Oct 11
14
The Real Lessons of Genealogy
When I was in the third grade, I rode my bike to school, and all the way there my mind roamed the universe—castles and knights, cowboys, sports, outer space and comic book characters–but not one thought was given to school. I wasn’t interested in school. It was only an irritant and a constant interruption of all the things that were important to my 8-year-old mind. In fact, the only way to make the school day bearable was to cram every available moment with things that had nothing to do with school.
And I wasn’t alone. The hallways, the gymnasium, the playground, the cafeteria were all filled with people playing at the latest fad. These fads included yo-yos, tops, baseball cards, crystal radios, Davy Crockett coonskin caps, pea-shooters, and squirt guns. The school, on the other hand, employed an army of teachers and coaches and lunch ladies and hall monitors to confiscate our stuff and stifle our fun, which admittedly slowed us, but never stopped us.
I think it was right about the time that yo-yos started to lose popularity that one of the guys came to school with a blue coin folder. It was made of stiff cardboard, with kind of a leatherette finish and silver printing on the front. Inside were round slots with the dates and mint letters printed below them. He had already filled in about a dozen slots with pennies, because it was a penny folder. He said that once he found all the pennies and filled in all the slots, he could turn in the folder for $50 at the bank.
Fifty dollars! We were amazed. We asked him where he got the folder, and he said the corner Rexall store carried them. No surprise, there. They were the ones who carried the yo-yos with rhinestones on them, the wax lips, and the miniature squirt guns so small you could hide them in the palm of your hand. All through the week, the blue penny folders started to appear in my classmates’ hands. Whenever someone got change back from his milk money, a dozen heads would gather and peer over his shoulder to see the dates on the pennies he was checking.
It was a careful time, I remember. I didn’t dare spend a cent until I had scrutinized the date on it. Bus money, milk money, and candy money were examined with an obsessive intensity, while nickels, dimes and quarters were practically ignored. I hounded my parents to let me look through their change every night, and insisted on silver coins for lunch money, so I could get pennies back in change.
When I think about it, we must have been an irritating bunch, always fiddling with our pennies. The only redeeming factor was that we only had penny folders, Any other denomination wasn’t of much interest to us–even dollar bills weren’t as magnetic as a handful of pennies. Most of us filled in the easy spots of our blue folders pretty quickly, until the slots that remained were for the scarce coins. As we began to realize what an ordeal it would be to truly fill one of these folders, we started to get discouraged and became bored with the whole affair. But there was one kid who showed up at school with his folder completely filled. We were impressed as only third graders can be, and asked him how he did it. His dad helped. His dad had a coin collection. His dad already had most of the coins, if not all of them.
The kid was proud of his filled folder, but he had no stories to tell about collecting the coins. He didn’t even know which ones were the hard ones to find. He didn’t know about the zinc-coated steel pennies minted during World War II because of the wartime need for copper in ammunition and other military equipment. Or the 1909-S VDB penny designed by Victor David Brenner at the request of President Theodore Roosevelt, that is one of the most in-demand items among penny coin collectors. Even those of us whose folders were mostly empty knew about these things. So what did the coin collector’s son get out of the experience? I think he got out of it what he put into it. The only kid with a completed penny folder, and yet he hadn’t learned what the rest of us who hadn’t filled their folders learned.
I’m not 8 years old any more, and I no longer collect pennies, but I have developed an interest in genealogy which isn’t so very different from the fascination I used to feel for all those third-grade fads. And every time I see people who people who hire a genealogist to do the research on their entire ancestry, or the ones who grab the work already done by a relative and use it to fill out a decorative family tree to hang on the living room wall, or the home genealogists who never read the books dealing with the time and place where their ancestors lived, but instead flip straight to the index to look for family surnames, I remember the kid who had a fully-filled penny folder, but who had learned nothing about the pennies it held.
