In my previous blog, I am an Addict, I described some of the pitfalls that are faced when starting out on a journey to research one’s ancestors. In this brief article, I will examine some more issues that may arise.
Choosing the Right Resources
Many people looking for evidence of their family’s past rely on websites which specialize in genealogy. Most of these require a subscription, with the exception of Family Search. If the funds available for research is limited, you may not be able to subscribe to all at the same time. I would suggest that the best solution to this issue is to take on one subscription at a time for a short period. After that subscription expires, pay to access one of the other websites for a while if you believe there is more information that you would like to find; in other words, rotate your subscriptions. Why not stay faithful to just one site? Each of the major companies offering the key records of births, marriages, deaths, migration and so on is in competition with the others and therefore they try to update their records as frequently as they can. They may offer records which have only just been released by the authorities because of time restrictions or they may have purchased records from a source whose records have never previously been on-line. By going back to these sites on a regular basis after a certain time has elapsed, you may find information that was not there before.
If you have ancestors originated in different parts of the world, you should also be aware that different websites have many overlapping records, but each has some records which are not found at all, or only minimally on another site. For instance, Family Search has a large number of records from South Africa and Jamaica, amongst others, whereas these records are not found on Ancestry. The latter, however, has many collections which are invaluable for looking at the migration of Jewish forebears to the United States, in particular the Hamburg shipping manifests which are important for people with ancestors who left eastern and central Europe from the 1880s to the 1920s when the bulk of our families moved away from “the old country”.
There are many resources other than the major players such as Family Search, Ancestry, MyHeritage and FindmyPast. I am not a social media fan and still have no interest in reading the gossip and mis-information found on these sites. As always there are exceptions: I have fallen in love with Facebook. I mentioned some of the groups on Facebook in my previous article. Every single day, I am amazed at the lengths members of the groups will go to in order to assist others. I had completely “lost” a Canadian relative who was married in 1919 but disappeared just after World War Two. There was no information about her or her children anywhere after 1946. I theorized that she could have changed her surname as her husband turned out to be an embarrassment because of his criminal activity leading to his incarceration in 1938. I also suspected some of the records, especially those of her children, were protected by privacy laws as they were relatively recent. Further, I wondered if the children might have migrated to Israel or elsewhere and changed their names as a result. One day, while idling scrolling through the Facebook groups that I regularly read, I came across one I had never seen before based in Canada which looks up obituaries and death notices for those who seek these records. I posted information about my relative such as when she married, the name of her husband and the names of her three children, which I knew from census data. Within 24 hours, I received a reply from a regular researcher. She sent me a newspaper clipping of an official announcement by my relative’s eldest son relating to a change of surname. Yes! Yes! This helpful researcher, who is now an “email pen-pal”, cracked wide open my search for my relative which had been fruitless for so long. Using FindaGrave, I found the dates and places of death of my relative, her three children and their spouses. My speculation as to the reason why I could not find these people was also proven correct – they had indeed changed their surname. Having said that I find the Facebook genealogy sites useful, I must also state that some of the people who post can be irritating. On a number of occasions, a post is put up by someone who is looking for a specific relative giving their full name, place of birth and whatever else he or she knows about this person. Most of those who reply will give whatever hints and information they can to assist but there are also people who reply with the comment, “My grandfather (or whoever) came from that town too. He was born in 1920 (about 100 years after the person of interest)”. How is that helpful? If they had suggested sources of records or information about the town, the material is certainly relevant, or if the person born in 1920 had the same surname, there could be a connection. Failing the provision of useful input, it would be better if such “replies” were not posted at all.
Reaching Out to Possible Living Relatives
From various sources, you may be able to find a contact email for a potential living relative from whom you may hope to get more information to fill in gaps in your family history. When you google a name, you may note a Facebook, Linked In, or even a business address with an email contact. There is no harm in shooting off a message to such people but there are several points you should note. With so many online scams these days, people are rightfully very cautious about opening or replying to messages from someone they do not know. I would suggest the following:
The many times that I have said to myself, “I must save that record” or “I must keep a record of where I found that information”, and later found that I had not followed my own good advice are numerous. Why did this happen? First, I assumed that I would be able to remember where I found the record. I was wrong. I could not remember. Second, at the time I found a record of relevance I intended to save it but something or someone intervened. Perhaps I could smell the dinner burning and ran to rescue it. In the aftermath of cleaning burnt pots, I totally forgot about the record that I had not yet saved. Sometimes, messages came in on my phone from a friend or one of my sons, and again, by the time I had had a chat session with them, I forgot to save that important record. As far as possible, I try to save records of interest immediately I find them, after all I can delete them later if they prove to be irrelevant to my research. Still, the truth is that even a genealogy addict has to recognize that a burning pot on the stove could potentially be more momentous than a record not saved.
