Genealogy: Developing your research strategy

Ask any expert how to begin tracing your family tree, and you'll get a pat answer: "Start with yourself. Work back one generation at a time. Document milestones in reverse life order: death, marriage, birth." Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Though theoretically correct, this vague answer is about as useful to novices as computer manuals are to the technologically challenged.

You probably already know you must acquire a birth certificate or some official document to prove you're the child of your parents. Without that, there's no reason to proceed. You may realize you also need to gather vital statistics about your siblings, such as where and when each of them was born.

But what comes next? Despite the fact that your story is unique and your age, ethnicity, religion and nationality will ultimately direct your research, you start your quest like everybody else. You'll obtain birth certificates, census returns, wills and other commonly used records to link the generations.

Consider this worst-case scenario as an example. Your parents are dead. You have copies of their death certificates. Most certificates give the names of the decedent's parents. Not so in your case. And you can't remember your grandparents' names. What to do?

You know your parents married in your old hometown, so your best bet is to get a copy of their marriage license application, which is usually a county record. (I'm talking applications, not certificates.) Since the late 1800s, applications generally include the names and addresses of the couple's parents and other pertinent data. (Not sure where they got hitched? Try the county where your oldest sibling was born.)

Latch onto copies of your parents' Social Security card applications to confirm your grandparents' names and establish where your parents were living at that time. (Log on to ssdi.genealogy.rootsweb.com for details.)

Between the marriage license and Social Security card applications, you may uncover enough data to order copies of your parents' birth certificates. (See www.vitalrec.com.)

Your next task is to complete family group sheets for your family and for the family of your mother or father, depending on which side you're tracing. The operative word here is "complete." Resist the urge to skip over your siblings, aunts and uncles. It's not necessary to show every twig, although many researchers list virtually everybody for four generations or more. But you'd be wise to include at least the name of each member of each nuclear family in your direct line, their birth and death dates and the names of their spouses. (Forms are free at most public libraries.)

Why bother with aunts and uncles? You'll grasp the significance once you discover that your grandparents weren't the only couple named James and Janet Smith living in Whatever County, N.J., in 1920. Sometimes the names of their offspring are the only way of distinguishing between the families. Given the proliferation of naming traditions by various ethnic groups, the children's names may become essential research clues.

Suppose you don't know the names of your aunts and uncles, much less those of one generation removed? No matter. Just follow the money. The most reliable way to confirm family ties is to see who shared an inheritance. Heirs make good watchdogs. For this, you'll need copies of your grandparents' wills and probate records, which are county records. However, some counties in some states dump them on the state archives as quickly as possible to save storage space.

As with vital records and marriage license applications, you can request copies of wills and probate records by mail. Most are indexed by surname, so you don't need an exact date of death. Be certain, however, to ask for all information pertaining to the settlement of the estate. It's the probate records that name names and show who got the goods.

COMING NEXT WEEK: Continuing the quest.

-- Donna Murray Allen welcomes your questions about genealogy and will respond to those of general interest in future columns. Sorry, she can't take phone calls, but you can write to her c/o Floridian, St. Petersburg Times, P.O. Box 1121, St. Petersburg, FL 33731, or e-mail her at rootscolumn@aol.com. You can read her column online at www.sptimes.com. Type Donna Murray Allen in the search box.

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.