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Jun 11
8
My Cousins and the Pogo Stick
I’d only seen them in comic books, but to my ten-year old mind, they were the coolest form of transportation known to man. It was my birthday, and my taste in toys had gotten so weird that my mother had no idea what to buy me for a gift. I really didn’t have any ideas either, but I was sure I would know it when I saw it.
We had gone to a tiny toy store in the neighborhood that was packed with every imaginable kind of toy. The guy who owned the place was always brusque and irritated whenever a kid came in alone or with friends to buy some model paint or a tube of airplane glue, but today I had my mom with me, and he practically oozed fake charm. He had dollar signs in his eyes, and I could swear I saw him rubbing his hands together when we walked in. Mom would have none of his nonsense, though. When he started to follow us, she told him we wanted to look ourselves, and if he followed us it would just make her uncomfortable. Reluctantly, he slumped back up to the cash register.
I knew I couldn’t take long, because this was a toy store, and mom wasn’t interested in looking at toys. My time was limited, so I scanned the shelves quickly, from top to bottom and left to right. Some good things, more good things, but I hadn’t seen the right thing yet.
Finally, I saw it. It was next to the bicycles and pedal-cars. A pogo stick. I’d never seen one in real life before. It was beautiful. Shiny red steel, with foot rests made of silver metal, and a greased pole coming out of the bottom with a crutch tip capping the end.
I lifted it gingerly and set the crutch tip gently on the floor. A shadow fell over me, and I looked up to see Mr. Toy-Store Man blocking the light.
“Can I help you?” he said with syrup in his voice.
“We’ll let you know,” mom said, already getting bored with this toy store excursion. Then she turned to me and asked, “What in God’s name is that thing?”
“It’s a pogo stick, I told her.” What do you do with it? she asked. “You ride it,” I explained. “Like a witch’s broom?” she asked. “No, you stand on it and hop down the street.” I told her.
Of course she didn’t understand, and she wasn’t interested enough to try. She just asked, “Is this what you want?” Oh, yes!” I said. And we walked out with the pogo stick wrapped in two of the store’s biggest bags and fastened with masking tape.
When my dad saw the pogo stick, he was a lot more interested. He wanted to know how it worked. I demonstrated for him, falling down a couple of times. It took some doing to catch and hold my balance. Dad just laughed and shook his head.
“What do you think of it?” I asked him.
“Looks like a good way to bust your butt,” he answered. “But, it’s your birthday, not mine, and I guess you’re as entitled to something stupid for a present as you are to something sensible, if that’s what you want.”
Pretty soon, I had hopped all over the neighborhood. I had let all my friends ride it, and everyone within a quarter-mile radius knew what a pogo stick was. I even took it when we went on vacation. Basically, it was a trip to visit my grandparents, but it also included side-visits to innumerable other relatives.
Dad’s parents lived on a farm, and they had another son who lived a couple of miles away. My uncle was also a farmer, with four sons, all teenagers. They were all older than me, and bigger than me, plus we were on their turf—the farm. I was a city boy who didn’t know anything about farming, so my cousins and I just stood around scuffing the ground and looking at our shoes in the ninety-degree summer heat.
Dad came out of my uncle’s house with a glass of iced tea and saw us doing nothing, and being awkward, so he said, “Why don’t you go get your pogo stick. I doubt these boys have ever seen one.” So I went to the car and got it.”
When I showed up with the pogo stick, everybody was amazed. They circled it, like it was alive and it might strike like a snake. I showed them how to ride it, and the ice was broken. They hopped on the hard clay, on the wooden porch, and on the flat rocks. We went from cousin-strangers to cousin-friends, thanks to the pogo stick.
When it came time for us to go, my youngest cousin handed me back the pogo stick, as we were saying our goodbyes. Dad called me to one side and said, “You know, these boys have never seen a pogo stick before, and if you take this one away, they may never see one again. Why don’t we just leave it with them. We can always get you another one.”
I thought it over for a second. My cousins were really having fun with the pogo stick. Maybe more than I was. Plus, Dad said we could get another one. So we left the pogo stick with my cousins. They loved it.
