Finding out about your ancestors is something we all do once in a while. