Question: I’m a beginner at this. On Ancestry.com when I type in a person’s name, birth year, state and marriage section that I want to check, I get SO many answers to look at that are from England, other states, etc. – about 20,000 or more. Why doesn’t just the person’s name & information that I put in come up? It’s so frustrating to sit and go through all this information because it simply has the same last name. Thank you Answer: Searching in a large online database can certainly be frustrating, even for those with years of experience. With databases such as Ancestry.com, you should use a search strategy. I suggest putting in a minimal amount of information about the target person, perhaps a name, one date and a place of residence, … Read entire article »

Question: What are the research techniques for an American Indian ancestor, great-grandparent? Answer: Research for American Indian ancestors living in the 20th Century are essentially the same as those of any other people in the United States. But, of course, as you go back in time, you may encounter some considerable differences in the number of written records referring to the Indian population. More than any other community, the researcher should learn all that is possible about the history and culture of the specific tribe or tribes involved to locate the various records that may have been created in the jurisdictions for those tribes. The first step is ascertaining the tribal association. This is accomplished by determining the tribes associated with the locality or localities where the ancestor lived. Quoting from the FamilySearch Research … Read entire article »

From time to time we will answering questions posed on the Family History Expos website in the Ask-the-Pros section. Here is this post’s question: Question: How do I find an obituary of a person who died in 1945 in the Ft. Bayard VA Hospital, Grant county, New Mexico? Answer: Thank you for this interesting question. Whether or not an obituary was written and printed depends upon the decedent’s surviving family members since they would usually be the ones writing any paying for the publication of an obituary. If an individual died away from family and friends or had very limited economic means, then there may have been no obituary written. However, even absent a formal obituary, a local newspaper may have printed a death notice. On the other hand, if the person who … Read entire article »