I never did see another pogo stick anywhere, so of course Dad never replaced the one I had given to my cousins. But I always suspected that Dad knew we wouldn’t find another one. After all, there was no eBay in those days. I can still picture the pogo stick in my mind, the way it looked, all shiny and red. But even clearer, I can still see the looks on my cousins’ faces when they were hopping around in the dust that summer day.
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Confusion. Busywork. Chasing your tail. Scattering your focus. Too many choices. Frustration. Loss of patience. These are things that continually plague new family tree researchers, and it’s not altogether their fault. The blame lies with the do-it-yourself instructions being handed out (or sold) by pseudo-experts, and sometimes by real experts. It’s not so much that it’s untrue as it is that it’s unhelpful. Often, with good intentions.
There’s a difference between knowing something and being able to explain it so someone else can understand it. Plus, an explanation that makes sense to an experienced person may be totally confusing to a novice. This is why so many people give up ancestor hunting before they really get started. So, what’s the answer?
The answer is a different kind of explanation, one that walks a fine line between telling you what to do, and telling you why. It makes sense to explain the steps, but only to someone who understands the basic gist of where they are trying to go with their family tree research.
Here’s an example. People tell you to interview family members, which is good. However, it can lead to your getting confused and overwhelmed. Your fundamental, bare-bones family tree is not about brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles. It is about you, your parents, their parents, their parents’ parents, and so on, back as far into the past as you can go. To maintain your focus, you need to concentrate on the “parents of the parents” concept as your road map. The other relatives are not in that direct parental line, so they are of secondary importance to your quest.
Back to the parents of the parents. Once you find them, you need to document that they are your ancestors. What would qualify as documentation of ancestry? Three records:
- Birth Certificates
- Marriage Certificates
- Death Certificates
Are these the only acceptable documents? No. Are they the easiest to find? Sometimes. Then why mention only these three? They are the most obvious official documents that outline a person’s life. Birth, marriage, and death. Any family history researcher who keeps these documents in mind won’t stray far from the trail.
Now here’s how these documents work. A birth certificate will identify the person, and the date and place of birth. However, it will also tell who the parents were. This helps you go back into the past, locating the parents of the parents.
Marriage certificates document a fork in the road. Marriage is the basis for new family lineages being formed. To trace them backwards, we need to know the date and location of the marriage and name of the spouse. Fortunately, the marriage certificate will provide the maiden name of the bride.
Death certificates mark the end of a life. They contain the name of the individual and the time and place of death.
How about other documents, like obituaries? Having the time and place of death is often necessary to be able to find the dates and towns where the obituary was published.
Genealogy isn’t like a blueprint, where everything is mapped out in advance, requiring only that you follow the steps. It’s more like a treasure hunt, where the end isn’t in sight, but where each discovery contains a clue for finding the next. That’s how beginning family history researchers should be taught.
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Mar 11
22
The Twin Hats of a Genealogist
Genealogists wear two hats. First hat is that of the rational, fact-finding researcher. This is the no-nonsense hat of the person who scours the information repositories, who photographs and scans, who copies, transcribes and indexes, who pins down significant dates and places, and who footnotes and documents every source.
But there is another hat, that of the assumer. I realize that budding family tree researchers are taught that assuming is the archenemy of genealogy, but it isn’t. Assumption is often the only thing that can keep the research going. To jump start it when it stalls. It’s like the third step of the scientific method: “Construct a Hypothesis.”
The problem arises when the motivation behind an assumption is questionable, like the burning desire to prove oneself related to some historical luminary. Of course, that’s not a bad assumption, provided your search goes back far enough and wide enough, since we are all related, in the earliest times.
But this kind of motivation is dangerous whenever it leads us to single-mindedness in our search, causing us to look only for data that supports our assumption, instead of simply following the ancestral trail to wherever it may lead. The former technique causes us to research the family tree from top to bottom, ignoring the fact that family trees grow upside down. You, as the researcher, are the starting place, not some famous historical figure you think or wish to be your ancestor.
