Looking up ancestors

RIVER BENDER - FEBRUARY 2004

The Internet has become a gold mine for genealogists and it keeps getting better with time as more archival data becomes available. Some websites charge a subscription fee for access and for several months I subscribed to one to see census records, the same records our family used to search on microfilm in the National Archives when we lived in the D.C. area. Now you can access census records free. Here are a few tips on what is currently available:

Heritage Quest

We're very lucky to have the New Bern-Craven County Public Library offer a free online service to members called "Heritage Quest." It's available at http://newbern.cpclib.org/research/index.html. You'll need to have the 10-digit bar code available from your library card to sign in. Once in you have the choice of four data bases:

Search Census: This allows you to find ancestors and relatives in the complete set of US Federal Census Records from 1790 - 1930 by entering a surname and given name. Censuses before 1850 unfortunately show only names of head of households but starting in 1850 other family member names are shown. A handy reference site that shows what is available in each census is at http://home.att.net/~wee-monster/census.html. You can also get "census forms" in Google to see column headings.

Search Books: Here you can find information on people and places described in over 25,000 family and local histories.

Search Persi (Periodical Source Index): Find information about people and places from the index of over 1.6 million genealogy and local history articles.

Search Revolutionary War: Search selected records from the Revolutionary War Era Pension & Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The LDS church maintains the largest genealogical data collection in the world at the main Family History Library in downtown Salt Lake City. Free online access is available at http://www.familysearch.org/

The reason the LDS church is interested in genealogy is explained in church doctrine: family love and life can continue forever, even after death. Thankfully, the church allows non-members to use their collection, and it is a wonderful resource.

We are lucky to a have a LDS Family History Center in New Bern where one can access most of the LDS microfilms and microfiche. Everyone is welcome to use the resources at the LDS church at 1207 Forest Drive in Trent Woods. Hours are Tuesday/Wednesday 9am-9pm, Thursday 5pm-9pm and the 1st & 2nd Saturday 9am-1pm. Phone 638-5341. Visit http://www.cravengenealogy.org/ccgsfhc.htm to learn what is available for genealogy research.

Social Security Death Index

The Social Security Administration publishes a Master File Death Index that is purchased by various commercial genealogy web sites and made free to the public. One such site is RootsWeb.com at http://ssdi.genealogy.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/ssdi.cgi.Here you enter a person's name and determine if they are deceased. It's not perfect and it doesn't cover deaths before 1962 but if you need to contact an elderly relative you might want to check if he or she is still alive. Also it's a good place to verify death dates given to you by relatives.

Contact relatives before it's too late

The usual starting place for tracing your ancestors is to find out what your relatives know. You could be lucky and find a distant aunt that already knows who your ancestors are. I suggest you call relatives and get their e-mail address so you can exchange information. A useful tool is Google's phonebook search at www.google.com. For example if you were looking for my phone number and address you would enter phonebook:david wallace,new bern. Don't forget the colon.

Genealogy Software

Whatever you do, you need a genealogy program in your computer to keep track of data and be able to print reports and ancestor and descendancy charts. Otherwise you'll reach a point where you're buried in paper and lose interest. There are many good programs you can find by using Google but the one that I like and have used for years is Brother's Keeper. It costs $45 and can be downloaded on a trial basis at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Brothers_Keeper/

Past articles written by Dave Wallace since 1998 are available at http://always-online.com/nbcug/dwindex.htm.

http://ssdi.genealogy.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/ssdi.cgi