Five Tips to Finding New Ancestors & Cousins

It is said that if you pick an ancestor back ten generations, there would be close to one million descendants. Many of us probably have those "Aunt Marys" in our family that traced our ancestral lines back to "Noah", or at least back into the 1500-1600s. These will be our "ANCESTRAL" lines.

Around 2012 or so, an emphasis on finding all the collateral line descendants, our cousins, was introduced. This is called "Descendancy Research". If you were to pick an ancestor just four generations back (a great-great grandparent), there will SIXTEEN collateral descendant lines to research. Sorry…just when you thought that your family history was done! Actually, it is quite exciting to think that we can work on finding new people in these lines, AND during a time period when records are more easily found. Don't forget that your collateral line living cousins may often have photos, histories, or other information about your family members just waiting to be shared with you.

You will find that doing research on descendant lines is much easier now with all the records coming on line. It is certainly much easier than trying to find your ancestry lines before the 1800s.

US census records started listing the names of individuals in 1850, and by 1880 the relationships of the household as well. Every 10 years a new census was completed, showing the composition of the family. New children will be added to the next census. Don't forget that there were children that were born and died between census decades and so their names wouldn't be noted on census records.

The first time you look at a census record with the names of your ancestors, perhaps your grandmother as a young girl, it is an exhilarating experience. The occupations of the head of household or older family members are listed. The birth places of their parents are also listed. This can help where there are two families with very similar names to identify which one is really your family. Did you know that the census record even shows the street address and name of where they lived? Take some time and search using Google Maps for the house, and see what you can find.

Record sources are the birth, marriage, death, census, and other records that we find. They document basic facts about that individual, like what day they were born on, when they were married, etc. It is important to "attach" these sources to the individual(s) to document the specifically entered facts. The following statement is often quoted.

Sources document that the individual actually lived. Just because Aunt Mabel told us that the information is true, doesn't mean it is, unless there are sources for the facts.

FamilySearch is now doing a lot of the searching for you, even while you are asleep. Just how cool is that? They will show you a record source as a "hint". Just look at it, and determine if it belongs to your ancestor or not and then attach it through their "Source Linker" if it is.

Sources not only have dates and places, but also may have information describing your ancestor's physical characteristics, like having red hair, being tall & slender, and having blue eyes. World War 1 Draft Registration cards are great for this kind of information. Census records will tell you where they lived and often what they did as an occupation and much more.

Let's say that I have an ancestor with 11 attached sources. It's interesting how many times I have just gone back to review each of the already attached sources, from top down, and found additional information to record from the source. Often other family members that have not yet been added to Family Tree are found. People that are attaching the record hints to FamilySearch, are just not gleaning all the information from the record source they are presented with.

The process of using the FamilySearch "Source Linker" can be a bit confusing at first. It is typical to not know how to use this tool and so some family members may have incomplete sources attached. We can show you how to use this great tool!

Another common problem we see, is that the person attaching the source record, doesn't even look at the actual document. They only look at the index of the document. Always look at the document image to see for yourself what is in it. Remember that dates or other information can be mis-indexed.

By actually looking at the document image, gleaning all the information from it, and correctly attaching the source, you will be amazed at how much more information will be available for them, including additional family members.