Illustrations by Marc Burckhardt
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Resources
By Nanette Varian, March & April 2005
An American life generates an awful lot of paper—licenses, land deeds, even lawsuits
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Any basic how-to book, such as The Complete Idiot's Guide to
Genealogy (Alpha Books, 1997) or
Genealogy Online for Dummies (Wiley Publishing, 2001), can show you how to
find these documents.
One-stop shops
Ancestry.com—the Bigfoot of
genealogical search engines—lets you troll millions of records at once.
Searching is free, as is viewing some results. Other results are available by
subscription ($49.95-$189.95 a year). Other sites include www.afrigeneas.com, www.rootsweb.com, www.vitalrec.com, and familysearch.org.
Portal sites
If the Internet is a library, then portals are its card catalog, says Cyndi
Howells, creator of the genealogy portal cyndislist.com and author of
Planting Your Family Tree Online (Rutledge Hill Press, 2004). Such sites
present organized links to scads of databases. Some of the other biggies: www.usgenweb.org, www.worldgenweb.org, www.genealogyhomepage.com, and www.genealogyportal.com.
Previous genealogies
Are you sure you're the first historian in the family? The Library of Congress has more than 40,000
family histories. The Allen
County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana, has an extensive genealogical
collection. Also explore state archives and historical societies. One caveat:
you must check your ancestor's work by locating the primary sources
yourself.
Census records
Every 10 years, the feds make a record of the country's inhabitants by
name. You can now see those records through 1930 (there's a 72-year privacy
cutoff), as well as some state and special censuses. For an index, visit www.census-online.com or www.us-census.org. Images of census pages are
available to ancestry.com subscribers, or for sale on CD-ROM. You can also view
pages on microfilm at the National Archives and The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints' Family History Library, both of which have branches
around the country.
Immigration info
Passenger lists spanning six centuries are available in reference books, on
CD-ROM, and on fee-based genealogy sites; many are also searchable for free,
thanks to sites like www.immigrantships.net and www.olivetreegenealogy.com. The Ellis Island site offers a searchable
database of passenger manifests. The U.S. Citizenship and
Naturalization Service site also offers extensive tips and databases.
Military records
Look to the U.S. armed forces for vital records, a physical description, and
much more. Try the Civil War Soldiers
and Sailors System and the United States Internet
Genealogical Society Military Collection Site. Look for a pension file
(maybe under a widow's name) and bounty land warrant application files
(land was sometimes awarded to vets). The National Archives and Records
Administration should have both.
Crying uncle
There's help out there for you, if you need it. Ask for interlibrary
loans, instead of traveling. If you beg, some librarians may even photocopy and
mail the pages you need. Or you can hire help via the Association of Professional
Genealogists. Hourly fees typically range from $30 to $60.
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