variety of classes down at the Iowa Genealogical Society, and I am the instructor tonight.
So I've been doing jennyology for about 1516 years now, and I've got deep Iowa routes.
So. I love talking about genealogy, and I'd love helping people get started with this hobby.
My husband just retired a few weeks ago, and I'm trying to get him going. I took him to want to share his DNA classes last week, just to try to get him going.
So it's really a great time. There's always new things coming online.
I'm gonna talk about online resources tonight. And then I'm also gonna talk about getting out there and getting into the archives, too, because that's really a wonderful and necessary part of doing good research.
It seemed like during the test. Everybody's hearing me okay, and seeing what they need to see if if something changes, drop something in the chat.
Sherry's great. It troubleshooting that kind of stuff.
Alright, so I am. Gonna try to keep it to about an hour and a half.
But this is very, a very dense presentation. And and every time we talk about how we might pair it down there's just some really good foundational information that we want to make sure that you're getting and and like some of you have already mentioned, this is a great time to set some good
habits, and to learn from the errors that I and others have made so that you don't spend time on researching the wrong family.
So these are the kinds of things that we're going to cover tonight.
They are considered the basics, good foundation skills for good research.
DNA and research outside of the United States are just beyond the scope of what we can cover tonight.
I'll talk a little bit as we go through about some of the other educational opportunities that are available online and down at Igs.
And those types of things. So there's lots of different ways to get good genealogy, information, and education.
But tonight we're going to try to keep it to what we kind of consider the basics.
So with that, said, We're gonna just jump right in and we're gonna start with just some basic guidelines.
So, even though everyone was a beginner once. This is a hobby for lifelong learners.
There is always something new to learn whether it's new record groups that have come out or new technologies.
Just DNA itself just has changed. It wasn't even really a part of research when I started.
So there's just always something new to learn. So I love that I do consider myself a lifelong learner.
So I love that about this hobby there's also record sets. We're going to talk about the basics tonight.
But then there's some record sets that are just a little more complicated and advanced to use.
So, as you get your wheels under you, and you get a good foundation, then you're going to want to take on some of those new, those more advanced types of record sets.
Maybe probate records or land records. That kind of thing.
So there's always something new that you can be learning about.
Okay, that family lore we don't wanna discount it because there may be a negative truth in there.
Okay, and those family stories are important. I was talking to a friend at church.
The, other day, and he was saying that that's mostly what his research has been made up of, because his family did pass down so many family stories.
And there's a way to document that, and then find the records and documents that support those stories.
So maybe you are a family that you've got a story that there might have been native American blood, or that you go back in your related to royalty.
I was helping a friend of mine a year or so ago, and she had a story in her family that her grandma had been a cook at a dude ranch, and I think the story was that it was Arizona, but with a little digging the woman's name it didn't take me very
very long at all to verify for her that the woman had been a cook at a dude ranch, but the Dude ranch was in Montana, not Arizona.
So in just a couple generations the story had gotten morphed and twisted a little bit, but there was still something, you know.
There was still something accurate there.
So when you are just getting started. Sometimes, we're really tied to the way our name is spelled, and that's one of the things we've got to let go of in the past.
That was not always the case. We have relatives or ancestors that didn't sometimes didn't read or write, have relatives or ancestors that didn't sometimes didn't read or write, and names just weren't spelled that one particular way all the time so you've got to be open to that idea of
a different spelling of a name still being part of your family.
Also ages might be off, birthplaces might change from record to record, so we're trying to track down the truth.
But we're trying to track down the truth. But we've got to track down the truth. But we've got to be flexible within that.
So, for example, I there's a family that I research need.
And in my family my branch of the family. It's MEA.
DE. But I can look back in the records, and it's only about 3 back, and I can see where the 2 brothers, the one family State of Missouri, and they dropped the E.
And my line of the family came to Iowa. In this kept the E.
But I can very clearly see where they're related. So when I do that Missouri research, I'm tracking a different spelling. But I'm still working with that same family.
Okay.
So we've just got to be open to that. I was also helping a friend that we were looking at a surname that we found him in 19 forties.
So then, best practice, we went back. 1930, went back 1920, and they had stayed in the same place.
But in 3 different censuses. Their their surname was spelled 3 different ways.
Alright. So if you do, family research for very long at all, you will probably discover some family secrets or some things that some people will, except more easily than others.
So, perhaps a family member with a criminal record or birth that wasn't quite, you know, born less than 9 months after a marriage date, or those kinds of things.
And along with that DNA has brought about some new relatives and unexpected parenting, and those kinds of things.
Oh, yeah.
So, the point being that you just want to be sensitive about that.
And I've been doing this so long now that when I find things like that I'm not taken aback like I used to be.
But I have to remember when I share those things with my mom that can still, you know, she's one generation older.
And so you just need to be really sensitive about what you're finding and and be thoughtful about how you're sharing it.
You may find things that you choose to keep private.
Alright, and then I just touched on this. But the Internet is great for our genealogical research, but not everything is on the Internet.
You're gonna need to get out and go to those libraries and those courthouses museums, historical societies.
And really, that is part of the fun to get out and find those nuggets that are in archives and places.
So this is such an important concept. It's actually the focus of our educational programming at Igs this year and every month we've had a librarian from a library in or near Iowa.
And they've been sharing information with us about their collection, and they always point out some things that may not be available online.
And I'll talk a little bit about our library and the historical building here in Iowa.
In just a moment. So let's talk a little bit about where the best place to start.
And this is a important time to try to set some good houses.
Hi, and one of those is to set some goals.
Okay, you'll be investing time at least, and probably money.
If you do this for very long. So you just want to give some thought to what you want to accomplish, and once you decide that, then your research approach will follow.
Okay. So maybe it's that you want to identify a specific individual. You know.
Are we related to this particular famous person, for example? Oh, well, I always heard that we were really related to President so and so.
And you want to track that line and see if that's true, or I try to do a lot of kinship. I'm trying to track down.
We wanna we wanna be accurate in who we're researching.
So I've got a lot where I get back to like the early 18 hundreds.
And of course there aren't as many records as we get back there in many cases. So then, I'm trying to sort through these men with the same name.
Well which one of those is my ancestor. We call that kin shield.
Okay. And so that may be the route that you want to take with your research.
Okay? Or maybe you've heard again. Maybe you've heard a story I have a third grade. Grandfather.
That was in a Confederate prison, and I'm not a military buff or a war buff by any means, but I am fascinated now with Confederate prison camps, so I want to know everything that I can find about what my ancestors.
Life was like in this prison camp. So you're goals, and your approach to your research will change over time.
Ancestors. Life was like in this prison camp. So your goals I don't think there's probably any of us that are trained to do this professionally, and so it should be fun.
It should be fun, and it should be, I know we were just talking before we started about some newly retired folks, so now we've got time on our hands to dig into that.
But it should be fun and enjoyable.
So, a little bit of best practice to go along with that.
You do want to start with what you know best. So you want to start with yourself and then work your way back.
Oops! Sorry about that, alright, and you want to be as methodical as you can be, and it's hard, especially when you're getting started, and you're getting that, you know. If you've been on one of the websites where they send you hints and things you can really jump
into some rabbit hole, but as far as best practices go, if you can come up with a research question and try to stay as focused as you can on that resource question rather than jumping all around.
And so that probably means looking at that kinship like I just mentioned, and making sure that you've got a good strong link from your from your current generation back to the previous generation, as you work your way back.
And then you're wanting to collect that corn information for each of those individuals, and by that I mean their birth, death, marriage, place in dates, and we'll talk more about those records in a minute.
But the idea would be that you're going to remain focused and work on one generation at a time.
So, for example, II research a English name Hereford, but I have not found my immigrant ancestor yet in the United States I'm back in the southeastern United States.
Now in again early 18 hundreds, late 17 hundreds. But I can't just jump over to England, which I suspect is where they came from, and just jump in and start working over there because I haven't tied my immigrant ancestor back to those ancestors in England yet.
So you just want to be methodical. And as you're working through that.
And then you do not want to forget about those older relatives.
I heard somebody that was able to ment to get their older mother tested.
That's fabulous. I was really fortunate.
My grandma lived to the age of 92.
I didn't get her. DNA tested again.
She died just DNA just really wasn't quite a thing yet, but she was really sharp, and she shared a lot of family stories with me.
I got her to id a lot a lot of photos for me, and then she told me a lot of great stuff that even now I can still go down.
I can still go find the records to track down some of those oral history things.
So, for example, she said, oh, she had a cousin that drove a car into a field while I went and found the newspaper article that supported that she talked about cousins who's mother had died during the Spanish flu and I found that death certificate to support.
That so II document what I got from her through oral history.
But then I also can find at other documents to to support and verify those those family stories.
So do talk to those older relatives of yours while you still have the chance.
Alright. So now I'm gonna turn and we are gonna start talking about some local resources.
Okay, so you're gonna start 2 ways with this.
And I know I'm talking to at least several folks here that are in the Des Moines area.
So I'm gonna mention some places that you can get to very easily and so we'll talk about that.
And then we're also gonna talk about that location of where the ancestor is that you're researching?
So I'm gonna use my Mercer County, Missouri, as my example.
Okay. And I've got a surname that I excuse me that I research in Mercer County, Missouri, and I have physically been to the courthouse in the public library there in Mercer County.
Okay. But I can also do Mercer, counting Missouri research here in Iowa with some of the resources that are a few at our historical building.
But then some also at Igs. So you want to think about it.
I hope I'm saying that in a way that makes sense to you.
But you want to think about it in both ways. So even if you're you're in one place physically, and your ancestors someplace, else you want to cover both angles.
You want to cover where you're at, but then, also, where that ancestor was, and that can be a road trip.
But again, we're we're really lucky in this day and age that a lot of public libraries and historical buildings and so forth, have at least some access over the Internet.
Okay. So like, I said, I've done research for Tennessee, Ohio.
We've got some nice books and things at the Iowa Genealogical Society for other States.
And I've been able to do some of my research for for my ancestors in those places but I've been able to do it right here.
So just think about that from kind of both angles.
Alright. So when when you're looking at that local resource or that public library, whether it's where where your ancestor was, and you're looking at a public library site that's across the country, or whether you're right here locally, you might find microfilms
of newspapers, you might find a local history section, and sometimes they call it genealogy.
But oftentimes they call it local. Excuse me, local history I'll still be open to the idea that the local, the libraries that you're looking for, where your ancestors may have lived.
You may be looking at something in the next town over, or looking in the county seat, so maps are really good to have, because it just may not be in that little I have a lot of farmers in my family, so I'm always out, you know, out in the rural area, and
I've got to kind of think through. Where's the town?
Where's the biggest town that they might have spent time in, and and shopped and got the newspaper from?
And those kinds of things Inner Library Loan is a great resource.
It varies a little bit from library to library. Sometimes there's no charge, sometimes there's a postage charge.
I was able to get. I'm out here in Altoona, Iowa, and I was able to, through my public library, hearing Altoona, I was able to get a book on Rome, Tennessee, and but the book actually came from a Library, in St.
Louis. So you just might want to check with your local public library about how they're interlibrary. Loan works.
Alright, then also locally, is where you're gonna be able to get your hands on those one of a kind items those things that you just may not find any place else they might be.
Books that have gone out of print. They might be documents or booklets that have been written by state historic, or, excuse me, state genealogical societies, or county genealogical Societies.
They might have files with family histories. So those are just little hidden jewels that you don't.
Wanna you don't wanna pass over so let's talk about our society I'm a very proud member of the Iowa Genealogical Society, and we are just right down here in the East Village.
So we do invite you to come, visit in person, or at Iowa.
Genealogy got org. So they were, we're just 2 blocks west of the State Capitol, and we are on the north side of Grand Avenue, and then the State Historical Society, Iowa State Historical Society Archives, specifically are just right across the Street from Us.
State Historical Society and then the State Historical Society, Iowa State Historical Society Archives specifically are just right across the street from but at our library we're open 6 days a week every day but Sunday we're open till 90'clock tonight a
week we have a annual membership fee, and then we'll be able to use the library free for the whole year, or you can come in and use our library for just $10 a day.
We've got a full time. Librarian, and he's wonderful and we've got great volunteers.
All kinds of people that want to help you find what you're looking for.
All kinds of people that want to help you find what you're looking for. So we've got over 10,000 books, other kinds of publications and microphones like I mentioned.
Certainly we have a very large Iowa collection, as you would expect, but those publications that we've got go across the country a little bit of international, too.
We have access to the ancestry.com.
The library edition. So if you don't want to have your own subscription to answercestry Com, you're welcome to use our library edition, and you can find reference, and that's the international version.
So you can find records. Get your image, and then save an image of it and email at home to yourself or back to your own email address.
And then we are also an affiliate of the Family History Library.
Oh! They call themselves family search, now, I believe the family search Library and Salt Lake City.
We're going to talk more about them in just a minute as well.
But the neat thing about that is, although they have digitized millions of records, and many of those are available to us on our own personal computers.
Some of those by virtue of the licensing arrangement and the digitization arrangement with the entity from whom they got the records.
Some of those are under a bit more of a restriction, and you just simply have to come into an affiliate library to use those.
And so what you would do is you'd come in.
You could bring your own computer or use one of ours, and when you would see that little lock on those record sets if you were at home, when you get into an affiliate library, their locked almost magic, we have a variety of educational classes, every month and we have a
couple conferences annually, a spring and a fall conference, and then we've got a number of special interest groups which are a great way for our members that have different interests and different expertise in all different topics.
Related to genealogy. They get on typically zoom and just share information with each other. Fellowship and information.
So those are all benefits of membership and information. So those are all benefits of membership right now, and as I'm recording this, it's mid June, and we have a $10 summer pass available, and it's good through from now through the end of August.
So if you're wanna take another little look at what we've got this would be a quite an inexpensive way to come in and see what what's available.
There. Alright, I am gonna head across the street now to the State Historical Society of Iowa, and on the screen you're seeing they're actual website.
Their web, page changes from time to time, but this one, this image that I snapped here is pretty current.
You're gonna go into where it says research. Well, obviously, you're welcome to look at everything but if you want to get into their records and their their catalogue to records, this is where you're going to go here.
Okay, and they are open for business. They've done quite an extensive, remodeling here in the Des Moines area.
They've also got a location in Iowa City.
Their collection is online under in their excuse me, under that research link.
But they are not a lending library, and I should mention we are not a lending library either, so the majoritys that you would use in either one of those facilities you would use while you were there.
But the catalog is nice, so that you could review it before you made a trip over, made a trip down.
Okay, so this is right across the street from the photo.
I just showed you a moment ago, and many of you, I'm sure, are used to coming in on the locust side there into the museum.
But this is actually on the grand side, and that's what takes you into the archives right there.
And they are recently renovated. So they've got a nice big picture window there, and if you're familiar with the geography of Des Moines that is facing east, so you've got a nice view towards the capital there, and then there's the tables that are right there are
if you've asked for documents to be pulled then they want you to sit out there, and the open, and there's a few guidelines for how many folders you can have at one time, and how many records you can request it at one time, and so forth.
and then off to the right. What you're not seeing in that photo is where they've got a nice grouping of microwave readers, and those are connected to microfilm printers.
The librarians there are very helpful with showing you how to use those pieces of equipment, and then also guiding you towards where those where those microfilms are housed, and and helping you kind of think through what the what records they have that might be useful to you so as you
were looking at. That photo over to your left is where they've got lots of balls, and then all their microfinance stored over that way.
I do encourage you to look at their web page or make a phone call before you go down.
Currently their only open to the public. On Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and they pull records from the closed stacks 4 times during the day, and I think the first one starts at about 9, 9, 15, or so, and then again II don't know right before lunch right after lunch.
And then again mid afternoon. So if you have some idea of what you want, one at least.
When you get there, they'll have something they're ready for you.
Otherwise you may run into a situation where you've just missed the poll, and then you've got a couple hours potentially without the records that you came for.
But they'll work with you on that, and we keep hoping and hearing that maybe they will open an additional day.
But that has not happened yet. The renovations are not quite finished there, although the the research room is open right now.
But there are still some renovations going on at the throughout the building.
Okay. So at the State Historical Society, I touched on some of this already, but they house our State vital records they've got a large collection of books and periodicals.
They've got census records. They've got our archives and photo collection.
They've got a very extensive Iowa newspaper collection on microfinm. It's fabulous.
I've been using it for years, and I have not.
I have not exhausted all the places and people that I want to look for in the newspaper.
So it's very, very extensive. They've got a nice manuscript collection I'm doing volunteer project right now with some indexing.
And so I'm in there on a regular basis myself and a couple of other volunteers.
And it's just so interesting to hear what people are coming and looking for.
So it's a nice way to hear about all the different records.
That they have there. Of course they've got the county government records and they're the repository.
We're all of the State government records are. So they've just got a great collection of records.
And if you even went in and said to the librarian, Hey, I think my great-great grandma was a school teacher at a country school they've got, you know.
They could lead you specific set of records. And so just some really unique things. There.
And if you if you're researching Iowa folks, you're definitely gonna wanna make a visit there at some point.
Alright, I'm gonna be really quickly here. If if you do get bitten by this bug, there's some other great libraries across the country that you'll want to make a trip to at some point.
So the Mid-continent Public Library is part of the Kansas City, Kansas City, and I think they even go into Kansas.
But the Countywide library system there in Kansas City, and the building specifically in the Independence, Missouri location is dedicated to genealogy.
2 floors of materials, and a just a beautiful building I think I saw they just turned 15, or they're turning 15 this summer.
So that's a pretty easy little road trip to make from here.
So that's a fun one. And then Allen County, I think, is one of the 2 or 3 largest genealogy libraries in the country, and again they are part of a public library system, and they've devoted this one particular branch to genealogy and then of course kind of the mother of
all is the family search Library in Salt Lake City that is supported by members of the Church of Jesus Christ.
Of the Latter-day Saints, based on some of their religious beliefs, that is supported by members of the Church of Jesus Christ, of the Latter-day Saints, based on some of their religious beliefs.
They believe very strongly in reuniting folks with their ancestors, and that is part of the mission and belief of their church, but they want to make those records available to all of us.
So you're very welcome to use the website. I'm gonna show you in just a minute as well as their library.
And you do not have to be a member of the Latter-day Saints Church, and then, of course, the Library of Congress, where official United States records are also held in cup in Washington, DC.
They also have a website that's visited. That's very much worth a lot.
Lots of good research tips and strategies, and some records.
You just always want to call and confirm before you go and make sure that their hours are open.
I think we're kind of back to where things are open more regularly.
But for we all know for several years, couple of years that wasn't the case.
So you just don't want to be traveling too far without knowing if they're going to be open when you get there. And that's especially true.
If you're heading into some of these smaller, maybe a county, a county library, or a county genealogical society.
Many of those places are man strictly with volunteers.
So you just wanna check ahead of time that somebody's gonna be there when you get the.
Alright! When you get to that library, or archives, or repository, do take the time to talk to the librarian or the volunteers.
This was hard for me to get through my head, because I don't want to bother people, but those people know that collection inside and out and it is so worth your time to invest.
You know the the initial time when you get there to get oriented to the place, you'll just save yourself so much time, and you know the person doesn't want to hear your life, story, and they don't need to know all the details of what you're looking for but if you can give
them a brief overview of what you're looking for.
They're going to be able to put their hands on something in a matter of minutes that might take you hours to figure out so they're not going to do the research for you.
But they're going to guide you to that to the record group.
That's gonna be most likely to help you and save you a lot of time.
And then, of course, we want to be a good patron when we're at those places.
We want to know what the policies are, as far as making making copies.
Sometimes it's a sometimes it's a, you know.
I need a bunch of quarters to plug this machine, but more and more often it's kind of an honor system, and you'll make all the copies that you need, and then just pay it at the end of your visit, or whatever it might be so you just wanna be up to speed with those kinds of
things at our place, and also at the historical building.
We have small walkers, and we ask that you not carry a bag or a bunch of stuff around.
With. We ask you to use a pencil rather than a pen.
You're welcome to bring your computer. But those kinds of things.
Then you'll put it in the light in the locker.
Costs your quarter, I think a oh, cost straight.
It doesn't cost anything now, because there, they've got a code, and you just lock it.
And then, when you're ready to go, you unlock it and go at our place, you drop the quarter in, you, lock it, grab the key, and then, when you're ready to go, you unlock it, and get your quarter back.
Alright. So let's talk a little bit about some of those really great Internet resources.
And so I just would be remiss if I did not mention the Family Search library, as I did say.
They are. They've that it is their their duty to share these records with us, for free, for free they they don't charge for anything, and it's such a robust website.
So I encourage you to get a free account. They're not gonna bother you or ask anything of you, but it doesn't entitle you to use their very, very vast collection of digitized records as well as their wiki, which is a great place for learning just about
any topic. If I'm researching a new place or I'm using a record group that I'm not familiar with, I always head over to their their wiki to try to learn a little bit, and they've got something on just about.
Everything they've got instructional videos. You can find instructional videos on Youtube websites that cost money, ancestry.
There's a paid subscription, but they also have some free records.
So it's usually a combination of a variety of different sources.
Different websites and places that are gonna help you get get your questions answered.
Alright. So how do you? How do you know? Maybe when it's time to actually hire professional or collaborate the great thing about being a member at the Ira Genealogical Society is, there's lots of other really great researchers that I'm in touch with that I can pick
their brain. Hey! I've tried this and this and somebody will say, Well, have you tried this or do you know about this reference set?
So this is a great hobby, for you know.
Talking to others, but there might be times when you need to pay somebody.
Maybe you really have hit a brick wall. Or maybe it's international research.
And you just can't get over to Ireland to get that record, or whatever I actually have used a number of times.
I've used a couple different researchers to get records for me out of Washington, DC.
Because just not been able to make a trip out there. And I had a lot of Civil War pension records that I wanted to get.
So I would pay someone just to get those records for me, and then they sent them.
I pay them, and then they would send me digital images of those records.
Alright. I know I covered a lot there. I need a drink of water, and I'll take any questions that you might that may have come up up to this point.
So Mary had asked a question in the chats, and I she lives in Canada.
Would I be able to access resources online? And and we were in the middle of talking about the State Historical Society records.
And I just replied back and said some of their databases and their collections are available online.
You just have to check their calendar.
Yeah, yeah, and with. And with the, I think you said with the I, if that came up when we were talking about the Iowa Historical building, I did not touch on this, but they have for not a lot of money.
They'll do some research for you as will we as will we, and that information is on both of our websites.
So it definitely worth a phone call to them. So if you're not finding what you would want in the form of a digital image, but you can see that it's something there in the catalog, if you pick up the phone and give them a call they'll work, with you on getting you
a digital image of that, for it's just a few dollars, I think.
I don't think it's terribly expensive.
I wish smile when I get on their site, and I'm I'm looking at vital records.
They'll say this is available at family search, or this is available at ancestry.
Com. It's like, okay, so it's been digitized.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay. Good. Okay.
That's how we got in chat. So if anybody else has a question, go ahead and open up your mics and just ask Lori directly.
Just have to take a little bit of pause, so people can find their mute button.
I'm not seeing any movement. What's just go ahead and move on.
Okay, and I'll stop several times now, because we are gonna talk about a number of specific record groups.
So I'll be stopping quickly in between each one of them.
Again. Just kind of help. Our brains categorize this information.
So I'm gonna start with some basic records on which your research will be built.
And these will be the records that will lead you to other most likely lead you to other records.
Okay, so that would be our census records.
I'm gonna talk about Federal census and State census.
We will talk about those vital records and then we don't want to leave out those family documents and stories and those kinds of things.
The nice thing about these records is they can be relatively easy to find, and so you've got some early success under your belt, which I think is super fun.
And so you've got some early success under your belt, which I think is super fun, and it definitely gets you.
You know, you wanna keep doing it because you've found some success early on.
But again, like I said, it's those are also the records that are going to lead you to additional records and just keep more of that information about your family.
Flowing into to you. Alright! So Federal and State census records.
Are the basic building blocks and your goal one of your goals should be.
I told you. You can form your own research question, and of course you can.
But one of your research questions would be, or as part of your research plan.
If you're if you're, you know, trying to find a particular generation in your family, you want to try to find that family in all of the family.
Excuse me, all of the Federal censuses that you can publish find them in, because it orients them.
You at least know every 10 years where they were, and who was in that household?
Okay, so you want to try to find them in as many as you can, and then we can supplement that with those State censuses.
Okay. And each piece of those that census record is just another little piece to the puzzle.
Okay. So many States took a State census and.
I'm off on my slides. I apologize.
Okay.
Yeah, it's jumping there. Okay, so there are some limitations with census records.
And there can be some inacturacy so like I mentioned earlier, you want to be.
You want to be. You want to be flexible. But the information can be inaccurate, and a few reasons for that could be.
It's only as accurate as what was heard or what was understood.
There may have been a language barrier. There may have been a small child answering the questions.
Sometimes if the enumerator came several times and and couldn't get somebody to answer.
So they took census information from the neighbor. Okay? So they're just a lot of places where a neighbor, okay?
So there are just a lot of places where a breakdown and information could occur sometimes with those records the handwriting has become extremely faded. Sometimes with those records the handwriting has become extremely faded, or it's illegible, sometimes with those records the handwriting has become extremely faded, or it's illegible.
the enumerators could only come back so many times.