Saving records is one key aspect of successful genealogy research but being able to find them again is equally important. True, you should be able to find the record you saved yesterday without too much trouble, but what about the one saved more than five years ago? If you do not have a system, you will surely find it difficult to retrieve the record when you need it. Computer technology is wonderful. It knows you are fallible and will help you find your old files but sometimes a file will fall between the cracks because you cannot remember the name of the file. Given my age and generation, I still prefer hand-written notes but if you are young and tech-savvy, go for writing up your stories in a computer file. My notes are organized by family, starting with the names of the ancestors in a particular family as far back as I can go. I will write their birth and death dates, date of marriage, information about their spouse(s) if any and his or her parents. I will jot down where they were born, where and when they migrated, if relevant, their occupation and any thing else of interest. Following each couple will be a listing of each of their children with the same information. When I have brought this family up to the present day, I start a new set of notes on a different ancestor. All these materials, and anything I might have printed out, will be popped into paper files and there is my system. It works for me. Any other system that works for you is just as good.
My genealogy addiction gives me hours of enjoyment. I hope it does the same for you.
About the Author:
Marilyn was born in Australia, raised in New Zealand and has lived in Malaysia for over 50 years. Since retiring from teaching at the largest university in the country, she spends all her spare time researching her family history. Marilyn, using the professional name of Maimunah, is the author of a number of books relating to industrial relations, employment law and human resource management. Her latest book, published in 2023, is the story of her ancestors, entitled Fears, Tears, Secrets & Successes, published by i2i Publishing UK.
Choosing the Right Resources
Many people looking for evidence of their family’s past rely on websites which specialize in genealogy. Most of these require a subscription, with the exception of Family Search. If the funds available for research is limited, you may not be able to subscribe to all at the same time. I would suggest that the best solution to this issue is to take on one subscription at a time for a short period. After that subscription expires, pay to access one of the other websites for a while if you believe there is more information that you would like to find; in other words, rotate your subscriptions. Why not stay faithful to just one site? Each of the major companies offering the key records of births, marriages, deaths, migration and so on is in competition with the others and therefore they try to update their records as frequently as they can. They may offer records which have only just been released by the authorities because of time restrictions or they may have purchased records from a source whose records have never previously been on-line. By going back to these sites on a regular basis after a certain time has elapsed, you may find information that was not there before.
If you have ancestors originated in different parts of the world, you should also be aware that different websites have many overlapping records, but each has some records which are not found at all, or only minimally on another site. For instance, Family Search has a large number of records from South Africa and Jamaica, amongst others, whereas these records are not found on Ancestry. The latter, however, has many collections which are invaluable for looking at the migration of Jewish forebears to the United States, in particular the Hamburg shipping manifests which are important for people with ancestors who left eastern and central Europe from the 1880s to the 1920s when the bulk of our families moved away from “the old country”.
There are many resources other than the major players such as Family Search, Ancestry, MyHeritage and FindmyPast. I am not a social media fan and still have no interest in reading the gossip and mis-information found on these sites. As always there are exceptions: I have fallen in love with Facebook. I mentioned some of the groups on Facebook in my previous article. Every single day, I am amazed at the lengths members of the groups will go to in order to assist others. I had completely “lost” a Canadian relative who was married in 1919 but disappeared just after World War Two. There was no information about her or her children anywhere after 1946. I theorized that she could have changed her surname as her husband turned out to be an embarrassment because of his criminal activity leading to his incarceration in 1938. I also suspected some of the records, especially those of her children, were protected by privacy laws as they were relatively recent. Further, I wondered if the children might have migrated to Israel or elsewhere and changed their names as a result. One day, while idling scrolling through the Facebook groups that I regularly read, I came across one I had never seen before based in Canada which looks up obituaries and death notices for those who seek these records. I posted information about my relative such as when she married, the name of her husband and the names of her three children, which I knew from census data. Within 24 hours, I received a reply from a regular researcher. She sent me a newspaper clipping of an official announcement by my relative’s eldest son relating to a change of surname. Yes! Yes! This helpful researcher, who is now an “email pen-pal”, cracked wide open my search for my relative which had been fruitless for so long. Using FindaGrave, I found the dates and places of death of my relative, her three children and their spouses. My speculation as to the reason why I could not find these people was also proven correct – they had indeed changed their surname. Having said that I find the Facebook genealogy sites useful, I must also state that some of the people who post can be irritating. On a number of occasions, a post is put up by someone who is looking for a specific relative giving their full name, place of birth and whatever else he or she knows about this person. Most of those who reply will give whatever hints and information they can to assist but there are also people who reply with the comment, “My grandfather (or whoever) came from that town too. He was born in 1920 (about 100 years after the person of interest)”. How is that helpful? If they had suggested sources of records or information about the town, the material is certainly relevant, or if the person born in 1920 had the same surname, there could be a connection. Failing the provision of useful input, it would be better if such “replies” were not posted at all.