The best kind of assuming is the kind that inserts intuition and supposition into the detective- work aspect of genealogy. This can be very effective when you run into a dead end in your research. For instance, an ancestor who appeared on one census record is not found on the next, and yet all logic seems to point to the conclusion that they should be. This is when it may be helpful to hypothesize.
You may want to assume that the person had gotten married and moved. Or, if you know the local history of the time, you may know that flood, famine, financial failure or some other problem had affected the area, and that moving was a common solution. Often, many people moved to the same place. Another assumption you might make is that the person changed the spelling of his or her name, or shortened it.
Assumptions like this are only working theories that allow you to plug in a what-if notion and see if it gets you past the hole in the trail. It isn’t jumping to conclusions as long as you make certain that you verify everything that you have assumed. In fact, verify everything you have been told, read, or assumed before you begin to rely on it.
So those are the two hats of the genealogist. I wonder if there’s any connection with the twin-billed, deerstalker hat that Sherlock Holmes wore.
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If a genealogist from the past were to dog our steps these days, he would pound his fists while imagining how much more research he could have accomplished if he’d had access to a computer, and he could have done that research without having to travel. Travel? How about without leaving home? Or without even getting dressed? He would think us lucky, but lazy. And he would be right.
Speaking of lazy, what would our counterpart from yesteryear think of us if we were to just sit back and wait for our research results to come to us? Impossible? He might think that, but how about you?
How about if you could set up your research queries, and then take a nap? Or go to the movies? Or even go on vacation? It’s not quite that easy, but almost.
The secret is to make use of Google Alerts. What’s that? It’s nothing more than a service whereby a user can be notified automatically whenever certain content is released by any of a multitude of sources, including blogs, news, the web, video or discussion groups. Once you enter the information you want monitored, you will get an email the moment something turns up on that topic.
So the only real work is the setup. To do that, just go to Google Alerts, where you will find a form with spaces for five different choices.
Choice # 1. This is the most important and requires the most thought. This is where they ask for your search terms. Here are a few suggestions. When you enter an ancestor’s name, don’t put it in quotation marks, because that will require any results to be an exact match. A middle name added or excluded can throw your query off. On the other hand, you do want to string information together, separated by a +. This means the information following each + has to be included in the results. Thus, your search terms for a paternal great-grandfather, who died in Topeka, KS in 1897 might be expressed as: [John A. Smith + Topeka, KS + 1897].(Brackets are mine) If you know the name of the person’s spouse, express it as [John A. Smith AND Loretta Smith].
As you can imagine, some experimentation will be in order until you find the best way of expressing the search to get the results you want. You can also enter multiple searches for the same person by using different search terms.
Choice # 2. The “Search Type” is easier. Just select “Everything.”
Choice # 3. For: “How Often,” select “as-it-happens.”
Choice # 4. For Volume,” select “All results.”
Choice # 5. For “Deliver to,” select your email address or feed.
You can quit here, and go take your nap, or enter another set of terms for another alert for another ancestor. You can enter as many alerts as you like, up to 1,000.
You can also search for other things regarding your ancestry. Enter a birth date, a birth place, a marriage date and /or place, a military unit and date during wartime, etc. This may inform you of a flood, a famine, a financial failure, an important local event or a global one. This kind of search will provide the kind of background information that breathes life into your family history, lifting it above the ordinary catalog of names and dates. Knowing what was going on in the world at significant times in your ancestors’ lives helps you feel empathy for their motivations and choices. It also feeds any detective instincts you may have by providing reasons why an ancestor may have moved from where you last found them.
Ancestral information is added to the Internet every day. By using the automated Google Alerts system, you will save yourself the trouble of repeated daily searches for the same information. Plus you can get in more nap time.
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Genealogy is a waiting game—at least as far as U. S. Census records are concerned. Take the 1940 Census, for instance. Everyone knows it won’t be available to the public until the second of April in 2012. That’s because census information is kept secret for 72 years after it is taken. To protect the privacy of those still living, they say.