They were especially in rural areas. They were covering large distances.
There were deadlines, I mean they only had a certain amount of time to gather that information, so there's a lot of places where errors can happen.
And then as the as the indexes have come about, there are errors from time to time in in those indexes.
So an example of that I had. I was looking for a family, and I couldn't find them.
In 1910. I knew they had to be there, because I already had birth records for several of the kids in the family, and I knew that they had been born in this particular county Webster County, and Iowa.
So I had. I went page by page. I didn't use digital images for that.
I actually went and got the microphone out. And I found them on the last page almost as an afterthought, where everybody else had been done.
You know, in an organized fashions going through the neighborhoods.
These were tacked on at the end. Their name was terribly misspelled, but I would not have found them as I was just trying to come up with different ways to search for them in the in a like an ancestry database I had to I had to go in and look at that
microfilm page by page, to find them.
Okay, so with those Federal census records, we're going to talk about the population schedules right now.
There were other census to. There were agricultural censuses and manufacturing censuses.
But we're gonna talk about the population censuses.
They were taken every day years beginning in 1790.
The 1890 was destroyed in in a fire, and what wasn't destroyed by fire was destroyed by the water from putting out the fire, and and then that they weren't clean it wasn't cleaned up in in a timely manner.
And so then the rest of it got destroyed. There's only about 6,000 records that remain from the 1890 the Federal census records are organized first of all by State and then by county, and then down to the township, or town and in larger cities.
That would be broken down by wards, and those larger cities, and they're closed for 72 years in the United States.
So we just had our 1950 census become available last year so it's been out.
It's been out now for just about a year, and it was really quickly indexed and digitized.
So that's his, the latest one that would be available.
I'll show you a picture of that in a minute.
So in those early records, 1790 to 1840, all you got was the name of the head of the household, and then the number of free ones and females, and they weren't by their specific age.
They were broken into age groups, and then in 1850, and later, then, they began to name every person that was in the household, and as the decades progressed, more questions were asked and more information was provided.
So, for example, the needs of the government changed what they wanted to know change.
So, for example, a veteran in 1910, while they were trying to find out what pension benefits were going to cost people were asked in the 19 thirties if they had a radio they were trying to figure out how to share information on a wide scale.
So when you see what types of questions were asked, or might have been asked in and then weren't asked, but more often were asked, and then a little more detailed information was asked for as the years progressed, it goes back to what it was the government was was needing to learn, to prepare for
the next decade of providing services in our country so I'm gonna show you a few images tonight.
And this one happens to be of an 1830. So it's super basic.
And I've got a great, great, great grandfather about halfway down the page there, and so his wife is not listed there.
She shows up as the tick mark over here. We call these tick marks when they aren't named.
So we've got her over there, and I know she's the writer.
She's the only female in the household at that time.
They had just had my great great grandfather, and he's just a young boy there.
He's under 5 years of age, so I know that that's them.
And because he was their first born child.
Okay, then if I go on and look at that same household 30 years later.
Now my great great grandfather is out of the house.
His mom and dad are still there, and he's 2 youngest brothers, are there, but he's gone out and started, you know, and we'll soon be off to fight in the Civil War.
But you can see from 1830 to 1860. Now I get their ages.
Whether they're male or female, they're profession.
Okay, the value of their real estate and their personal property, and then, where they were born, and if if they've been to school that year or not, some folks have had good luck with tracking down like old school records, I have not for any of the families that I've worked
on. Some folks do have good luck with that. So so pretty basic information at that point.
But definitely ties your family to a particular time and place.
And then, as we move forward, this is a different family, and this is 1,900.
Now, okay. And you can see that again. They're asking for a little more information.
The 1860 that I showed you. They just reported on their age, but now 40 years later, they're asking for what month the person was born and what year they were born.
They're asking what their age was that their last birthday?
And then their marital status. They're asking where this person was born.
And then also where their parents were born, whether or not their citizens are not that could lead you to potentially some naturalization records.
Again their profession.
Here's one. Some states still have their agricultural records, and I've been able to look at a few agricultural records here in Iowa.
So if I could see that that they were listed on an agricultural schedule, and that agricultural schedule still exists.
Then I can go in and see how many acres they owned, what types of things they were farming.
If they had livestock, how much of the land they had cleared!
It's just a really great picture of, you know, farm life in in Iowa.
In this particular census again, just as we talk about being a beginner.
It took me many years to realize that this was the guy I was looking for.
Samuel Ashcroft, but it wasn't until many years later that I realized he's living next door to his sister.
But at that time, when I was a, you know, failing new researcher, I didn't know her name.
I wasn't the least bit interested in her, so you know our brains can only hold on to so much at one time.
So you want to comb those records for everything that you can, and then make sure you're hanging on to them, because that was just really fun.
When I realized that. But it was, you know, several years later, before I did.
And you you excuse me. You always want to look at the entire page, too.
I've heard stories of people that you know that where a husband and wife, before they were married they just didn't live too far apart, and they might show up near each other on on the census records and things.
So it's good practice to look over the look over the whole page, and, in fact, some people would say, to look, look at at least the 2 pages before, and the 2 pages after of the record that your ancestors specifically on okay, then we're gonna keep coming along.
So now we're into 1940. And the thing I wanted to point out here this is when when they began to do a little bit of sampling.
And so what they've done here is twice on the page, and you can see here where it says supplemental questions.
There were 2 lines on the page where they gave the person whose name happened to fall on that line.
They asked them some additional questions. So again, you want to get in the habit of looking at the whole, at the whole page.
So I'll show you what those supplemental questions looked like.
They're down at the bottom of the page, and you can see there's that fella that I had just highlighted. And they asked him some additional questions about where his folks were from and what language they spoke, and a little bit of occupation information okay.
But those kinds of things can give you clues obviously back to his parents, to that earlier generation.
And then here's 1950 like I said, that was the most recently released.
It's available for free on ancestry.
Dot com family search, and then also the Us. Archives has a page a direct link that will take you to the digitized images, and it's good practice.
I don't think I said this yet. It's good practice sometimes even to look at different sites for those records, particularly if you're have like this one's the print is nice and nice, and dark and pretty legible.
But some of those earlier ones the handwriting is hard to read or they're just really faded.
Sometimes I don't know if it's the different ways that they digitized, or the different images that they were using to do the digitizing.
But sometimes it'll look a little different and a little better on one website over another.
So if you pull one up and it's just really hard to read on ancestry, let's say, then, pop over and look and see if family searches is any different, or if myheritage is any different.
Sometimes it's not but sometimes it is, and it might it might make the difference between you guessing it what it says, and actually being able to read it, know what it says but this one's pretty good, and with the sampling that was done here when they wanted that additional information they actually did it
on every fifth line. So they took the sample, but they took it from about, you know, 5 people on the page instead of 2 people, and then one kind of makes me laugh, because this is the first one where my dad was born, and could be enumerated and his family, of 4 falls right between
the 2 lines, where they took additional information, and this vacant beside him is, that's the house that I remember going to visit my grandma and grandpa, and that was a vacant lot forever.
So it's funny that one of the chances to get additional information just happened to fall on a vacant lot. So.
And there's those questions. Then, at the bottom of the 1950.
So for those supplemental lines. Then you would just like those down to the bottom of the page.
Okay.
Alright, so so, where to access those records online through microfilm, I mentioned that we have the Ancestry Library edition at Igs.
But it's also available at many public libraries throughout the Metro and and some of the ones, and I might be missing some.
But the ones I know for sure. Pleasant Hill Public Library, Ankony West, Des Moines, Walkie, those public libraries all have a library edition of ancestry in addition to Igs.
So again. If it's you know, you wanna check it out before it's it's Pricey.
So if you don't own one if you don't own your own personal subscription, lots of times I let my subscription lapse and wait for a deal, and then I just keep myself a running list, and then I make a trip to the library periodically and just look for things at that point
so there's lots of workarounds to. You can spend a lot of money on this hobby, but you can.
Also, there's some workaround so that you can do it in a less expensive way as well.
So I do think I mentioned this earlier, but this is a screenshot of the census records that are available at ancestry, and you can see which ones they've got for free right now, and I shouldn't say right now I don't think it changes it's been this way.
For a long, long time, but these are the these are the collections that they've chosen to make free at at family search.
They're all free. All of these would be available to you if you get that free account.
So I did just mention about the it being clear on some sites rather than another.
And again you might wanna go back to to the microfilm, too.
Don't just settle for the digital image. If you're still having trouble reading it, or if you know, somebody should be there, and you're not finding them.
