Oh what do you use when you do genealogy
what do you use when you do
yeah okay I'm not a great singer but that's the question of
today's video howdy
what do you use when you do genealogical research I use a combination of Google
search operators, Google and various other free genealogy sites
that's a great question and since we have a worldwide audience it's very
difficult to answer with just an easy answer now if you're asking what I use
I'll be happy to show you in just a little bit but if you're asking in
general what should people use the very first question comes down to where are
you researching because a number of factors come into play there are a
number of countries that never kept written records so what do you use
really is who do you use and you actually have to find out who knows the
oral history of that country that you're trying to research and you're probably
not going to get very far accurately
you also run into countries
that had political upheaval and you know what the very first thing to be
sacrificed on the altar of fighting
yeah. paper records for a variety of reasons
and so if you're in that country where your records are lost because of war
blood and other types of destruction you're also stuck
on how you're going to do your research
so as my mother and
father-in-law are learning as they're over in Vietnam you have to talk to
people and that's what you have to use to do your genealogical research over
there and in some other parts around the world so the first thing you have to do
is define where you are researching because that is going to determine what
you use and not only that,
that where also needs to address the question of
what language you're researching in
I am not able to do a lot of German research
right now because I don't read or speak the language and I don't read old German
so a lot of that where
and defining the where and what your skill set is
tells you where online or in person you will do your genealogical research
the next question everybody has to ask themselves is
why are you doing genealogy research
because you're why determines to what level you're going to do your genealogy
research and how in-depth you're going to be is going to tell you where you're
going to do your research whether it's in an archive
or more in-depth scholastic based genealogical sites
or just something kind of casual and guess what
the answer is different for everyone
and the answer is okay no matter how interested you are
so let me walk you through a couple of suggestions that I have for
the varying levels of genealogical interest you may have Matthew or anyone
else watching this video
the first level is what I like to call a casual
researcher you're just casually are interested in family history doesn't
mean you'll be more interested in going in depth in the future but you're just
kind of mildly interested and curious and so what you're going to be most
interested in are search hints
Why? Because it takes the hard
work out of genealogy oh my gosh when I started genealogy twenty-something years
ago oh yeah
Search hints would have been a godsend and
you know what even though many of our genealogists take it for granted there's
still a blessing and you should use them even if you're more than a casual researcher
so where are you gonna find these search hints of which I talked about
well on some of the genealogical site like you see right
here FamilySearch is free but it's a collaborative tree
Ancestry and MyHeritage have private trees
but they also have search hints
if you're a casual user and you are frugal or just don't want to spend any
money head over to Family Search but I'm gonna give you a piece of advice in a
moment and if you're casually interested and you're willing to spend some money
or somebody bought you a gift membership for a year then check out Ancestry or MyHeritage
especially Ancestry if you have US-based ancestors and MyHeritage if
you have more global ancestors
now Matthew said he has a lot of luck with
Google search and I'm guessing he uses Google search to get two different
websites out there such as USGenweb or some of these other free sites that
you have to use Google search to find because you're not usually going to find
them on Ancestry or FamilySearch or the like
beyond that I don't have a lot of
luck with Google search I may think
my family is too small or whenever I search
for family members I usually find things that I've written so I find myself but I
do have some luck with Google books
My ancestors still aren't amazing enough to find in Google books
but what I find in Google books are county histories if
I want to learn a little bit more about where my ancestors came from I've
exhausted some of the hints on the various websites and now I just want to
know a little bit more about Franklin County, Ohio
then I can go to Google books and look for at Franklin County Ohio county
history I can also use Google books and I did this when I was kind of casually
doing research and that was discovered the unit history for my ancestor William
James Townsend who fought in the Civil War
I knew his unit the 133rd Company K of the Ohio Volunteer Infantry
And I went to Google books and found a unit history
of that unit and that was really exciting
so sometimes the books are for just more broadening my mind about the
history at the time and place my ancestors lived even though their names
aren't usually going to appear in those books
now when you begin to get a little
more serious in your genealogy you want to organize your data and one of the
tools that you might consider using its genealogical software now some of the
reasons why genealogical software is better than just kind of haphazardly
searching online and saving things to Google Drive or Evernote is that it's
really designed to organize the types of information you're gonna find family
groups pedigree events in someone's life notes media citations
it organizes that
information and unlike and other organizing systems such as paper files
or Evernote you can analyze data and clean things up in your family tree this
is what genealogy software really excels at even more so than online genealogy trees
and finally I love geneaology software that becomes a central hinting
source so instead of going to Ancestry and FindMyPast and MyHeritage
I can go to one place and right now my place is RootsMagic
it has hints to the four major web sites
and then with a product called GenSmarts it also gives me some
other hints of some records I might want to investigate
so I really love having a central hinting spot for a variety of places to research
using genealogy software
now when you're move beyond casual researching
and you're into more serious research you're still gonna use genealogy
websites but you're gonna go beyond the hinting you're still gonna use the hints
your're still gonna use the hinting but you're going to go more
in-depth you're going to go check out this thing called the Card Catalog in a
video from Ancestry that I interviewed Crista Cowan she said check out the
Card Catalog because in the search form these smaller collections where your
ancestors are hiding aren't always bubbling up to the surface you have to
go check out the card catalog but not every collection
especially on FamilySearch
has a searchable form you can see the digital images but you have to
browse through them much the same way if you were flipping the pages of a book
and the only way you're gonna get to those collections is in the card catalog
and so when I am really trying to dive deep into an ancestor's life and I'm
being serious then I will go investigate the card catalog
additionally ever wonder why you can't find a particular record
I know this is asked quite a bit on our YouTube channel
why can't I find the birth record for an individual
you have to go check out the wiki pages FamilySearch has a wonderful wiki
collection the wiki pages on FamilySearch tell you specifically when were
records kept for a particular time and place
and if your ancestor lived in that place
did they have their birth before during or after the institution
of records being collected by the state or the church or not at all
that's where you're gonna find the answers to those questions
so when you're ready to go beyond casual researching
you need to check out wiki pages
okay serious researchers have a
lot of places they can go and find out more about their ancestors and once
they've exhausted or attempted to exhaust the big four
Ancestry, FindMyPast, MyHeritage, and FamilySearch
they go off site kind of like off-roading if you will
so they probably have already investigated some of these record
repositories that you see online cemeteries are usually linked with
Ancestry and FamilySearch to Find-a-Grave and Billiongraves but we go a
little bit deeper for me if I know my ancestors were buried in Cincinnati Ohio
and they happen to have been buried and Spring Grove cemetery then I head over
to the Spring Grove Cemetery website and I find some really great information on
that website
Courthouse records - I've used the Huron County Courthouse to find
probate records and divorce records for some of the ancestors that I am
researching right now
the NARA website is a great portal to a lot of other
collections that you may be interested in they don't always have stuff online
but they give you the guides to do off-site research because yes not
everything is online my new favorite beyond city directories which I have
three videos on this channel you can check the description or the info cards
yeah small plug the newspapers- Newspapers.com Newspaper Archive
Chronicling America GenealogyBank these have great records for you to
investigate to find the stories behind your ancestors rather than just
obituaries which most people actually go look for when they're searching newspapers
there's so many other great finds and newspapers and I also said
those county histories but it pays to remind you county histories are
fantastic for the social histories about your ancestors and you never know you
might actually find that your ancestor was published in that county history