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Ancestry.com Class 2
I. Census Records
On the drop down menu click on
Census & Voter Lists.
Background:
Census records can be rich with details about
your ancestor. Be sure to look at each and every
question that was asked and think about what
the answer meant to your ancestor. Those
answers tell your family’s story.
While the questions in census records vary from
place to place, and year to year, you can find information like names of other household
members, ages, birthplaces, residence, occupation, immigration and citizenship details,
marriage information, military service and more.
From the Census and Voter Lists home page you can search all the
census collections. Doing a global search of all the collections is a
good way to start but you might miss a few good results. You can
narrow your search by using Narrow by Category. Try a global
census search and then narrow it to a particular census year by
clicking on the decade on the left and search again.
You can also search from the Ancestry home search page. Put in
the name of an ancestor.
Search
On the results page click on the Categories tab and select the census
you would lie to see.
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2. Suggested Records
From Ancestry main search page, put in the name of an ancestor alive
between 1850- 1940. Narrow the
search by selecting Census & Voter Lists.
After you bring up a census transcription,
note the suggested records to the right.
Explore a few and determine if they are
indeed your ancestor. Go back to a
transcription. Click on the name of a
family member. That person will now be
in the top position and suggested records
will show about that person. If suggested
records don’t show up about one
member of the family you may be able to
find them on another census by going to a
sibling and finding suggested records for that sibling. You can easily track a family
forward and backward in time by “census hopping”.
3. U.S. City Directories
Use the drop down menu and choose Card Catalog.
Select Schools, Directories & Church Histories. U.S. City
Directories will be one of the top collections on the right.
Select it, put in a surname or the full name of an adult
living between 1821-1989 and Search.
You can also browse directories from the right side of
the U.S. City Directories search page.
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4. Collaboration
“Approximately 80% of all research done in genealogy is duplication,” said Ron
Tanner, Product Manager for the Family History Department. “…is there anything
we’re going to have to do differently? The answer is ‘yes,’ we need to stop playing
Go Fish and play 52-card Share-em.”
Message Boards on Ancestry.com
From the Ancestry home page, click on
Collaborate.
Type in a surname in Names or Keywords and
Search.
Also, take a look at LOCALITIES CATEGORIES.
Roots Web
Go to http://lists.rootsweb.ancestry.com/
Type in a surname in the Keyword(s) and Search.
Link to articles on collaboration:
https://familysearch.org/blog/en/collaboration-sharing/
http://www.lds.org/church/news/familytree-new-familysearch-service-promotes-collaboration
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5. “Fun Stuff”- pictures
Use the drop down menu
and choose Card Catalog.
Under Filter by Collection
choose Pictures.
Notice the collections at the top are U. S.
School Yearbooks and Public Member
Photos & Scanned Documents. You can
Sort By different criterion, Search the
entire “Picture” Collection or search
individual data collections. Try searching
the entire “Picture” Collection. If there
are too many results, choose an
individual data base.