Okay, and we still have some microfilm readers and like, I said, they have them across the street.
But we've got microfilm and microfilm raiders that Igs, too.
Okay, any questions about the that's all I'm gonna say about Federal census records.
So any questions about that before I move on to state census.
There's a question about the Us. Indian census roles.
I'm sorry that you I didn't hear the whole question.
The can you talk to the Us. Indian census roles?
Oh!
Yeah.
This is, yeah, this is Don on the previous slide you had a line that said You us Indian census.
How did they handle native Americans is, see the third from the bottom.
I do. Yup!
What it is that do they do a different senses for native Americans, or do they include?
I just don't know how they do that.
I'm gonna take a shot at this, and then sherry, please jump in, and then you know what this does lead me to, to to get more accurate information when you click on any one of those collections and you go down to the bottom before you start searching for your person it's a really
good idea for you to read the little summary synopsis of what that record group entails, and how it was collected.
Okay.
So that's what I would do with that. I'm guessing that that was tribal land.
That that's specific to try the land, and that the folks that were living on tribal land, that that was collected and put into into that specific collection at ancestry.
But you would get that answer by clicking on that summary below.
It when you went on to ancestry.
I know from the 1950 census which just came out.
Had all. Everyone took what they called the schedule, A.
I think they called it. And then for those that were living on tribal, on the reservations, there was a separate form they had to fill out as well.
So they can be indexed in 2 places, and they weren't just native Americans.
Yeah.
They were anyone that was living in that territory. So they aren't just you don't have to be a native blood to be on that sense.
It's just where were you living at that time?
Yeah. That's a good point.
So, and every census. The rules changed a little bit on who was included, and who wasn't included.
You'll find some that have codes for ethnicity, and there are tables you can always.
There's a kind of if you really want a deep dive into the census.
There is something called the enumerators instructions that you can find, and those are fascinating because they give all the tables of the codes that we're supposed to be used for all that stuff.
So!
Thank you.
Hope, that helps.
Yes.
Yup. And I didn't. I didn't talk about it, but in some of those images I showed that the enumerator might have been asking the question in June, but he but the question was asked in relationship to whatever that enumeration date was which may have been March so how many people were in your
household on March first, for example, well, maybe you had a baby between March first and June first, but you were to be answering the questions, as was your situation on that enumeration date.
Even though the enumerator didn't get everywhere that he or she needed to get to on that specific date.
I just another tip. There is always read the headers, because some censuses they were.
What was the age as of January first? And what was the age?
Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
As of June. First. So, some of them could do the math, and some couldn't.
At least that's what I found in my family.
Alright, we're gonna head into state censuses, and I'm gonna talk most specifically about Iowa.
Again, the reason, a census was taken was because the Government needed that government entity needed information to prepare for that next decade.
So oftentimes what you'll find with your state, since this is that they were taken just in the years just before, and shortly after becoming a state that's not always the case.
But it's often the case, and population may have been growing rapidly at that time.
The other thing with a lot of State censuses is, they were often taken in the interim periods between the Federal censuses.
So in the you know Federal census nineteenth, a State census in 190.
5, Federal 1910, State, 1915. I'm gonna show you some examples of that.
I don't want you to waste time looking for censuses that aren't there either.
They no longer exist, or weren't taken. To begin with.
So you can find out where in which States have surviving census, and if they still survive, first of all, if they were taken and second of all, if they still survive, and you can use that family search, Wiki, for that, I'm gonna show you a picture of that in just a minute, or
there's a pretty famous reference book called The Red Book.
We happen to have a copy of it at Ids, you might be able to pick it up.
Used, I think it's out of print right now, but you might be able to pick it up.
Used for not too much money to find out if the state you're interested in took State censuses, and for what period of time?
So here's a screenshot from that family search.
Wiki and I just pulled the Iowa, and you can see all the years that an Iowa census was taken.
And then over on the right you can see how you can get your hands on it.
Okay. And so family search does a good job of partnering with the paid websites.
And so lots of times they've through their agreements.
They've they've kept copies of some things, some things they've made sure we're available at some of those paid places.
Here's one that happens to be at myheritage and ancestry and family search.
So go and clear back to our 1836 Territorial censuses, and then the last Iowa census was taken in 1925.
And we're gonna talk about that one, because that's a good one.
And especially good one. So here's 1856 thing I like about this.
This is not my relative. I wish it was. But the nice thing about this one is, we have a program at Igs where you can get certificates.
If you're facing the State at the time of statehood or I think it's a hundred years and then you're eligible for a pioneer certificate, and when I read this man here on the fifth line in 1856, he had already been it says years.
in this years residing in the State, and he had been in Iowa for 16 years. By then.
So, if someone was ever researching him they would be eligible to get a state insertificate on him.
So not a whole lot of other information there. But again, this was when head of I take that back.
They did include every person on this one, and maybe where they had come from.
It might be a later one where they had come from.
Okay. But then the 1925 is the only census in the United States.
So it's the Iowa census, but it's the only census that's in the United States where the person that was being enumerated was asked for the names of their mother and father, and then they showed they asked where they were born they asked for the mother's.
Maiden name. They asked where they were married, and they ask their ages if they're still living.
So we have that on microfilm at Igs and across the street, at the Historical Building, and then it is also available online.
So the exciting thing about that one is, if the mother and father were still listed, we're still living, and they happen to be living in Iowa.
Then you could go find them in the census, and that would list their mother.
You know their mother's made name, and where they were married it could push your research back a whole nother.
Generation plus, it's just fun. It's a fun one.
Because they asked quite a variety of questions. So I'm gonna show you this one.
It's actually goes across 3 pages. So you want to make sure that you've looked at everything you can for that family.
So like on this page. I was interested in this family right here so here they are in the beginning, and I get who they are in relationship to the head of the household.
Male female, their ages, hey? Amount of schooling little bit of citizenship data.
Okay. But then, when you flip the page the way they digitize it is, I think this picture shows it, but they laid that first page down, and then they laid this one against it, and some of them are better than others.
I had some really strange wonderings for a while, because the one that my grandparents were in it did not line up well at all, and so I had a little bit of time where I was wondering if my grandfather had been married twice and so you just really want to make sure that when you're
following us, that you're following it straight across even if when they laid it out to digitize it, they didn't line it up quite correctly.
But this one's pretty good, so I can keep following that family that I'm interested in, and I get I get their names of this person's father and mother, and where they were born.
Okay. So a lot of great research leads, as well as this column that tells me where the person in this column was born.
And then we're gonna follow them into their third page of information or 2 page spread.
I should say, and you don't see much here for information, as it relates to this group of people.
But on a different page you can just see how much information they're asking about military service, and they' the span, the Civil War, the Spanish War, and the World War.
So this was only world war, one had occurred at this point in time and then they go on and ask for some occupation.
Information as well as their church affiliation. So you can see how all of that information could potentially lead you to some other record sets.
Okay, questions about state census.
Hey? I'm gonna move on to vital records.
Then also birth, marriage, and death records, and right along with those census records, census records, your goal usually would be that you'd wanna try to collect as many of these as you can.
Certainly as far back as you can, because you're gonna come to a point in time like this.
Point in time that I'm telling you about with the early 18 hundreds, late 17 hundreds, you know, they weren't gathering this information at a state level or a county level.
So then you have to move into land records. Church records other other ways of obtaining that information.
It becomes much more challenging.
Okay, so this group of records for lack of a better word, it varies widely from state to state, and even within a state there's there's a great deal of variance.
You might find a really complete set of records in one place, and a very incomplete set of records, someplace else, and they can also be founded a variety of different places.
You might find them at a town or a county level.
Certainly you'll find some of that at the State level.
Some of its microfilmed, a lot of its digitized.
Now I doubt that it's all been digitized, although family searches is committed to digitizing everything that they have access and can get access to.
But but to try to really establish that kin shipping get us a thorough of a picture of your relative or your ancestors, as you can.
You really want to try to get that birth, marriage, and death for all of your ancestors, and there you will find inaccuracies.
When when you can't find those vital records that were government funded or government sourced you, then you have to move into those alternative sources like I mentioned the church records newspaper announcements, obituaries, those kinds of things that family search wiki
I'm going point you back to that again as well as the Red Book, because that can tell you what's available for each state so that you aren't spending your time looking for something that doesn't exist.
In Iowa, the records were recorded first at the county level, and then sent on to the State and some counties complied much more quickly than others.
I think some of the late, some of the last counties in Iowa to comply with it was I wanna say it was around 1919 or something, so so those county records are available.
