How do I go about discovering my ancestry?

Question

I have to do a project on my family tree for English class, but it seems that everytime I think I have some sort of lead towards my ancestry I hit a dead end. Besides talking with relatives and without spending any money, are there any websites or archives you would reccomend for finding more out about my ancestry? Give me any tips you can think of. Also...is it possible to get any information with a person's name birth/death date and SSN?

Answer 1

Go to your public library. Find out what they have. They might have a subscription to Ancestry.Com which has lots of records.
They have all the censuses through 1930. The 1940 is not available to the public yet.

Now, be careful about taking as fact things you see in family trees on any website, free or paid. They are submitted by subscribers.
Most of the information is not documented. You might see different information on the same person. But all too frequently you see the same information repeatedly on the same person without documentation. This no doubt means foolish people are copying without verifying. There are errors in trees on the internet. Also many people resent someone copying their information without permission.

Call your nearest Latter Day Saints(Mormon) Church and find out if they have a Family History Center. They have records on people all over the world, not just Mormons. In Salt Lake City they have the world's largest genealogical collection. Their Family History Centers can order microfilm for you to view at a very nominal fee. They don't bring up their religion and they won't send their missionaries by to ring your doorbell.

Social Security was voted in by Congress in 1937 and began January 1938. There is a Social Security Death Index on Rootsweb, Ancestry.Com and FamilySearch.org(LDS) site.

A person is on it if they were drawing social security at the time of death and off their own social security number. For instance, my mother had a social security number and worked for a time and put into social security but she is not on it as she was drawing off my father's social security when she died in 1976.

Some persons have been added to the Death Index that never put into social security or drew social security. These were elderly people who had to get Medicaid and therefore had to get a social security number. The dates of death on the 2 I saw were wrong.

To find a person on the Social Security Death Index you only need their name as listed with Social Security OR their social security number. You don't need both.


On Ancestry.Com and Rootsweb SSDI you can probe a link to the right and a letter will come up for you to order a copy of the social security number application. It cost $27. It does give the name and place of birth of both parents, including mother's maiden name.

I don't know how far back you have to go but I think sometimes teachers don't understand the scope of genealogy. You can't just put a name into a website and BINGO you pull up your family tree. You might pull up some family lines but the information must be verified. You can't take it for granted that it is correct.

Also don't get involved in the origin of a surname. The same surname can come from more than one nationality. Also not everyone with the same surname is any way related. Be very careful of peddlers of surname products, like coats of arms. They are all over the internet. They sell them at airports and shopping malls. They are shams. Coats of arms do not belong to
surnames. A misnomer for a coat of arms is "family crest."

See links below

http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/comconsumerpsst.cfm

http://www.college-of-arms.gov.uk/Faq.htm

Answer 2

Go to http://www.ancestry.com and sign up for a trial membership or try http://rootsweb.com which is an Ancestry community, its just does not give you as much good info as a regular membership does on Ancestry.

Anyway, start with what you know, your grandparents, look at the census, the most current available is 1930. Find them when they were children, this will tell you where they lived, who they lived with, etc., this will lead you to your great grands, do the same thing again and this will lead you to your great great grands. Repeat as necessary. How many generations do you have to cover? Listen to the stories the old ones tell you. Do they say things like the "Motherland" (check out Germany) or County whatever (check out Ireland)? Use the name and birth date and SSN on the Ancestry website, you'll get a slew of info.

My problem was I ran into the civil war. Go figure.

PS WOW.......1039 - Now that's some research! WOW

Answer 3

Usually the teacher only wants 4 generations. That's you, your parents, grandparents and great grandparents. They don't expect you to go back into the 1700's.

Check your local library's homepage and see if they subscribe to heritagequest.com. If they do, you can use your library card to access it from home for free. This gives you the census reports up to 1930. If you know what state and what county relatives lived in this is a great resource. Your library may also subscribe to ancestry but you will have to go to the library to use it for free. Just remember to request documents from any submitters if you find your family.

Familysearch.org is good for other things. Please remember anything you find online is only a tool. There is so much bad research out there that it's a must to document with birth, death, marriage certificates, obits and cemetery records to prove your work. If you find your family on any website, contact the submitter and see if they would send you copies of their documents. If they say they don't have them, then don't trust the info.

Rootsweb is another website with lots of links and info. Again if you find your family, request documentation.

If you luck out with any of these, then you should be able to cover your 4 generations with no problems. Surely your relatives can help you with 4 generations. That's all the further back I would take it for your report. You could include pictures of your ancestors to spice your report up a bit.

Other then that it will cost you. Nothing in this hobby is free. It is very costly to do it right and very exhausting. I've been doing this for 15+ years and have spent more then I care to think about.

Good luck on your report

Answer 4

tip one....
Try posting the name(s) and dates/localities of the ancestors that you currently have found via interviewing relatives.
No one here or elsewhere should be able to find or post records about living persons... so be sure that the persons you are hunting are deceased. Several persons have/use ancestry.com and are very helpful about doing reasonable lookups for you.
Having a person's ss number will enable you to find them in the social security death index, which gives you dates of birth/death and (again) the social security number itself. You don't need the number to find them in the first place. From that point, you have the option to order (read: purchase) the person's file, which gives further data. Obviously, getting such a record is extremely valuable... but it isn't a one week thing.
I have to agree fully with the previous post that many teachers love to assign "family trees" as an exercise in research. Unless they have personally researched their ancestry, they often don't have a clue as to what is involved.
Throw out some specifics for us to work with, and you may have a bunch by Sunday nite.

Answer 5

If you have an SSN and a name, and the person has died, you can look it up in the death records.

However, living people's records are considered private, considering the SSN is invovled.

You say this is for English class?

Are you in K-12 or in college?

Most K-12 that I know of that do a family tree project only want limited information anyway...but always try to dig deeper just for your own sense of identity.

Best of luck!

Answer 6

You did not add the rider to that question that so often appears on this site which is for free, well done.
Talk to family parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles
etc.

Have a look for family papers, letters. diary's, military papers, Family Bibles,

then work back generation at at a time use www.familysearch.com
and www.rootsweb.com. I take it by the use of SSN numbers that you are in America ( I am In the UK ).

Try having a look at www.ellisisland.org you may find relatives there.

Good luck and good hunting

Answer 7

I learned that my great-great grandparents from Norway were the first white settlers in their township in Minnesota. They lived in a sod shanty and killed wild animals for food, and they ground burnt corn to make coffee! In another branch of the family, 2 young sisters met a young boy on the train who had no destination, and they convinced their parents to take him in. That was the first I'd ever heard of Orphan Trains, when people suffering through the Great Depression would resort to putting their children on a train and hoping for the best. I also learned that 3 brothers in my Dad's ancestry owned a "horseless carriage" motor company in about 1908-1918, where they sold very early American cars and did repairs. And I now have a couple of great pictures of them, posing in their REO cars on the lawn in front of their house!

Answer 8

Start with:
familysearch.org