May 10, 2009
TRACING OUR
ROOTS
DEVELOPING YOUR PERSONAL GENEALOGICAL LIBRARY
Brenda Kellow
By staying home, more researchers naturally need the proper
tools for collecting and documenting their genealogical finds. Where do you find
a tip for correctly recording a document, for using vital records, understanding
church records, or how to abstract a deed properly? Although an online search
might have information, you must ask yourself if it is trustworthy. A personal
genealogical library is an investment and your choices need to be the tried and
true ones for conducting non-Internet research. Buying used books online is
possible and certainly less expensive, but I suggest you buy the better choices.
The most beneficial instructional manual for conducting
American research is Greenwood’s The
Researcher’s Guide to American Genealogy, my personal favorite and the
textbook for my classes. The latest
is the third edition, but used older editions found online are much less
expensive. Through his instructions, you will learn the proper way to evaluate,
find, and use records that are not on the Internet and may never be on it.
Adding Ancestry’s Redbook and
The Source should finish out the most
basic instructional books.
After learning how and where to research we usually begin
searching census records to identify where people lived during past decades.
County lines changed often in the early years of our country, but there are two
choices for pinpointing the county boundaries at any given time. One is
Dollarhide’s book Map Guide for U. S.
Federal Census History 1790-1920 and the other is the somewhat sophisticated
electronic software AniMap. For census content and schedules, Kemp’s
The American Census Handbook and
Lainhart’s State Census Records are
helpful. Her latest edition corrects the errors for the upper part of Missouri
made in the first edition.
Tackling county courthouses after finding our subjects on
the census requires understanding the different indexes and the different court
documents. Most everything to guide you throughout courthouse research is in
Rose’s Courthouse Research for Family
Historians.
The records for understanding and tracing land purchases
and sales are in the courthouse and mentioned in Rose’s book above, but the
quintessential book
for
understanding the many nuances is Ancestry’s
Land and Property Research in the United
States. The information remains pertinent although published a few
years ago.
As your research skills evolve and you broaden your scope,
have handy an older law dictionary such as
Black’s Law Dictionary; a
genealogical dictionary such as Harris’
Concise Genealogical Dictionary; an inexpensive book of the timetables of
history to relate current events with your ancestors life; and Mills’
Evidence, Citation and Analysis for the
Family Historian. EasyBib Free Bibliography is a handy online source.
It is necessary to have the Guide to
Genealogical Research in the National Archives for researching federal
records.
You will need a genealogical software program for recording
your family history research, documenting your proof, organizing your research,
printing out blank forms and blank censuses, etc. This is essential. The free
ones are just as good as the costly ones. You can test drive many of these
before you select one. The perfect software program is the one you like and can
use easily. For a selection, Google “free genealogical software programs” or go
to www.genealogysearch.org/free/freeware.html. If you choose the free Legacy
Family Tree, there is a free monthly user’s group for this software in the
genealogy library on the fourth Tuesday of each month from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30
p.m. They also meet at the same time in months with a fifth Saturday.
When you collect everything possible on each generation
back in time, you will want to refer to Hatcher’s
Producing a Quality Family History
before beginning to write. She mentions numbering systems, but refers readers to
Curran, Crane, and Wray’s Numbering Your
Genealogy, Basic Systems, Complex Families, and International Kin to become
acquainted with the various systems.
Collecting the proper tools for scholarly genealogical
research does not have to be expensive if you first try to buy them used. I
search online at places such as Amazon.com, Powell’s Books and Abe’s Books, but
there are many others you may find when you search Google for “used genealogy
books.” Having a personal genealogical research library at home is certainly
convenient and an asset to those searching on their personal computers.
Brenda Kellow has a bachelor's degree in history,
teaches, and lectures on genealogy. Before retiring to publish her family’s
histories in 2007, Brenda held certification as a Certified Genealogist and as a
Certified Genealogical Instructor. Send reunions announcements, books to review,
and genealogy queries to: TraceRts@verizon.net.
