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“Start with yourself and work back in time,” James M. Beidler said.
Beidler, of Leesport, is a freelance writer and lecturer who's been recognized for his award-winning newspaper column “Roots and Branches.”
In his role as a commonwealth speaker with the Pennsylvania Humanities Council, Beidler recently presented “Finding Ancestral Devils in the Details,” a program on genealogy and the Internet. The program was hosted by the Kreutz Creek Library in partnership with the Kreutz Creek Preservation Society and Historic Wrightsville.
Simple rules
There are a few simple rules to getting started on your quest, but here are a few words of caution before you begin - becoming a genealogical detective can be habit-forming, an endless quest that keeps calling you back.
“It is never finished. It is the type of hobby where every time you find an answer, you find two more questions,” Beidler said.
There are a variety of sources to help budding genealogists get started on their journey
If you find a book or information about a family with your surname, do not assume you are related, Beidler said.
“It's more fruitful to begin with yourself, write down what you know about your immediate ancestors, interview those who are still living and then attempt to build upon this information,” he said.
Interviews with older family members can be a great resource and, while some of the information may be inaccurate, it can be helpful in further research, he said.
“Never discount family stories; also, never take them as complete gospel and truth, although most have some kernel of truth to them,” he said.
Search for truth
Since the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania did not issue birth certificates before 1906, baptismal records are helpful in researching births prior to that date. Family Bibles, Census records, wills, deeds, ship lists and other certificates are also helpful tools in researching your family history.
Do not assume everything you find is correct. Beginners often use family genealogies and county histories, which might contain errors. It's wise to double-check the information by using a primary source, such as those mentioned above, before including the details in your account.
“It cannot be overstressed to those starting out that, if they have to make an assumption about something they read, the assumption should be that the printed source is wrong . . . not that it is right!” Beidler said.
While it is important to “nail down the time period and location of a given ancestor,” it is equally important to “lose your sense of the standardized spelling of a surname,” he said.
“If I had a nickel for every time someone said 'Oh, that's not the way we spell our name,' I would have a lot of nickels. The Census enumerator, as he went around the country, did not ask how a name was spelled, so think of how it was spelled for your ancestor not how it was spelled by your ancestor. Think of a name phonetically, and think of all the different potential spellings. Look for a whole set of different variants,” Beidler said.
If you get stuck, Beidler said it can be helpful to branch out to the siblings of a direct line, rather than limiting your research to direct ancestral lines.
Check the Web
Additional resources are available on the Internet, offering a possible alternative to the genealogist who is not excited about digging through Grandma's attic or sorting through dusty church records.
“Two observations on this growing trend: Computers and genealogy software programs are wonderful for helping genealogists keep track of their data, and Internet sources should be held to the same standard as other documentation . . . the information must be traceable to a primary source to be useful,” Beidler said. “Recording that something was found on a certain Internet Web site is insufficient documentation.”
Help in researching your family tree is as close as the library of the York County Heritage Trust. Countless numbers of families have taken advantage of this valuable source for information on their family tree.
“Eighty to 90 percent of the people who come to the library come to do family research,” said Lila Fourhman-Shaull, librarian and archivist at the trust.
“We recommend that they try to gather as much as they can from their family first,” she said.
At the library, they can refer to as many as five different sets of file cards referring to surname. They can take advantage of deeds, county histories, church records, burial and baptismal records, wills, military service records and other bits and pieces of information about many of the families with ties to York and Adams counties.
In addition to these valuable resources, the library offers 43,000 books, a wide range of newspapers and other publications, more than 120,000 photographs, more than 14,000 slides and more than 400 audio recordings.
Mardella Fries Brenneman of Mount Wolf has been working on family history since she retired 14 months ago. She has done six families in all, her husband's ancestors and her own, and now has about 9,500 names of people who are related, she said.
“I hope to put my information on
ancestry.com to help others searching for these people,” she said.
She volunteers two afternoons a week at the York County Heriage Trust and finds “the volunteers that work there are very well-informed and I want to learn from them. The library staff is also very friendly and helpful,” she said.
Once the work is completed and genealo-
gists have done their research, many of them put their findings together in a pamphlet to share with family members at a reunion or have them printed in book form, librarian Fourhman-Shaull said.
She cautions that, once the project is started, many genealogists continue to search for more information.
“It all depends on the individual. Some people are never satisfied. They find one answer and five more questions. They keep looking for more information.”
Technical help
SOME FAVORITE GENEALOGY SOFTWARE programs available:
· Family Tree Maker Generations
· Personal Ancestral File (PAF) Reunion (for Macintosh)
· The Master Genealogist
On the Web
JAMES M. BEIDLER, a freelance writer and lecturer, provided the following information on Web sources:
· FamilySearch, sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, at http://www.familysearch.org, gives access to the Mormon databases, such as the International Genealogical Index and Ancestral File. The site also contains the Family History Library Catalog.
· RootsWeb, the “free genealogical community” at http://www.rootsweb.com, contains tutorials and other how-to information for beginners. Many societies have pages on RootsWeb.
· Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites at http://www.cyndislist.com is run by Cyndi Howells from Washington state. It contains more than 220,000 links to Web sites that are categorized by topics such as geography, record type, ethnicity, etc.
· Pennsylvania GenWeb Project, http://www.usgenweb.org/pa, part of the USGenWeb and WorldGenWeb projects, has a Web site for every county. Some have abstracts of original records and queries for trading information; all offer a starting point to orient beginning genealogists to the particular county.
Getting started
A QUICK LIST to get you started:
· Check your family first. Interview your relatives.
· Be prepared for tall tales, but know there's a nugget of truth in them.
· Don't assume that everything you read and find is correct.
· Don't assume your surname was always spelled the way it is now.
· Check the Web.
· Know that you could get hooked. Experts say every answer you find can lead to more questions.
