So you want to compile a genealogy for your family...

So you want to compile a genealogy for your family?

If you are reading this, congratulations! You may be on the first step of finding out more about your roots. Or you may be someone who is familiar with genealogy looking for tips or hints on how to find better data or links to the past. Either way, welcome!

I have been collecting my family’s genealogy data for a long time, at least since I was in middle school (at present I am a few months shy of 29). I have compiled it, reviewed it, corrected it, and made several interesting discoveries along the way. I should also mention that I am a full time teacher and went to college for history at the graduate level, so I am familiar with the historiographic methods and they inform my current hobby work of expanding and complicating my family tree.

Why do I do this? First: it is fun! I’ve always been fascinated with history and culture in general, and I love finding out how people lived their lives in the past. To have a family connection to those past lives just makes the fun more personal. Second: I am a stickler for making sure information is CORRECT. Even if a spurious family connection might connect me to more famous ancestors, I will scrutinize it and prefer a less fantastic option unless I am 100% certain of its veracity. Extraordinary hypotheses require extraordinary evidence to prove.

With that approach in mind, I felt it might be helpful to share a few tips I’ve learned for fellow amateur genealogists to save you time and confusion as you traverse the world of digitized data we are blessed with in the 21st century.

1: CROSS REFERENCE YOUR INFORMATION:

This is the most helpful tip I think I can provide. With so many websites out there it can be hard to choose where to start. Personally, I very much enjoy both Ancestry.com and Geni.com, and I am a current subscriber to Ancestry with a World Explorer Membership. I like Ancestry for its user friendliness on both the website and the app, and the ease with which you can upload and view datapoints. However, I find that the ease with which people can upload data sometimes lets individuals add spurious information to their family trees with ease. So when you link with another family’s page, I recommend you check a site like geni.com to back up the veracity of that information. This is especially true for famous ancestors such as the Dudley/Sutton family. Some people in the United States claim direct descent from Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (Elizabeth I’s possible lover), through his only surviving son the illegitimate Robert Dudley. However, the younger Robert moved to Italy and had children there who remained nobles. They did however have cousins with less wealth and power who found their way to the colonies, and who I and thousands others can claim descent from. I would not know this for certain if I had not checked multiple websites to verify this information. Checking multiple websites also helps differentiate cousins who have the same few names (looking again at the number of Roberts in the Dudley family!) Geni.com is useful because more ancient ancestors are viewable for free, and only private individuals and private trees are hidden. So I recommend checking at least those two, and scouring other websites including personal family websites, to be sure you are collecting accurate information.

2: SCRUTINIZE THE DATA

While you are cross-referencing data from across the internet, take a moment to pause and consider where this information is coming from. Consider whether you have access to the source of the information and the relevant data. You can usually find these in images and file attachments on sites like Ancestry and Geni that are appended to the profiles of ancestors. I encourage everyone to READ THEM! This can be challenging for non-professionals and I recommend you have a good computer for some of the files, as a bigger screen will help you see the information better. Especially when looking into wills, probate inventories, and censuses which were written or filled by hand. This is a time consuming process, but one of the most rewarding, because you get to see the data first hand and verify it yourself. For me, being part of the discovery process is its own reward.

One positive aspect of effective scrutinizing is differentiating multiple people with the same name. Patrick Henry O’Rourke is a common name in America thanks to the civil war general Patrick Henry O’Rourk. So finding my great-great-grandpa was difficult, until I discovered that he was not born in the US or in Ireland, but in England! His grandfather had moved from County Mayo to Manchester, and it was only he who immigrated to the United States in the 1880s. If I had not scrutinized the data over birth dates and names of wife and children, we wouldn’t have found out that he had originally lived in England. Since names like Smith, Taylor, Williams, and Davis are so common in the United States, it is important to do specific searches for dates and spouses and locations, and scrutinize the data you find! Otherwise, you might end up working on someone else's family tree rather than your own!

3: TALK TO YOUR EXTENDED FAMILY

This is the simplest and hardest tip I can offer. As an introvert I sympathize with many of you, especially those with strained family relationships, when it comes to communicating with family they might not be forthcoming. I encourage everyone to first do what is healthy and responsible for yourself, never communicate with people you don’t feel safe with. That said, finding those family members you do feel safe with is all the more important for maintaining a comprehensive record of family history. I would not have had a good start to my genealogy journey if it wasn’t for three of my grandparents starting this journey on their own. Thanks to them and their stories, I have so much information about all the branches of the family that I can confidently call my knowledge comprehensive. I want that for anyone and everyone who is interested in detailing their family history. I also know the challenges for those from different backgrounds where they don’t have access to easy records, and websites for different countries and different communities have varying levels of accessibility. That is why family histories, oral or written, are crucial to gathering the initial and personalizing data that helps narrow down searches for broader connections. My piece of advice is that if it is safe and helpful, make those connections to your family as soon as possible. Write down those stories, make recordings, and keep in touch with extended family. Working together on something like this might be a great way to reinforce bonds with people you love, and share a connection to your deeper past.

One resource I can share that is especially helpful in this regard is the Brister English Project, which is a website designed to be a resource for African American Genealogy: https://bristerep.me/ Finding non-white ancestors in the United States is sometimes difficult due to the priority of records that survives to this day. Chattel slavery did not afford African Americans the same priority of personhood as White settlers. Checking documents such as slave schedules, probate records, and wills from plantation owners can help but without guidance or resources to parse through these sometimes unclear data points (with individuals listed by first name only if not as Boy/Male #1) this can be a monumental struggle. Working on different family backgrounds like my wife’s which is primarily black, is aided by resources like these which are specialized by the type of documentation they assist with. Please consider helping this non-profit any way you can for the sake of more accessible genealogy for everyone.

I am also looking into providing help with genealogy myself, if you find yourself in need of help with genealogy or need links to resources, feel free to send me an email at [email protected] More information to come in the future.

Have a great day, and happy hunting for history!

- Bryce