But then they did also send them onto the state level. They're closed at the state level.
You can see there for 75 years, for birth and marriage records, and then 50 years for death records.
And again, that varies from state to state. Some States are very open with their records.
Other states are. They just make it a little more challenging to get to I'm gonna show you an example in just a minute.
Missouri has put a large number of their death records online for Free and their Secretary of State's website.
So it it just varies from state to state so here's an example of a birth register from Website county.
And because it's a little bit later, it's actually typed.
So it's really easy to read, and I was looking for I was trying to get all the kids from my great grandma and great grandpa's.
They have 13 kids, so I've been trying to track as many of them down as I can.
And then here's a much earlier one. It back to 1862, and I was interested in the husband and wife there with the Red X, and that was just before he was he had already enlisted at that point to join the Union army.
And he they got married over in Johnson County, and then he took off for with his regiment to fight in the Civil War.
But the one of the interesting things on this page was, it's a little bit hard to read but this says, on request of parties, certificate returned to them April ninth, 1894, and this is the fellow I mentioned, earlier that was in the Confederate prison he survived that
Confederate prison, and he came home. He came back to Guthrie County, farmed and tragically.
He was in a farming accident, and that's how he died in March of 1894.
So just a couple weeks later his wife and he had just got his Civil War pension just a couple of years before that, and she is very quickly taking what steps she needs to take to get that pension turned into a widows pension because it's her only source of income her husband has just died
so she's trying to get that in order as quickly as she can to get some income coming in. And that's just a good example of how one record can lead you to something different, something more.
Here's a 1929 return of a marriage certificate. Again.
Webster County, some of the things I will point out to you here.
You get. If it's the first marriage or not, you get the number of marriages you get riding grooms, parents, names.
You get some witnesses, so I have not done any research on these witnesses.
As far as I know, they're not relatives to the ancestor that I was looking at, but it would be interesting to know if they were family friends, or how they, how they fit into this picture.
I see that this marriage was done by a minister, so I could do a little research.
Try to track down what church? That minister was affiliated with, as opposed to a marriage that might have been done by a justice of the peace.
So again, just leading me to other places and people to help try to find out as much as I can about the life of those people.
Sometimes we call those folks. You might hear them referred to as your as your ancestors.
Fan Club, and a famous researcher coined that term.
And it's stands for friends, associates, and neighbors but but that's part of doing that good, thorough research.
If you can't find what you're looking for just by looking for your person, you need to branch out and look at who your ancestor was spending time with, and where he was doing business, and where he was living in those kinds of things.
Yeah, I'll show you one of those Missouri death records again.
Right now. Those records, I think those might be on kind of a rolling timeline, too, right now they go from 1910, and I think they're up to about 1970.
So I think they're kind of based on that. On some privacy laws, you can get a lot of information from that that could help you push back your push, your family back to here.
He is telling who is, whoever the employment was, is telling who the father was, and they think they've got a maiden name for the mother they don't have a first name for her, and I know that to be true, because this is a great great great grandfather of mine that
was raised by his biological mother didn't raise him.
It was his, it was his father's second wife who raised him so this is his biological mother, but he spent very little time living with her.
He spent the majority of his life living with what would be a his stepmother.
So get a cause of death burial place. So again, lots of places to go looking for additional records.
And this is my guy that I haven't spent some time in Mercer County.
You can see there. How long is he here? He lived there his whole life.
So I spend time down in Mercer County looking for him.
Questions about vital records.
Alright, I'm gonna go through this next section just a little bit more quickly.
Oops! Sorry!
Just a quick question from Don. Did the native Americans have vital records as well?
My understanding is, it depends on where they were living.
So!
Yeah, that's my understanding as well.
Okay, let's touch on those family documents and stories.
Those kinds of things might be one of a kind. They might be the only copy and you won't know that they exist.
If you don't ask, and sometimes the people that are holding them don't understand the value they might be the person that cleaned out the house where where the where this kind of information was held, and they might just not have gotten thrown away.
But they have no interest in looking at it, so you just need to talk to your relatives about.
You know where some of that kind of stuff might be, and it might be, you know, any of these kinds of things, but it might be old Bibles or old letters, scrapbooks.
I brought home a bunch of pay stubs from my grandm grand grandpa's house when I, when I helped clean their house out, my cousins thought I was crazy.
Why did I want that? You know? But it was it was so interesting to see how they had.
You know how their, how they had grown in there in my grandpa's occupation over his life, so!
Okay. If you've got some of those family documents and stories, maybe they're not published, but they're still good hints for you, and they can guide you back towards some original records.
So maybe there's something that you you know, are in your family's possession.
We have a really nice collection of them at the Igs Library.
A number of them are online now at Google books. So you, you want to still verify the information that you read we've had a period of time in genealogy where we a number of them are online. Now at Google book. So you want to still verify the information that you read
we' they're not as well documented as we would want them to be based on what we know now.
So there's certainly worth a look. But you still want to verify the information that's in them.
But by those same lines you don't want to plagiarize somebody else's work so kind of use them as hints to guide you to some records and depending on when they were written, there might be more records available now than when that family history was written or compiled and
like I say, there's just all kinds of places where you can find those so, as a matter of doing good.
Thorough research. If you're working on a particular surname, for example, you want to look and see if you've got some family family stories, family records like that.
Family books is what I'm trying to say alright.
But then you don't want to overlook those oral histories and those those nuggets, those stories that have been passed down, those family traditions, and you can write those down to insite those you know.
You you can just say is simple, as you know.
I've written up some of those stories that my grandma shared with me, and then I just say, this was told to me my name by my grandma lists her name, and then I list the date that she told me, the story.
You know, that's documentation for me. I happen to know how sharp she was, clear up to the end of her life, but that just gives that gives what I know to be true about that story.
At that point in time.
Okay, so here's some of those kinds of records that we don't have time to talk about today.
Certainly our person online. That's interested in the native American research.
That is a very specific type of research. And I would I would encourage you as your as you build your skills, to look for classes and webinars that are specific to that type of research.
And those specific record sets that will help you with that.
So these are just other types of more specific, or I don't want to say advanced, but I certainly wouldn't call them necessarily foundational.
They'd be kind of the next steps for you or for us as researchers, and we offer classes that Igs on a variety of those things coming in July.
This might be a good next step for you. If you do have Iowa routes.
We've got 2 cles coming up in July on a Saturday.
Might be the 20 SA class on specifically on Iowa census records.
So lot more detail than what I went into this morning of this evening, and then one on Iowa vital records, and again a lot more detail than what I was able to go into, and the gal that's going to teach that is just a expert in both those areas so those will be really good
courses. There's more information about those 2 classes on our website, and they're available.
I believe those are going to be offered in person and online.
You have your choice, so those would be really great. Next steps.
But like, I say, webinars, books, there's a lot of videos on line that can help you when you wanna get into that more specific information around more specific types of records sets.
Okay, I'm gonna move on to a few things to watch out for as a beginner.
And again, these are mistakes that all of us have made.
So if we can save anybody some time from learning from from our mistakes that's that's just better.
Your time Ron, from our mistakes. That's just better. Your time researching will be better spent.
Okay, so here's a hint that I got, and it, boy on its face.
It sure looked like it was my ancestor.
The years fit, the name worked, the name of his spouse is my great, great grandmother, his wife.
He did have a child named Francis, but the part that just wasn't making any sense to me was this, this England residence?
But it took me so aback, so I had to go back into my own records and check myself.
That that was not my ancestors, and check myself, that that was not my ancestor.
And sure enough, when I went back and looked, it came back to me.
Yup, he he had his farm there in Mercer County, back in 1880, so I just had to be reminded of that.
But he. He had his farm there in Mercer County, back in 1880, so I just had.
I just had to be reminded of that. But they weren't in England.
They were in Northern Missouri. So we all get in that mindset that oh, that John Smith is my John Smith!
So you just have, to be so skeptical when those shaky leaves, when those hints come to you, and you have to validate what you're finding.
Those public trees are full of mistakes, and then I'm unfortunately people cut and paste from those public trees, and then the incorrect information almost seems to override the correct information.
So you just need to be really, really cautious when you accept those hints, and you might think that you have a pretty unique family name but you'd be surprised how many times that's same name given name and surname, particularly of the men show up in that calendar or in a in the
same local local area. And if you're just not really capable pretty soon you're researching somebody else's family and not your own.
So you just want to be really careful when you're looking at other people's research and those hints, those shaky leaves, cause they're super addictive.
But they are just hints. So you just want to be cautious with that.
Okay. Generally speaking, the closer the person is to an event, the more likely the accuracy that's not always the mistake.
