Getting down to business

So when I started one of the first things I did was I went out and bought two books. One is called The Genealogist's Companion and Sourcebook by Emily Croom. Great reference material. I also purchased The Organized Family Historian by Ann Carter Fleming.

Inside Ann Fleming's book is a cd rom with all of the forms you will need to be organized. Forms included are Family Group Sheets, research log, correspondence log, census forms etc. Each one is designed to help you keep up with all of the information you find.

Next you need to pick your filing system. Mine is a filing cabinet with each family member's name and family written on a folder.

Once I had the two books and my filing system set up I was ready to begin. The first thing I did was that I went to my dad and told him about the project. I then sat down with him and we filled in a family group sheet with our families information on it. Like our names, dates of birth, when he and my mother got married, when they got divorced, when he remarried to my step mom and so on and so forth. I also asked him questions about his childhood, about his parents etc. I wrote all this information down as we were talking.

That was when I learned about the practicality of having a tape recorder. I could then later go back and transcribe what was said instead of causing my hand to cramp trying to keep up. It also freed me up to really listen to what was being said.

Now that I had this information down I could now look for documentation. Documentation is important to a genealogist. You need the documentation to show where you have gotten your information from so that someone coming behind you in your research will know where you got your information from. If it comes from a family member , state who it was that told you and when. So for my father's interview the information he told me was typed out with the following example of documentation.

Interview with Henry D Parrish Sr. October 24, 2004 at his home (gave the address)

Armed with this information my next place to look was to the county courthouse. I was born in Edgecombe County, NC so this is where I went. ( I will go more in depth about finding records at your county courthouse in a later post.)

The people who work in the courthouse in Edgecombe County are some of the friendliest and most helpful people when you are looking through vital records. If you have a question they are more than happy to help. I cannot say this for all of the courthouse employees where I have gone looking for records. I have run into a few "bad apples" who were rude and inconsiderate. All I did was smile and say thank you despite their rudeness. You want to stay on the good side of the employees of the courthouse. So if one of the people who you come across has an attitude, keep a positive outlook and a smile on your face, otherwise they can make record searching difficult for you.

Once I had all of the documentation for my immediate family I had to decide which line to trace. Did I want to trace my father's line or my mother's line? After some consideration I decided to start with my father's line since I knew the most about this side of my family. ( I have since done my mother's side of the family).

At the time that I started this project, my grandfather had been deceased for 16 years. He died from a brain tumor the summer I was 12 years old. My grandmother was living however and she was able to tell me his parent's names. I also went to the Edgecombe County courthouse and got a copy of his death certificate. It also listed his parents names and my grandmother was listed as the informant who provided the information about him and his parents. Death certificates are a good source of family information not just about the deceased person but it will often time give the parents name of the deceased individual.

But remember you have to look at the courthouse in the county in which the person died, not in the county they lived, unless they died there. If a person lived in Pitt county but they died in Wayne county then you would have to go to Wayne County for the record.

Birth certificates are on file in the county courthouses in which the person was born.

So lesson for today is to gather your information from the living relatives for the family members you will be looking for. Document your information with documentation such as interviews, birth and death records as well as marriage records.

Document, Document Document is the lesson for the day.

(This passion for genealogy has continued. I had forgotten how to log into this page for many years and just found an old notebook that gave me what I needed to be able to log back in. So I am updating all these pages and will start posting new blogs shortly. )