Genealogy: How To Start
by Marsha Saron Dennis
Start with what you know: Write down everything you know about your family: dates and
places of births, marriages and deaths of all the members of your family starting with
yourself and your siblings, and going back, generation by generation, to your parents
and their siblings, your grandparents and their siblings, etc; occupation of family
members; where and how your ancestors immigrated to the U.S.; where the family
settled in the U.S.; languages they spoke; family stories (even if unverified) that have
been passed down through the years.
Find out what others in the family know: After writing what you know, circulate the
information to everyone for whom you have accounted in your summary. Ask each
person to check for accuracy, and to add as many facts as possible, also request
suggestions for which relatives are likely to know the most about the family. Make sure
to consult in-laws who often had to make a commitment to meet and remember all the
relatives and their relationships when they married into the family.
Interviews: After accumulating information on your own and from the clan, interview
people who have been recommended by the family as good sources for family stories.
Obviously, it makes sense to get to the oldest and/or frailest members of the family first.
Don’t ask questions that elicit “yes” or “no” answers. Ask open-ended questions such as
“What can you remember about your family gatherings when you were a child?”, “Who
came?”, “At whose home where they celebrated?”, etc. Ask the interviewee to describe
his or her early life within the family and the community. If the person being interviewed
was not born in the U.S., try to get him or her to recall life in the “old” country, as well as
the journey to America.
Research: Now you are ready to start searching for genealogical records. The family
inputs plus the interviews, added to what you already knew, should give you an idea of
what details are still missing and where to look for them. The bare bones of genealogy
are birth, marriage and death records; and these are usually the first documents sought.
Note that most vital records are housed in government repositories and are not online.
However, some indexes many be available online and in books. Because it isn’t always
possible to find these vital records right away, there are other sources to guide you.
The United States government has taken a census every ten years since 1790.
Because these records are kept confidential for 72 years, the most recent census open
to researchers is 1940. These records have all been digitized and are searchable by
name through databases (NYPL has free access to the best online databases).
Furthermore, New York State took censuses from 1825 to 1925. Extant schedules are
held by the respective County Clerk’s Offices within the State, as well as at the New
York State Library in Albany, The New York Public Library (Fifth Ave. & 42nd St.), and
the Municipal Archives (31 Chambers St.), also have collections of state census
enumerations for some local counties for various years.
Other records regularly used by genealogists include passenger ship arrival lists,
naturalization papers, newspaper death notices, probate files, cemetery records,
tombstone inscriptions, property records, voter registrations and records of religious and
fraternal organizations and unions. And never overlook something right under your
nose, such as family bible with a whole genealogy written in it, along with everyone’s
name and birth date!
Define your goals: Deciding to begin your quest by finding all of your ancestors, tracing
back all of your “lines” as well of coming back down the genealogical ladder to find all
your “collateral” relatives (descendants of your ancestors’ siblings), and all your living
cousins is noble, but unrealistic and doomed to failure. Set smaller, more reasonable
goals. Do you want to do both your mother’s and father’s families? Can you start with
just one? Are you hoping to have a family reunion on the Fourth of July with all your
extended family?
There’s nothing wrong with having as a long-term goal finding everyone to whom you
are related, both living and dead; but it is more likely that you will follow through to your
ultimate goal by beginning with smaller segments of the whole. Clearly there are times
that you have to gather information when it’s available, even if you then have to set it
aside until you are ready to pursue it; just understand that you can’t do it all at once. It
took thousands of years for you to be born into your family—don’t expect to unravel this
complex puzzle in six months!
Prepared & distributed by the Jewish Genealogical Society (New York)