May 21 Workshop Lesson (1 of 3):
Speaking from the Grave: What will
Your Ancestors Tell You?
Research Skill Level:
Beginner, Intermediate, Advance
Be aware that no matter how much studying of your family you will do, or how often you will go to the gravesite where your ancestors are buried, they will not talk to you, because they are dead!
However,
their records will speak volumes for them, if you are willing to learn from
them. The records that we will
examine in this session are by no means all of the records that need to be
examined in order to get an accurate picture of ones family�s history, but they
can be a start. In my book, Researching African American Genealogy in Alabama
there are additional clues and records that will need to be analyzed.
I have listed some, but since the printing of my book in 2008, other
records have been discovered and will continue to be discovered throughout the
years, and that�s the beauty of researching the family�s history, it does not
get old!
As family
researchers, sometimes the only record we might have on an ancestor is the death
certificate. We will discuss in
this session the information that is found on the death certificate that will
lead to the census, birth, marriage, employment, mortuary, school, land, and
medical records, just to name a few.
Every record found on an ancestor has clues in them to lead to other
records.
For example,
each census taken in the US asked a different set of questions. By comparing
them, it is possible to get a very good picture of a person�s life. You are
likely to learn where someone was born, where their parents were born, the
number and duration of marriages, the number of children a woman birth and how
many survived, occupations, whether they were literate and whether they owned or
rented a home.
Each county
will have different set of records.
You will be surprise, for example in Elmore County, Alabama in 1920 and 1921
there are dog tag registration records, which my ancestors were listed on.
It was the law that you had to register your dog and my ancestor did so.
Your ancestors would have adhered to the laws of their county or state,
if they did not want to pay a finds for breaking the laws. These records were
kept; it is up to the family researcher to find them!
If you do not
have a death record, you will need to be creative to supplement your research by
using other resources, such as coroner, church, and military records.
Local newspaper research may also produce a death notice listing just the
basic facts, or an obituary with details about your ancestor�s life.
Although we will not be able to go in-depth in exploring newspaper
research, however we will talk about its importance to family history research.
Your ancestors
left road maps to your family trees, just follow them and it will be a learning
experience all the way.
The Wiregrass Common Heritage Project has been made
possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the
Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor
