Interested in tracing your family
heritage? The History Room at the Rowan
Public Library has just the resources. A
few new books that will help the novice and the experienced researcher find the
answers to the mysteries of family history.
Many have turned to “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to …” in any number of
topics from computer use to car repair.
Genealogy too has its own “Idiot’s Guide” by Christine Rose and Kay
Germain Ingalls. With explanations about
what to search, how to search for it and ways to explore many other topics,
it’s the perfect place to start. With
chapters on “Starting with Mom and Dad” and “Picnic in the Cemetery”, to
“Resolving Discrepancies”, this book covers it all. The newspaper section declares there is more
to find in newspapers than obituaries and wedding announcements; traffic
accidents, scouting awards, church functions, school projects, trials, scandals
and good deeds are also reported in the local news sheets and can be invaluable
for filling in the history of a family between censuses. Although much information can be found on
the internet these days occasionally an old-fashioned letter is the way to
contact a second cousin thrice removed to find out more information about a
common ancestor. Have you ever wondered
if you were eligible to belong to a lineage society - Sons of the American
Revolution or Colonial Dames? All these
subjects and more are covered in Rose & Ingalls “The Complete Idiot’s Guide
to Genealogy.”
If one is a complete rookie when it
comes to genealogical research and time is limited take a look at “Genealogy
Basics in 30 minutes” by Shannon Combs-Bennett.
A Silver Winner of the Benjamin Franklin Award of the Independent Book
Publishers Association, this slim volume is part of the “Quick Guides for a
Complex World” series. An experienced
researcher Combs-Bennett points out the five most common mistakes a new
researcher might make: researching the
wrong family, trusting “published” trees,
matching dates, repeated first names, and spelling variations. Spelling variations can be frustrating to any
researcher but earlier generations did not employ standard spelling and many
were spelled phonetically. The
researcher needs to expand the search to include similar names as well as
spelling variations to cover all the bases.
Many books and much information on the net are not verifiable. Folks sometimes republish family trees
without confirming the information is true.
Some published book on family lines or names contain mistakes or connect
families that are not in fact related.
These and other tips for successful researching are all neatly and
succinctly presented.
FamilySearch.org is the largest free
genealogical website with myriad documents that are useful for ancestral
research. Dana McCullough has published
the “Unofficial Gide to FamilySearch.org” that can help navigate the ins and
outs of the documents held by Family Search.
Not only does the site have United States census, vital, immigration,
military, probate and court records, Family search also has European, Canadian,
Mexican and Latin American records. The
book also includes specific searching techniques, worksheets to aid in
analyzing and a whole host of suggestions on how to find that elusive
connection. These newly acquired books
and many others are available in the History Room to assist in unearthing
family stories.
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