True or False?
It is true, but there’s a way around it. It’s called the Census Bureau Age Search Service. The Bureau will search any census record from 1910 to 2000 and send you an official transcript of their findings. This means that every single item on your ancestor’s line entry on the Census reports for any of those years can be revealed to specific relatives.
What Kind of Information Is Available?
It is important to realize that you will not be able to see the original census record, but a transcript. The transcript you receive will contain the individual’s name, relationship to the head of household listed on that census, age, and state of birth. It may also contain the sex and race. If the person was born in a foreign country, their citizenship will be indicated. Neither state of birth nor citizenship are available in census reports from 1910 to 1950. If your ancestor suffered from Black Lung, certain pieces of data, such as their occupation can be requested. If the individual cannot be located in the requested census, a form will be sent stating that fact.
Who May Receive this Information?
Of course this information is available to the person to whom it relates, parents or guardians (with documentation) of minor children, or legal representatives of mentally incompetent persons. In the case of deceased persons, which is the area family history researchers are interested in, the application may be signed by:
- An immediate blood relative. This means a parent, sibling or child.
- A surviving husband or wife.
- An administrator or executor of the estate.
- A beneficiary of a will or insurance policy.
All applications regarding deceased persons must be accompanied by a certified copy of the death certificate, along with a statement of the relationship to the deceased. If the applicant is a legal representative, a copy of the court order naming him or her so must be included. If the applicant is a beneficiary, legal proof of that beneficiary status is required.
How May this Information Be Used?
This data may be used to qualify for social security or other retirement benefits, to apply for a passport, in making passport applications, to verify relationship when seeking to settle estates, to fulfill any requirements for a birth certificate which may be unavailable, and for genealogy research.
How Much Does It Cost?
The age search is available to the public for what the Census Bureau calls a “congressionally mandated fee.” What that amounts to is $65 for a search of a single census for for a single person only. Money orders are accepted for payment. Oddly enough, credit cards are not accepted, but personal checks are.
Also available is further data on the same person, which is known as the full schedule, consisting of the complete single line entry of personal data recorded for that person only. Since this information is provided in addition to the regular transcript, there is an additional fee of $10.00 for each full schedule. Full schedules are not available for the years: 1970, 1980, 1990 and 2000.
How Do I Apply for a Census Bureau Age Search?
Applicants must fill out a BC-600 application form, enclose the appropriate fees, and mail it to the U. S. Census Bureau location indicated on the form.
How Long Does It Take?
Applications are processed in the order in which they are received. For an additional $20 fee, applications can be expedited, meaning a week or less to process. For three-day receipt of results, you can overnight the application to the Census Bureau, enclosing a pre-paid, overnight carrier, return envelope.
If you simply can’t wait for the next census report to be made publicly available, the Census Bureau Age Search is a genealogist’s simplest solution.
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Feb 11
25
Are You Tweeting Your Descendants?
Nothing excites a family history researcher more than discovering letters from an ancestor. Why is that? Well, for one thing, letters usually contain names and dates, mention relatives and explain relationships, but they also offer a much deeper layer of information from the standpoint of genealogy.
Letters convey the mood of your family member at the time they were written. They also are likely to be filled with details of everyday life, illnesses, weather, financial issues, family challenges, and dozens of intangible descriptions that give the reader a feel for the time in which their author lived.
Plus, it’s not only limited to letters. Diaries are another personal communication from your ancestor or ancestress—usually intended for no other eyes but his or her own. Consequently, people writing down their most intimate thoughts and feelings in a journal have no reason to hold back, to censor their comments, since they expect no one else to see them. And they may be right.
On the other hand, many times, long after the writer’s death, his or her correspondence and personal journals, which have been tucked away in a chest in the attic of a descendant, do get discovered and read avidly by a family member hungry for information about his ancestry.
