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FYS 100 -- Discovering Our Ethnic Past: Strategy

Basic Rules

  1. Work from the Known to the Unknown
  2. Go back in time from generation to generation
  3. Decide what you want to learn:
    -- Birth and place
    -- Marriage and place
    --  Death and place
    -- Place of burial
  4. Look for evidence
  5. Context is important
  6. Be critical of all informations sources
  7. Keep good notes and organized files
  8. Document all of your information

 

Common Mistakes

  1. Genealogy is more than names and dates
  2. If you find information on the Internet, it must be TRUE
  3. Don't accept family legends as fact
  4. Don't limit yourself to only one spelling
  5. Don't trust everything you see in print
  6. Don't assume you are related to someone famous


Good Sources to Discover Your Ethnicity

  1. People / Family
  2. Family stories
  3. Census records
  4. Birth records
  5. Photographs
  6. Obituaries
  7. Newspaper articles


Other Sources to Learn about Your 
Family History

  1. Diaries
  2. Journals
  3. Letters
  4. Family Bibles
  5. Baptism records
  6. Marriage records
  7. Divorce records
  8. Death records
  9. Pension records
  10. Military records
  11. Wills
  12. Gravestones
  13. Family histories
  14. County histories
  15. Historical societies