[Noozhawk’s note: This column is brought to you by the Santa Barbara County Genealogical Society, which helps people — wherever they come from — discover, document and preserve their family histories. This monthly column offers guidance, tips and local resources to help you find your family story. Click here for a related article.]
Someone once joked that building your family tree is all about three verbs: hatch, match and dispatch. While humorous, the saying captures an essential truth about genealogy. One of the first goals of family history research is to discover the date and place of the birth, marriage and death of every person in your family tree.
Like many beginners, I started by writing down everything I knew or learned from relatives. My maternal grandmother often told me she was born in a covered wagon at What Cheer, Iowa, on Feb. 2, 1889. I faithfully entered those details on my pedigree chart.
Then someone asked, “How do you know that’s true?”
I didn’t. I had no documents to verify her story.
That question taught me one of the most important lessons in genealogy: Family stories are valuable clues, but they should be supported by documentary evidence whenever possible.
Official records of births, marriages and deaths — known as vital records — are the best sources for documenting these events. In the United States, they are usually maintained by county or state governments. Many can now be found online through FamilySearch (free) and Ancestry (not free), or ordered directly from state or county records offices.
Unfortunately, many of our ancestors were hatched, matched and dispatched before governments kept official records. Even when records should exist, they may never have been created or may have been lost. In my grandmother’s case, the county clerk informed me that no birth record had been found, even though Iowa began recording births in 1880.
That meant I had to look elsewhere.
Following the Paper Trail
When birth certificates are unavailable, family Bibles and church baptismal records are often helpful. I had neither. Instead, I searched a variety of records, including federal census records, her marriage license application, the birth certificates of her children, her death certificate, and newspaper articles.
The evidence was remarkably consistent. The 1910 through 1940 federal censuses all showed she was born in Iowa and recorded an age consistent with an 1889 birth. Her 1915 marriage license application stated she was born in What Cheer, Iowa, on Feb. 2, 1889. Her children’s birth certificates listed her birthplace as Iowa or What Cheer, Iowa, and her death certificate also identified Iowa as her birthplace.
I even found an 1887 newspaper notice announcing that her parents had moved from Indiana to What Cheer shortly after they married. Taken together, these records strongly support my grandmother’s account of when and where she was born.
The only part of the story that remains undocumented is the covered wagon. It may well be true, but without evidence I treat it as a family tradition rather than a proven fact. I keep the story in my research notes, but I don’t include it as fact in my family tree.
Resources for the Family Historian
As your research moves further back in time, you’ll often need to combine many different kinds of records to document your anestors’ vital events. If you can visit the communities where they lived, churches, cemeteries, courthouses, and local historical or genealogical societies are excellent places to visit and search. Â
Most researchers, however, will do much of their work online. Here are some of the best resources. Subscription sites are marked with ($).
Church records often document baptisms, marriages and burials. Probate records and wills can help establish a person’s date and place of death. Beginning in 1850, the U.S. federal census listed individuals by name, age and often place of birth. FamilySearch (free), Ancestry ($) and MyHeritage ($) contain millions of the above-named types of records from around the world.Â
Cemetery records are another valuable resource. Tombstones frequently provide birth and death dates, and sites such as Find a Grave and BillionGraves include photographs of millions of gravestones, often linking members of the same family. If possible, contact the cemetery office (if one exists) as it may have information about the deceased in its records.
Newspapers can provide birth announcements, marriage notices, obituaries and stories that place our ancestors in their communities. Chronicling America (free), Newspapers.com ($) and GenealogyBank ($) are excellent national resources. Some state libraries also provide free access to digitized newspapers, and local newspapers may supply copies of older articles or obituaries.
Finally, don’t overlook local historical and genealogical societies. They often preserve records unavailable anywhere else. For example, the Santa Barbara County Genealogical Society maintains on its website for members and the public a searchable database of more than 200,000 names drawn from local birth records, burial permits, coroner’s inquests, naturalization records, obituaries, wills, and probate files.
Celebrate Family History Month
October is Family History Month and an excellent time to visit the Santa Barbara County Genealogical Society at 316 Castillo St. in Santa Barbara. You are invited to take one of the free classes offered by the organization during Family History Month. The schedule of classes and events is posted on the group’s website.
