A certification of birth is a document that certifies a record of the birth appears in the records of the local office authorized to record records of birth. It may contain a transcription of the entire document or just a portion of it. The certification is not intended to be a complete transcription of the original document. It just confirms that the record is on file. A copy of the certificate of birth is usually an actual copy of the birth record. From the standpoint of genealogical research, it’s the preferred item to request. The image contains part of the certification of birth and birth certificate for my late grandmother. The certification of birth contains spellings of her parents’ names that are not what appears to be on […]
When a man naturalized in the United States in the 19th and early 20th century, his minor children automatically became naturalized as well, even if their names are not listed in the naturalization. When foreign born Ekke Behrens applied for a homestead in Nebraska in the 1880s, he included his father’s naturalization as proof of his citizenship. This type of citizenship is often referred to as a derivative citizenship. If you are unable to locate a naturalization for your foreign born ancestor, consider the possibility that his father’s naturalization served as his naturalization as well.
If a document refers to your ancestor as the lessor on lease–he owns the property that is the subject of the lease. If your ancestor is referred to as the lessee, he is the person being given temporary use of the property. The lessor owns it, the lessee borrows it–generally speaking. Records of leases usually are not kept by local record keeping agencies. Leases are usually only mentioned in local records when they are the subject of legal action over the terms of the lease or a conflict involving the property that was the subject of the lease. If there was such court action, a copy of the lease may be included with the court papers.
Remember there are several United States censuses that provide evidence of ownership of real property. Some ask for values of real property, others ask if the home was owned or rented. Documenting that land ownership through local land records may lead to additional information on your ancestor. Are you getting all the clues from the census?
I’m a member of subscription sites that allow me to create links to images on their sites that requires me to have a subscription to access.I don’t link to the images that are behind the “pay wall.” I download images of records that I need to my own media so that I always a copy of the image for personal use. That way, if something ever happens or I don’t have access to the site any longer–I still have digital copies of the images I used.
Don’t take “the courthouse burned” to mean that every record before that point in time was destroyed. It might be that in reality, records from some offices survived, some offices’ records were not completely destroyed, etc. In some cases, records might have been “re-recorded” after the fire. There may also be state or federal records that provide similar information. Ask around.
If you are using English-language records, is it possible that the writer slipped in a non-English word or a word in a non-English script? A native German speaker may have written in English only to occasionally slip in a German word out of habit? Or did a native Swede write a last name in his native script? That confusing word may be confusing because it’s not in English language or not in the English script.
Did your relative have such an odd way of saying a word or a phrase that a census taker or clerk would be hard-pressed to spell it correctly? The reason you are unable to find a name that’s clearly written on a record could be because your relative had a highly unusual way of saying it and the clerk simply did the best he could. The problem is compounded if the clerk was unfamiliar with your relative’s family and simply wrote what he heard. Clerks in small towns are more often to know what someone really means when the use their own unique pronunciation. Today’s post title is how it would have sounded if my grandmother had said “Use the bulldozer to push the multiflora roses in the […]
These two checks were written by my grandfather in the spring of 1941. They appear to have been written to pay for the medical expenses from the birth of his son Keith (my Dad) who was born in April of 1941. Dr. C. A. Runyon signed Dad’s birth certificate which indicated he was born in St. Joseph’s hospital. That’s a strong connection. The checks were located in a envelope that was tucked in a scrapbook of photographs, newspaper clippings, and other paper ephemera that included or mentioned my Dad. That’s another clue suggesting the purpose of the checks. The dates on the checks were also interesting and remind us that the dates documents are executed or recorded can also be a clue. Dad was born on 14 April […]
Stopping because you have located one record is never a good idea. By keeping on going, I discovered that an ancestor was divorced from the same man not once, but twice. By keeping on going, I also discovered that another relative’s first marriage “didn’t happen” and they were actually married two years later. Combine these unusual circumstances with the occasional record that gets entered or indexed late and you have even more reason to look for entries or documents “after you think you should.”
A good genealogy activity is to see if you can determine who the unnamed relatives are in an obituary–particularly if the number of grand and great-grandchildren are mentioned. Of course these totals can be wrong, but an attempt at “proving” the number may lead to some discoveries. And if pallbearers are mentioned, determine if they had a relationship to the deceased. Both of these activities may lead you to some new pieces of information.
We need to make assumptions in our genealogy research. Many times assumptions are necessary in order to get our work off the ground. But after a point, it may be that the assumption is hindering our work or that we have forgotten that an assumption was made. If you are guessing that the parents were married near where the first child was born, that is a good start. But somewhere in your notes, indicate why you believe where they were married and that you have no proof. If research does not validate your assumption, it may be that your assumption was incorrect. And if you enter your assumption in your genealogical database as fact, it can be very difficult for that information to go back to being an […]
Before interviewing relatives who were alive at the time of the 1940 census, try locating them in that record. Note the names of neighbors and ask your relative about these individuals. Giving your interviewee specific names may help to jog memories and get them to recall events they might not otherwise have thought about. This is helpful even if the person was not alive in 1940. Neighbors might have been neighbors for decades and even if the person did not know the former neighbors personally they might remember hearing their name mentioned. Anything that might help jog a memory is good.
When analyzing a record or set of materials that does not make sense, get away from what you “want to prove” and try to think “what do these documents really say?” You may find that they do not say what you think they do. And not every record says what we want or expect it to say. Sometimes our preconceived notions are what is getting in the way.
When using a record set with which you are not familiar, think about how someone gets into the record, how the information in the record is obtained, how the record is organized, and how the original record got from its original state to you. Do not just “guess” or assume that how things work today is how they necessarily worked one hundred years ago. All if these issues get to how we use and analyze the information contained in the record.
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