Now, there is a new wrinkle. These days more and more people do their writing digitally. What’s the reason? Saving trees? Shrinking storage space? Easier retrieval? Or is it just that we are becoming more comfortable with our computers than we are with pen and paper? Look at any blog. Web log. Log. That’s a public journal, and it’s digital. Another thing: to what extent has fast, free email replaced the slower, costlier snail mail—at least for communicating with a person, as opposed to getting deliveries from eBay?
What about Facebook? Twitter? Millions of people are doing their writing in these online archives. Their perspective is usually, like that of the ancestral diary writer, intended for a semi-private audience. But won’t our descendants have access to this information also?
On April 15, 2010, Twitter virtually guaranteed that our future descendants will be privy to all of their ancestors’ Tweets by donating its Tweet archive to the Library of Congress.
The Library of Congress has a tradition of collecting and keeping individuals’ firsthand accounts of history. This was done following the Pearl Harbor attack and the events of September 11, 2001. So why not gather Tweets?
Now think about the kinds of information we will be leaving our future family researchers. Moods, thoughts, favorites, opinions, dislikes, daily activities—the kind of information genealogists are desperate to learn about their ancestors.
It’s too early for our generation to reap the benefits of ancestral Tweeting, but it does affect us. Remember the old saying, “Never write down anything on paper that you don’t want shouted from the rooftops?” Take out the word “paper,” and you have something to consider whenever you are expressing yourself digitally.
Most important of all, keep in mind that when you Tweet, you are painting a digital portrait of yourself for your descendants—one that will be part of the legacy which you are leaving for future family trees. Are the tweets you are leaving today examples of how you want to be perceived by your great-great-grandchildren after you are gone?
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Feb 11
21
Dad Versus the TV Repairman
Television was a big deal in the 1950s. Evenings started to revolve around whatever was on TV. Little TV tray tables were invented so families could eat TV dinners in the living room, while they watched family programs in front of the set.
The only problem was when the television went on the blink. My dad could fix about anything, but he didn’t dare attempt to fix the TV. My mom would just call the TV repairman. He would come out in a little panel truck, which was like a van without the side windows. It always said “So and So TV Repair Service” on the side of the truck, and when the repairman got out, he carried a good-sized black case, like a doctor’s bag, only much bigger.
One time, the TV had gone out on a Thursday night, which was a catastrophe because the weekend was coming. Saturday morning cartoons. First thing Friday morning Mom called the repairman, and he showed up an hour later. I sat down on the floor and watched him open his case, which was full of television tubes and wires and stuff. The inside of the lid had a mirror built into it, so that he could set it at an angle in front of the TV and see the screen while he was fiddling around in the back.
After a few tubes had been swapped out without success, the repairman gave us the worst possible news. He thought it was the picture tube. We were doomed. Picture tubes cost a fortune. In any case, he would have to take it in to the shop to be sure.
I watched sadly as he removed the “guts” of our TV from the cabinet and carried it out to his truck. My weekend was ruined.
Later that day, Mom got a call from the repairman. He said the picture tube wasn’t the problem, and that he had the set fixed. He wanted to know if he could bring it by right then. Mom said he must be in a hurry to get his money, but I was just happy to get the TV back.
The repairman returned, bringing his wife and two kids with him. He said they were on their way to dinner. Mom was also fixing dinner in the kitchen while the repairman replaced the innards of the TV, and his wife and kids sat on the couch.
For some reason, the picture was all skewed and the screen was rolling up and up. So the repairman got out his toolbox, set up the mirror, and started to tinker in the back of the set.
When Dad got home from work, he looked suspiciously at the TV man, then glanced sideways at his family on our couch. Mom came in and introduced everybody to Dad, then she said dinner was ready. Naturally, she invited the repairman’s family to eat with us. They refused; Mom insisted; they accepted.
The repairman talked all through dinner. Dad said nothing, the repairman’s wife said nothing, so Mom nodded politely and made the appropriate responses to whatever the repairman said.
After dinner, back in the living room, the repairman set to work again, fiddling with adjustments. He would get the picture perfect, then do something else, and it would start to roll again. Finally, he had gotten a good picture, and Dad said, “Stop! It’s fine right there, just as long as it stays that way.”
The repairman got up and walked around the set, looking at the screen. He smiled to himself and nodded, then he went around back of the TV again to screw on the back panel. When he was finished, he walked around the front and sat down next to his family on the couch, saying he wanted to give it a few minutes, to make sure the picture stayed the way it was.
Next thing we knew, the Friday night movie was coming on, and the repairman said how he had always wanted to see that movie.
The movie droned on and on. My dad’s eyes began to get smaller as he became more and more tired. It was nearly two hours before that movie ended, and by that time Dad’s eyes had shrunk to the size of peas. He looked over at the TV repairman and said, “You know. . . I only wanted you to fix my TV; I didn’t want you to move in with me.”
The man and his family left. Dad turned off the TV.
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It’s true that the name seems a little grim and impersonal—a government index of death—but what else are you going to call it? The name, Social Security Death Index is accurate, blunt and to the point.
Back in 1935, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law, and that led to the Social Security Administration being established in 1936. Its purpose was to provide social insurance programs for the elderly, survivors, and the disabled.
For genealogists, the upshot is that a database was created that lists most individuals with a social security number who died in 1962 or later. This database was called the Security Death Index, or SSDI. The only restriction to inclusion is that the death has to have been reported to the the Social Security Administration. That just means that, whenever a family member, an attorney or a funeral home files for a person’s death benefits the information goes into the SSDI.
Why is the SSDI so helpful to family tree researchers? Simple, it contains several kinds of very valuable genealogical information about family predecessors who are deceased, including:
- Surname
- First name
- Middle initial (SSA starting including after the 1990′s)
- Social Security Number
- Date when Social Security Number was issued
- State or territory where the Social Security number was issued
- Birth date
- Month and year of death before 2000; full date afterward. This can be help you search for an obituary, a death certificate, or a will.
- Last place of residence
- Lump sum payment
If you are able to find a deceased ancestor in the SSDI database, you can then go directly to the Social Security Administration and order the actual application filled out in order for him or her to get a Social Security card. The application is known as Form SS-5. This form will give you even more genealogical information, including the place of birth, the father’s name and the complete maiden name of the mother.
Finding out exactly where your ancestor was living at the time when a Social Security number was issued can be aided by a little trick. Your family member’s state is coded into the first three numbers of the SSN. Each state has its own three digit preface, and these are listed on the Social Security Number Verification Service web site. The first numbers issued were New Hampshire, starting with 001-003, and the latest were Guam, American Samoa, and the Philippine Islands with 586. Unfortunately, on June 25, 2011, the Social Security numbers will no longer conform to these rules. Instead, they will be assigned randomly.
It is important to be aware that the name of every deceased person with a Social Security number is not included in the SSDI database. Here’s why:
- An individual’s death may not have been reported to the Social Security Administration.
- If your ancestor’s death may have occurred prior to 1962, and the Death Master File wasn’t maintained in a computer database.
- Your family member may not have been a participant in the Social Security program.
- It could be that survivor death benefit payments are or were being made to dependents or spouse.
- If your family member may have died recently, his or her death may not be indexed yet.
- There is a considerable possibility of human error in the index records, either on the the death benefit request form or in the actual entering of the information into the SSDI. In fact, the Social Security Administration offers no guarantee of its accuracy.
Several genealogy web sites purchase the SSDI information from the Social Security Administration and make it available online. Most of them are paid subscription sites, but some are free. A Google search can give you their URLs.
When searching for your ancestor or ancestress, you may not get results the first time. If that happens try different search parameters:
- Search by your ancestor’s surname, first name, state, and exact date of birth.
- Search by your ancestor’s surname and first initial, state and exact date of birth. This variation can help because sometimes the SSDI database only has the first initial instead of full first name, and many times the first name is misspelled.
- Search by your ancestor’s last name and date of birth, without entering the first name. This is because given names are sometimes abbreviated or misspelled, and other times a nickname may have been used.
- Search without entering your ancestor’s surname, but only the first name and date of birth. This may work when you don’t know your ancestress’s married name or if it entered in the index incorrectly.
- Search by only entering your ancestor’s surname and date of death .
- Search without using your ancestor’s name at all. Just enter his or her date of birth and date of death. Many times this will turn up results when entering names will not.
- Search by both your ancestress’s maiden name and her married name.
As you can see, the SSDI is more than just a way to document a family member’s death. It can also provide valuable information that will enable your genealogical research.
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A pedigree chart is a symbolic way of drawing a family tree, sort of like a stick figure is a symbolic way of drawing a person. There are plenty of notions about its invention and history, one theory being that the chart was developed in sixteenth century England by the College of Arms in London as a way of recording the ancestry of anyone claiming entitlement to bear a coat of arms. This meant they must either have received a grant from the College or were able show that they were descended from an ancestor who was entitled.
Assuming that you are neither an expert nor a maverick, the simplest pedigree chart used by family history researchers has spaces for four generations. It looks like this:
Simple Pedigree Chart
You can see that it’s like a simplistic sketch of a tree, only turned on its side. The sideways position is merely for convenience, and you can do it vertically if you like. After a quick look, the whole thing appears pretty obvious.
Before you get carried away with filling out your ancestral chart, you need to make sure you have gathered the information necessary to fill it out. Actually, you may not have all the information, so gathering the information you have available is a more realistic way to look at it.
You’ll notice that all of the spaces are numbered, beginning with 1, which is you. Print your name into space number one, CAPITALIZING the letters of your surname. This is true for every surname you enter in the entire chart, so that you can easily spot them later. Enter your middle name, as well as your nickname (in quotation marks), if you have one.
The next space is on the left, or top, numbered 2, that of your father, and to the right, or below, is number 3, that of your mother. Again print your father’s surname in capital letters, and your mother’s maiden name in caps, as well.
Obviously, each of your parents has two parents, a mother and father, your grandparents. Print each of their names with the surnames (maiden names) in caps also.
Next you will find eight spaces for paternal great-grandparents and maternal great-grandparents. Following the same format, print each of their names in the appropriate spaces.
Once you have done this, you have completed the simplest form of pedigree chart. For some people, this is enough information to fill in a basic family tree chart—the kind that resembles a tree and is sometimes displayed on the wall in a frame.
For others interested in being a more serious ancestor finder, more information is needed. You can download a more complex pedigree chart that will provide spaces for additional details including: date of birth, birthplace, date of marriage, date of death, and place of death.
When you are filling in this information you want to express dates in the way it is done in the military (1 January 2001). Locations are written as City, County, State (two-letter postal abbreviation), and Country. All of this format stuff is a way of standardizing how family genealogy information is presented so that anyone looking at it will immediately understand.
You will note that the pedigree chart has a blank space for you to write a chart number. This first chart, always starts with you, so it is always chart # 1. The organizing capability of the pedigree chart lies in the following:
Every person on chart # 1 has a number. When you select an ancestor from that chart to research in more depth, start a new blank chart. This ancestor will then become # 1 on the new chart.
If you look at the top of your blank chart, you will find a statement that person number 1 on that particular pedigree chart is identical to person number _______ on chart # ________.
Go back to chart 1 and take your selected ancestor’s number, then put it into the “identical to person number” space on your new chart. Next, enter “1” into the chart # space.
Every time you decide to record another ancestor’s history, start a new chart, with the new ancestor as # 1. This system of numbering charts is how you are able to continue backward through the generations, following individuals, and keep track of each person by relationship.
Once you have a clear picture of how the pedigree chart works, you are ready for an instructions on how to start your family tree. For a simpler, space-saving method of charting your family tree information, you may want to consider the Ahnentafel.
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