That's not always the case, but that's kind of the general rule.
So sometimes you ask a research question in your so sometimes you ask a research question and you're not gonna get an absolute answer sometimes the best you can do is narrow it down to a range of a possible answer, I've got a guy.
We've probably a dozen of us are trying to find a this man.
Just kind of disappeared, and we've got him narrowed down that he shows up in the 1885 Nebraska census and the 1895 Nebraska census.
But then he doesn't show up in 1,900, and then in 190.
5. His wife is back in Iowa, reporting herself as a widow, so we just can't get his death date narrowed down any more than than a ten-year period right now, and many of us have been doing that research on him for longer than i've been researching so sometimes you just
have to. You know you have to come up with a real, range, and then you have to decide how long you wanna spend on that research question before you say, okay, I'm gonna leave that as it's this range.
And maybe it's some point other information will become available to me.
But I'm gonna go on to another research question now.
If you can set some of these good habits right from the beginning, citing your sources is one of those good habits.
It helps validate your your work, supports the work that you've done, and it certainly makes it easier for you to retrace your steps and when you're first getting started, sometimes it's really easy to hold all those families and those names and dates in your mind but I'll tell you 15 years.
later it's a lot harder for me to hold it all in my mind, so I've got to be able to go back, and you know think you're not gonna need it again. But you are.
So you wanna you want to write that down and keep track of where you found something.
You don't have to make a complicated professionals have a very specific style of how they write citations much like if you ever wrote research papers for college I mean, there was a certain way to write citations, much like if you ever wrote research papers for college I mean there was a certain way to write citations and certainly
we want to. We want to do good work, and we want to be able to support the work that we've done.
But I went through a period of time where I was so hung up on my citations that I really wasn't having any fun doing the research.
So for me. You've kind of got to find that balance.
I want to be able when I'm sharing my.
The neat stories that I'm finding, and I'm sharing those with my family members.
I want them to have confidence that I'm researching the right people.
So I want to know where I got that information. But I'm not setting out to publish anything, so I can live with.
Finally, I can live with the way I've done some of my formatting, so that I know I can get back to the source again if I need to.
So a lot of words basically to say some information about where you got your record is better than no information.
About where you got your record is better than no information. And those websites can make it really easy for us to just cut those you know, grab those digital images and just keep going and going without taking the time to stop and analyze and really look carefully at that record.
So that citation information can be found. Here's an example from ancestry and all that citation information is there.
I might just put it in a slightly different order to construct it as a good citation that just change the order of some of those things a little bit.
And here's that same information. And this came up from a record off of family search.
So again I can look there and see. Oh, it was the old, you know, was the Ohio County.
Death records. And this is a database that family search put together, and I can look back and see where it family search got it from, and they got it from a county courthouse, and it was originally part of their microfilm collection.
Okay, there are some rules and some standards, and one of the best sources for that kind of information is this book called Evidence explained, and this is a book called Evidence explained, and this is a book called evidence explained. And this is a very well known historian and Genealogist.
Elizabeth Shan Mills, and she's worked very hard over the course of her career to help genealogists practice good research and good good historical documentation.
So she's written this book. It's several 100 pages, and then she's also got a free website.
Evidence explained. So evidence explained. The website is a great place to start it's got a nice little search box, and you could just even, you know, military record.
And it'd give you an example of how to cite a military record.
But you can go way into the weeds with citing a particular military record from 1 one war to another.
War it just you can get really, really deep in the weeds with that.
So you're gonna have to decide what's what's fun for you.
But still keeping your research good, that you, that you can be proud of, and that you can support the work.
The research that you've done, and again, I wish I wish I had gotten in the habit of doing that earlier in my research.
So if you can get in the habit early on, that'll be good.
Okay, I'm gonna touch very briefly here on some organizational tools.
So anything that I need to clean up before we move into that section.
Not in chat. But if somebody's got a question about, you know, foundational records or anything.
Not seeing any.
Okay, this is gonna come somewhat to.
Well, we do have Laurie. We had a question early on from Patricia that wanted to know about immigration and and Ellis Island, and I was thinking you covered that in the foundational records.
But you really don't, do you?
I really don't. Other than you know. Some of the census records will point you towards some naturalization, because some of the some of the census records ask specifically if you were naturalized or not.
Yeah.
I. My suggestion would be to go to the family search Wiki and and look specifically, just realize that Ellis Island wasn't the only port that people came in to many before Ellis Island was ready, came in through Castle Rock Castle Garden but my family came
in through New Orleans, and they came in through Philadelphia.
So you just have to kind of think about where your family came in.
Yup!
Where did they come from? Will drive a lot of which import port if you've got Canadian family that came across the border, many came to Canada and then came across because it was cheaper passage.
Okay.
So your records could be all anywhere.
Yeah.
Alright, that's all we got.
Okay, alright. So as far as organizations, certainly personal styles, personal habits are gonna come into play here.
But I'm gonna touch really, briefly, on paper and online software options.
You know this is evolved. No surprise to anyone.
Many people that I know, myself included, do a combination.
I have a software program, and I have things on paper. So I'm gonna present this kinda like, it's one or the other.
But it really isn't and doesn't have to be.
But as far as if you're if you're anti-computer, you're probably not on this call, because you're probably not on this call, because you're probably not on a Zoom call.
If you're anti software, I should say. But before computers were so prevalent people were doing genealogy, and they were using a lot of paper to do it.
And, generally speaking, they were organizing things by threeers or file folders in a file cabinet. And again, a lot of that's going to depend on what space you have available to you.
So a couple rules of thumb with that is, if you are going to the trouble, and expense of ordering documents or original certificates of some sort, anything that's got any expenses to it, or difficult to replace you don't want to carry those out into the archives
with you, or down to the library with you. So you're gonna make a Xerox of that.
And then keep that original stored someplace safely, ideally, and some sort of archival, safe or acid-free storage, and those kinds of office supply things that are asset free and archival, safe.
Those have become a little more easily available to get your hands on and a little less expensive than they used to be.
But keep that original somewhere safe. Certainly. Photos some of those kinds of things, but make a copy.
And then you know, Mark, that up as you're doing your research and that kind of thing.
I also know, and there's webinars on.
If you really do want to do a lot with your with more of a paper storage as opposed to online, there's webinars that you can watch, and then you can learn how to color code basically the different surnames that you're researching.
And that's a different organizational strategy that you could follow out.
And then to, you know, whatever color represents this particular Ph, you'd have your binders match that color in your file folders and all that type of thing.
Okay. But the other good thing about paper and part of the reason I can't just see one of the other is such a great work with, because it helps us visualize what we're working on.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry my dog is in the room, and he's ready for me to wrap this up, so I apologize for the noise in the background, but working with pencil and paper is good muscle memory, and it really can help you as you're filling out some of
these charts that I'm going to show you in just a minute.
It really can help you with your analysis, because in the process of writing those names and dates down, that's when you might realize, oh, that person couldn't be you know, that person's mother.
She's only 12, or you know something like that, or that, you know those 2 people couldn't have been born within 3 months of each other.
You know, different things like that. But in the process of writing that down that's that's when some of that might become more apparent to you, whether you're using paper or computer, you're still gonna want to make use of these forms.
I put just a couple of them in the handouts tonight.
I put a family group sheet and a pedigree chart, because those are again really foundational records.
Sometimes I use the ones that my computer software will shoot out for me.
But sometimes I still like to handwrite them again.
That is a good analysis tool that works.
I touched on some of these things, missing information, inconsistent information.
These forms can help you pull that out, or kind of jump off the page at you.
I research a surname, Lewis, and they used a lot of the same Gibson name over and over.
So you know Abraham had a son, Jonathan, and then a son.
Abraham, and then those 2 sons. They use those names again.
So there's in that in my family throughout all these different cousins.
Then I have to try to figure out which Jonathan is part of which line, and I don't have it all figured out yet.
But those family groups sheets can kind of help me, as I figure out where they fit into the to the family, and and which one was born, at which point?
There's lots of reasons to use those forms.
They can help with migration patterns. The same family that I'm speaking of.
They moved from Guthrie County to Webster County, and I can't.
They didn't own land so I don't have a you know, a land sale, date, or a land purchase date.
When they arrived in Webster County. But I can look and see which kids were born in Guthrie County, and then, when the kids started being born in Webster County and based on those birth dates, then I can figure out oh, that there's about the window.
Of time when they moved, and by that, by doing that I could get it down to, you know, a 12 or 18 month period of time.
As to when they must have moved, and I couldn't figure all that out in my head, or even just looking at that on a computer screen.
I had to write all that out and see it on paper, so they do keep you organized.
They can lead you on that Microsoft. So you know which entity which geographical place you should be looking for that family, and where you should be looking for the records.
But they really are good organizational tools, like I said, your software will generate it.
And those free forms are very readily available. So here's just a few of the places that you can download some of those free phones.
And even just Googling will send some of those up for you, and sometimes I make my own, sometimes the way I want to look at that information.
It's just easiest if I just create my own form.
Okay, so here's that example of that pedigree chart.
You're going to put yourself at the further slash left, and then you're just going to work through and put your parents, and then your parents, parents and you're trying to capture that vital information that we mentioned their birth, and where it was their marriage date.
And where it was, and then their death date, and where that was, and then you're just working your cell phone back in time.
To your earlier, your your parents, and then your grandparents, your great grandparents, working back as you as far back as you can go.
If that's what your research interest is. Okay. So just a little more of a closeup on that.
Okay. Now, let's talk real quickly about family group sheets.
And I included one of these for you as well.
It just lets you take a little deeper, dive or a little closer spotlight on one particular family.
I like using these to try to find errors or things that just don't make sense.
They can show us those immediate family members. They can show us where they lived when they moved.
Ages, marital status, that kind of thing.
Couple of rooms of when we're using these forms, we always refer to women with their maiden names.
Okay? And then when we're using dates, we spell out the month and we don't use a number.
So for like, for example, with the date that I've listed there on the slide.
It probably would be May seventh, but you wouldn't know for sure, and it could possibly say July fifth.
So we just don't even worry about it. We just always write it out so we would write the day, and then the date.
Excuse me the date, and then the month, and then the year, as is shown on your slide right there.
Okay. And we write the year out with all 4 digits, not just an abbreviated.
Again, it could be, it could be mistaken. And it could just introduce needless error into your research. And then, when we record places, we we typically record from that smallest location up to the largest entity.
Okay. So I'm this is not a sales job that I wanted to just make you aware of a little bit of software that's available.
And these are the most common software tools that are available for windows.
We happen to have user groups for all of these at Igs.
And if you're thinking you might want to get some software, you might want to talk to someone.
What do they like or not like about the software that they use?
Couple of these that at least have a free trial or a free version.
And then, if you really like it, then you can pay about $30 for $40 and get there what they would call the deluxe version, which would have more feature.
So you don't have to invest in this right away.
And even when you think you might be ready to have some software, there's ways that you can pilot it or test it out.
I'm not familiar with the Mac Products, but these are these are available on the apple side.
You do not have to use software.
I suspect if you get very involved in your engagement, you will probably want to use some sort of software just because of the convenience of the way of organizing the information, and then the wide variety of reports that you can print out reports charts and forms and for the cost for
30 $40, and you can look for sales around the holidays it's a pretty good.
It's a pretty good investment, because that's keeping your information in one place that you control, because it's your software on your computer, which brings me very quickly to the idea of online trees and subscription sites.
So these are all places that you could also have an online tree.
So you could be storing your information. There, that's the big thing that you wanna think about here or consider is ultimately that that website. They control your your data.
So, if that place went out of business tomorrow you wouldn't want that to be the only place where where your information was being housed.
So with software, you've got it on your particular computer and you control it.
You control it on these. Some of these are shared trees.
Family searches a shared tree ancestry Myheritage.
You can still have your own tree on those. Some people would use software and then just put parts of their family tree out onto one of these websites in an effort to generate those hints. So that would be one way that you could take advantage of both.
Okay. I think I touched on most of this, but if you, if you belong to ancestry, let's say you got the subscription, then you would not have to have the expens of buying that software, and you would get the hints they're going to do your backup for you that kind
of thing, but you may not own that data. It may be owned by that per that company that you're putting your information on like I say, in some cases you're contributing to a communal tree.
Some people, really, you know, there's a lot of cutting and grabbing things from other trees.
Some people don't have a problem with that, hey? That was my relative to some people don't like that so much.
So, if that's a person that's more your way of thinking than one of these sites.
These online sites may not be the best way for you to share your information or to store your information.
I should say, okay, so you just have to do what's gonna fit best with your way of thinking pros and cons to both of those.
So I'm gonna wrap it up. I'll give you one more chance if other questions have come to mind.
Thanks for sticking with me like you said. I know this is a lot of information, but I want it to be fun for you.
So I really really want it to be fun for you.
It's I love, seeing how my ancestors, who by and large were farmers, not not anybody famous.
But I love seeing how they have contributed to our country.
I love, seeing how I got here, based on decisions that they've made.
I don't have any other people in my family yet that are doing genealogy, but I keep hoping that as my nephews get a little older, that maybe one of them will show a little more interest.
But there's just so many benefits to doing genealogy, but I keep hoping that as my nephews get a little older, that may be one of them we'll still a little more interest. But there's just so many benefits to doing this hobby so I
I hope.
And I mentioned the class on coming up on July 20, s.
Those Iowa classes check our website for other clubes that we've got coming.
And then 2 other handouts that I that I gave, or another handout that I gave you, that I have not touched on couple of them. Sorry.
Let me real quickly. Let me mention this, because these will make more sense.
Now that, now that the presentation is over, I gave you a couple pages that have all the headings of what questions were asked in all of the censuses, of what questions were asked in all of the censuses and then I gave you just a one page thing that I typed up that I was
thinking about what would a next step be after you had finished this this class tonight?
If you really are more on the beginning side and on that last page I mentioned a good book that would give you some good ideas for doing your research in a logical, methodical way.
I gave you the name of an article that one of the one of our members, Ricky King and I gave you the name of an article that one of the one of our members, Ricky King at Igs wrote specific about resources, and that's in a family family Tree
magazine came out last year, and then, if you happen to be a person that likes podcasts, I listed a podcast there and what that gal did, it's an older podcast and she doesn't update it anymore.
But she did about 30 episodes, I think, and she went through and did just 30 min or so.
20 min just on land records, or just on church records, or just on these various record types, so that would be another way to start to wade into some of these other record types.
I wanna thank sherry for doing our tech support tonight as well as a couple of other members.
Kevin and Teresa, that help me put this presentation together.
So again. I thank you for your time, and I'll stay on here in case any other questions have come to mind.
Kevin wanted to know where your ancestor was imprisoned.
Oh, he was at Salisbury in!
North or South Carolina. So hmm. Looking over to see where my book is, I have not made the trip there yet, and I see from online there's really not much left and I've also not been to Andersonville.
And I would like to. I think I could go to Andersonville and maybe learn a little more about his life.
May have been like it at Salisbury.
Okay.
Probably because my husband's grand great grandfather was was in Andersonville, and the Museum.
There has a lot of information.
Yeah, yeah.
Or I should say it's a national park now.
Yeah, yeah, I'm trying to think I mentioned. I'm trying to get my husband interested in genealogy.
But for years we would go. Look at these civil war battlefields that I never would have thought I'd be interested in, and he was interested in the details of the battle and man.
Some of those Park rangers that some of our national parks.
They are just a wealth of information, and they've shown me they've taken me out and show me exactly where my ancestor would have been during the battle, pulled out maps.
So there're just a great resource to us to help us learn about where our ancestors were in a particular battle.
Patricia has put a question in about when people came here.
Did they have to register every so often they had to come through immigration.
So there should be passenger lists and immigration.
A rival records. Those were required, and then, after that, not so much, I mean, if they wanted to buy land, or if they wanted to become naturalized, they would be counted on the censuses.
It was less of a political issue as it is today.
They were citizens or not.
America was, has always been the melting pot of, you know we've been meeting immigrants to settle the land and to grow the crops and raise the food and build the cities.
And so we've been dependent as a nation on immigrants. And so we've been dependent as a nation on immigrants.
And so we've been dependent as a nation on immigrants.
Hmm!
And so there are records out there. But if they wanted to come and become anonymous unless they join something there were not required to register at the government level.
Yeah.
Well said.
Now the Church has kept a better eye on everybody.
Yeah.
Any other questions you guys had?
Okay. Great. Well, I wanna thank you guys all for coming. Thank you.
Lori. Great presentation again tonight. We hope we've stirred a little more of the questions in you to do some more research and join this funky.
Hobby obsession that we're a part of.
Yup, yeah, we hope to see you down at the library.
Sometime.
Or on another class, so that'll be great.
Yeah, yeah.
Alright! Well, if you're nice, don't have any more questions, we'll give you back the rest of your evening.
Thanks again! Bye, now!
Okay. Alright. Thank you. Everyone. Good night.