Reaching Out to Possible Living Relatives
From various sources, you may be able to find a contact email for a potential living relative from whom you may hope to get more information to fill in gaps in your family history. When you google a name, you may note a Facebook, Linked In, or even a business address with an email contact. There is no harm in shooting off a message to such people but there are several points you should note. With so many online scams these days, people are rightfully very cautious about opening or replying to messages from someone they do not know. I would suggest the following:
- First, explain upfront why you are contacting the person. State who you are and how you think the person is related. If you have the wrong person, they may not reply at all, although it would be preferable if they replied confirming that they are not the person you are seeking. This is what I would do if someone contacted me in this manner.
- Second, if you are using a messenger service to contact a person, such as that provided by Facebook, give your email address which may give the recipient confidence that you are not a scammer.
- Third, if you are contacting a person through their place of employment, you should apologize to them for using the information provided to contact them about a personal matter. If you know that the contact email address is not an individual’s address, you could request that whoever receives your message pass it to the potential relative. I did this recently in the case of a possible relative in the family mentioned above (who had changed their surname), and his agent passed my message to him immediately, leading to a most satisfactory exchange of emails.
- Information about living individuals should never be added to any family tree or other document open to the public without that individual’s express agreement. I was particularly upset recently when a relative in another country (all my family live in a different country to me) added my parent’s names, my name, and that of my husband and children to his family tree on Ancestry. A relative we had in common had requested this information some months before, which I had readily given on the express understanding that it would not be put up on a public family tree. He, in turn, shared the information with another relative without telling him of our agreement to keep the names private. To be fair, given his advanced age, he may have forgotten that he had agreed to this. Admittedly, the owner of the Ancestry tree took down down the information as soon as I demanded that he do so, but it was an unpleasant experience just the same.
- Be aware that a person you contact asking for confirmation that they are family may choose not to reply for a number of reasons. For example, they may have no interest in genealogy. Every time my half-sister emails me, she will ask, “Are you still searching for dead persons?” Well, that is her opinion of genealogy and family history, and it is possibly shared by many others. Alternatively, they may reply confirming the relationship with you yet the conversation or connection is not taken any further. End of story. They have other things to do in their life other than talk about family. Nagging by repeatedly sending follow-up messages will not help; indeed, it is more likely to alienate them. You have a right to be interested in researching family and they have a right to be dis-interested.
The many times that I have said to myself, “I must save that record” or “I must keep a record of where I found that information”, and later found that I had not followed my own good advice are numerous. Why did this happen? First, I assumed that I would be able to remember where I found the record. I was wrong. I could not remember. Second, at the time I found a record of relevance I intended to save it but something or someone intervened. Perhaps I could smell the dinner burning and ran to rescue it. In the aftermath of cleaning burnt pots, I totally forgot about the record that I had not yet saved. Sometimes, messages came in on my phone from a friend or one of my sons, and again, by the time I had had a chat session with them, I forgot to save that important record. As far as possible, I try to save records of interest immediately I find them, after all I can delete them later if they prove to be irrelevant to my research. Still, the truth is that even a genealogy addict has to recognize that a burning pot on the stove could potentially be more momentous than a record not saved.
Saving records is one key aspect of successful genealogy research but being able to find them again is equally important. True, you should be able to find the record you saved yesterday without too much trouble, but what about the one saved more than five years ago? If you do not have a system, you will surely find it difficult to retrieve the record when you need it. Computer technology is wonderful. It knows you are fallible and will help you find your old files but sometimes a file will fall between the cracks because you cannot remember the name of the file. Given my age and generation, I still prefer hand-written notes but if you are young and tech-savvy, go for writing up your stories in a computer file. My notes are organized by family, starting with the names of the ancestors in a particular family as far back as I can go. I will write their birth and death dates, date of marriage, information about their spouse(s) if any and his or her parents. I will jot down where they were born, where and when they migrated, if relevant, their occupation and any thing else of interest. Following each couple will be a listing of each of their children with the same information. When I have brought this family up to the present day, I start a new set of notes on a different ancestor. All these materials, and anything I might have printed out, will be popped into paper files and there is my system. It works for me. Any other system that works for you is just as good.
My genealogy addiction gives me hours of enjoyment. I hope it does the same for you.
About the Author:
Marilyn was born in Australia, raised in New Zealand and has lived in Malaysia for over 50 years. Since retiring from teaching at the largest university in the country, she spends all her spare time researching her family history. Marilyn, using the professional name of Maimunah, is the author of a number of books relating to industrial relations, employment law and human resource management. Her latest book, published in 2023, is the story of her ancestors, entitled Fears, Tears, Secrets & Successes, published by i2i Publishing UK.
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