1-Be patient and never give up. The process of finding
out information about your ancestors can be a long one and you may hit road blocks, but I have always found that just when
I think I won't find out anything else, another source of information pops up.
2-When doing searches, always keep in mind variations on the spellings
of a family's last name because of language barriers and the changes that occured to many last names when people came to the
U.S.. This is probably something you have already encountered, but I know from my own experience that I have found at
least five different variations of Jakubowski in the records I've looked at, plus the name was changed to Jacobs after my
great-grandparents got to the United States. Because of this, using soundex in online searches is a good idea.
That will help to find variations of the names you are looking for. If you're doing searches through paper or microfilm
records, look at them carefully so you won't miss any of those variations that might actually be the record you are searching
for.
3-While they can sometimes be a good source of information, census, immigration,
ship, and even civil birth and death records are not always accurate. They are extremely dependent on who was taking
the information and who was providing it.
4-Church records are extremely helpful. If you know which church
your ancestors belonged to and are able to get access to that church's records, then you are in luck. Many U.S.
immigrants, like my great-grandparents, belonged to churches where people of their same nationality belonged, so there wouldn't
have been as much of a language barrier. I have found that because of this, the church records I looked at had the most
accurate information about my family. Another helpful tip I can provide when it comes to church records is to be wary
of the Latin used in many of them. It would be helpful to have a pocket Latin dictionary handy to translate these records.
Of course, the same would also go for looking at church records from foreign countries. Some of them are also written
in Latin, but many are written in that country's language. I once looked at church records from West Prussia that were
written in German, Polish, and Latin, so I had pocket dictionaries from all three languages handy and it made the process
easier. Also, when it comes to language in those records, sometimes a person's name will be listed in its Latin form.
It is usually pretty easy to figure out their actual name because the Latin names have similarities to the regular ones.
For example, my great-uncle is listed as Jacobus in his baptism record, but his actual name was Jakob.
5-War records, obituaries, and the Social Security Death Index are good places
to find birth and death dates, or at least birth and death years.
6-The Latter-Day Saints have microfilm and microfiche of church and civil
records from all around the world. If you go to www.familysearch.org, you can look at their library's catalog and see if they have the records you are looking for. For a small fee, you
can usually have the microfilm/microfiche sent to a Latter-Day Saints Family Search Center close to your home for you to view.
See their website for more info. Familysearch.org also has some records online that you can currently look at for free.
7-There are a couple of other good online genealogy search websites, such
as ancestry.com, ellisislandrecords.com, and castlegarden.org(has ship records from the Port of New York before Ellis Island
opened), but some of them do cost money to access records.
