Those beginning in family history research often are not sure how the classification of the information found really works.  To do research properly and to understand the value of what you find it is important to learn how to group your information into classifications. As well, it is also good to learn how the review process works.  Confused yet?

What A Source Is

When doing family history research you find out information from various sources.  Sources are things like family bibles, tax returns, census data or things your grand mom said.  More specifically we can classify sources into the below Types.

1. Books

2.  Documents

3.  People

4. Artifacts

Sources are considered “original” or “derivative”.  An “original” source can come in various forms.  We are not concerned with the reliability of the information at this point, but simply the type of information such as visual, oral or written down.  How was the information distributed to you?  To be original it needs to be straight from the source and not derived from some other source.

A “derivative” source is information that originally came from another source and so is repeated or copied in written, oral or visual format.  Such records include things like indexes, a typed copy of a record, transcribed wills, etc.

Defining Information

Having gathered your sources you will then have “information” to look at and sort through.  This information is classified into “primary” or “secondary” types.  Many researches get confused at this stage, by those two classifications.

Primary information is written or oral communication that comes from a primary witness to the event or from a person with first hand knowledge. An official who is responsible for directly dictating records of a court proceeding will produce primary information.  A relative who was at a wedding of your father will produce a primary oral history of the event.  A family member writing down births in a bible right after the event is producing primary information.  The form of the information is not important and the accuracy is not guaranteed either, but it is primary.

Secondary information is information received from a secondary source such as a story handed down verbally through the generations.  Such a story is far removed from the original witness to the event.  Again, the form of the information is unimportant here.  If the information you have on hand was written or spoken by someone not directly knowledgeable to the event or officially appointed as the recorder of the event, then it is secondary.

Determining The Evidence

With your sources and your information in hand, you can now determine how strong the evidence is for your family history questions.  Ask yourself, “What is the relevance of the information I have and how well can it answer my family history questions?”  Evidence is born from information and comes in two types, Direct and Indirect.

In family history research “direct” evidence is evidence that is complete in itself.  You don’t have to fill in missing pieces or assume things.  This evidence includes all the details you need.

“Indirect” evidence is incomplete and needs more supporting evidence before you can reach a decision as to its conclusiveness.  It can be compared to the circumstantial evidence decreed in law courts.  If you are looking at evidence that seems to need some assumptions on your part before you can reach a conclusion, than it is “indirect” evidence.

Check out this excellent video about citing online sources:

There are several methods or principles you can use for searching land records in family history research to get a better understanding of how or where your ancestor lived.  One of the methods used is to recreate the neighborhood in which your ancestor lived.

You can use land records to reconstruct who lived in and around your ancestors.  They are a really good source for doing this.  The reason you should look at your ancestor’s neighbors is to notice any similarities between them and your ancestor.  Neighbors many times had similar migration patterns or immigration patterns.  You may find that it appears all of the surrounding neighbors came from one common place, either a foreign country or another state.  There were only so many migration routes from state to state, and your ancestor probably traveled on them.  If you had been unsure where the ancestor you are researching came from, this can give you a hint where to look.  It was common, the farther back you go for people to migrate together and live near each other.  If, in doing family history research, you acquired the land deed of your ancestor, take a look at the witnesses to the deed. They may have been neighbors.  By looking at the neighbors surrounding your ancestor you may find common patterns leading to more research.

In reconstructing a neighborhood while doing family history research you may employ other records such as census, tax or church records.  Using those records along with your land records can give you a better picture of the neighborhood.  If you were to look at local tax records you can see what families lived in the area.  Combining that with land records, connecting witnesses or examining tract books, you can confirm who lived near each other.  You may also find that some abstracts of land records have been published. They will list people living in the same small town.

Don’t forget to look at the Federal Land Tract Books.  Using these you can get a list of grantees as well as the location of their land.  The Family History Library has a lot of these on microfilm and many are available online as well (growing every year).

As an example, the below link is for a Federal Land Tract book for Butler County Alabama for before 1908.  It includes the first grantee of the land, and the location in range, township and section.  It also shows the year a patent was issued for the grant.  A map is on this site as well, indicating the location of the land.

http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Bluffs/3010/butl-idx.htm

Here is one for Washington County Florida for before 1908:

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~flwashin/WASH-IDX.htm

The National Archives also has Land Tract Books which are excellent for family history research. You may want to visit them.

http://www.archives.gov/publications/general-info-leaflets/67.html#use

As time progresses so does the availability of family history records online.

As we move forward it becomes increasing imperative for family history researchers to go online and do research.  Gone are the days of all hands-on research. We all knew it would come to this someday.  Yet researching in the online world is made complicated by two things.  The records appearing online are scattered and what records there are many times cannot be 100% trusted since the data may have been entered by a human.

As any family history researcher who has been online knows there is no way to avoid an eventual membership to Ancestry.com or access to it.  This is the premier online genealogy research site.  Any researcher who wants to move forward quickly probably needs access to this site to do so.  We all do want to move forward quickly because, lets face it, genealogy becomes a rush to complete what you can before you become an ancestor yourself!

Footnote.com is another online family history research site you need to think about joining.  It also is becoming a mandatory site.  With regularity the only two online sites we belong to are Ancestry.com and Footnote .com.  Even if we neglect to join some of our other sites every year, we make sure we at least join those two.

We want to particularly discuss Footnote.com right now because it is increasingly becoming a really cool site (as well as useful to family history research, of course).  If you don’t already belong to it you will want to take a look.  It is a little confusing to use at first but the amount of information available there is staggering.  Currently there are nearly 53 million historical documents there!  This is not a sales pitch.  Footnote.com is simply becoming a premier research site.

What is the coolest thing about Footnote.com?  They provide the original scanned copies of the documents they have.  Pay attention to this important fact.  The documents there are not indexes or copies of handwritten copies; they are scanned copies of real documents.  So you get to see the original source records.  As a family history researcher this is like finding a pot of gold!

The Free Material

There are several good free things on Foonote.com if you would like to try the site.  Some of the free reading material is just plain interesting reading, but may not have much to do with genealogy.  Most of it does though.  Some examples are below, but that is not all that is there.

-Free Photos.  You can upload your own and make comments on others photos, as well as view a huge library of historic photos for free.

-You can read Project Blue Book which contains 13,000 government UFO reports on sightings from around the world.

-You can look at the complete Pennsylvania Archives, which is 100,000 pages of information from 1664-1880.  This publication contains everything from tax, early military and early marriage records to historical accounts of Pennsylvania events from the Revolutionary War.  It is essential to Pennsylvania family history research.

-The Papers of the Continental Congress are here for free.  These were the official records of the early congress from 1774-1781.

Membership Benefits

There is almost too much on Footnote.com to cover in this article.  The major benefit of this site to family history researchers is the ability to see original documents and to attach notes to these documents.  Through the notes and interactions with other people looking at the same documents you can share information and history with each other.  It kind of connects original documents, with photos with stories with comments so that you get a much broader and updated view of the things you are looking for.

Footnote.com puts it like this, “…is a place where original historical documents are combined with social networking in order to create a truly unique experience involving the stories of our past.”

The help section has some very good introductory videos so you can learn to work with the site better.  I suggest starting with these as they do help a lot.  When we first got into Footnote.com we were confused as to how to use it.  It is heavily picture oriented so a fast internet connection is best.  The software they use which lets us read documents is powerful but can get bogged down.

I can’t emphasize enough the staggering information being put on this site.  They add millions of records a year, so you do have to go back in often.  They are especially big on war records.  I found the complete Revolutionary War pension records of my 4th great grandfather.  It was a scan of all the documents in his file at the National Archives.  Incredible!

Some documents they are currently putting on the site are:

-Board of Commissioners – Emancipation of Slaves in DC

-Civil War IRS Records – PA

-Civil War “Widows’ Pensions”

-Bayland Orphan Home Records

-Custer’s Court Martial

-FBI Case Files

-Missing Air Crew Reports, WWII

-Mormon Battalion Pension Files

-Newspapers (317 titles)

-Passport Applications, 1795-1905

-Pensions Index, Civil War to 1900

-Much, much more….

Some of the above are currently free to use.  They are not just indexes but scans of the originals.  There is a little green bar next to the current items that Footnote.com adds which tells you the percentage of how far they are to completing a project.

There truly is nothing close to this on the internet and it is reasonably priced at $55-$65 per year (they offer specials often so the price is in this range).  One trip to the National Archives, even if you live close, would cost more than that.  If you are at all into both history and family history research we suggest you try Footnote.com

Looking through land records is important for several reasons. You may have noticed we have mentioned theme before in this blog. That’s because using the land records of your ancestors can give you a broader idea of your ancestor’s life. Some things you can learn are the neighbor’s names, names of children, immigration dates to new areas, occupation and even economic status as a citizen. This type of information will take you beyond just knowing a few dates and marriages of your ancestor.

But before you begin doing land research for your family history research you need to prepare your notes and mind with the specifics of what you are looking for. You’ll need a research strategy. There are always new indexing of records going on and more and more land records are put on microfilm and the web every year. This gives you more opportunities every year to find new records, so don’t give up after 1 year of trying (and this applies to any family history research).

Did Your Ancestor Rent or Own
Many ancestors rented land, house or an apartment if they lived in or near a city. So you may not be able to find land records of an ancestor living in such a place. If your ancestor was a farmer in a rural area they probably owned land at some point.

What Was Your Ancestors Occupation
If your ancestor was a farmer, as most were the farther back you go in time, they probably owned farm land somewhere so records should exist for when they bough the land. If your family ancestor was a store owner or merchant in town then they may have owned a store but they also stood a chance of being a renter. You may not find land records for such an ancestor.

Have the Deeds of Your Ancestors Residence Been Indexed
Original records should always be your first choice, but if your ancestor’s place of residence has been indexed you can use these as a research tool. Some indexes include names of neighbors and or witnesses plus property descriptions. So they can be very useful.

What Years Are You Researching for Land Records
You need to know what kind of land records you may be able to find. Depending on the time period of the ancestor you are researching, different records may be available. Records can include grants, deeds, warrants, grants for military service, Native American land sales or leases.

Where Am I going To Go To Find the Documents
Once you have answered some of the above questions you will now have to figure out where the records may exist and if they even exist. Look up the county offices for the county you plan on doing family history research in, and the website, or a call, may tell you where their land records are located.

Census records will also tell you an ancestors occupation and if they rented or owned a home, depending on the year of the census. Census records, for certain years will also tell you the value of real-estate that they owned, giving you some idea of the magnitude of land your ancestor purchased.

The very best place to get census records online is at Ancestry.com. It isn’t cheap but I have personally taken my family back several generations using the census records found there, as well as some of the other data.

Ancestry.com Free Trial

Footnote.com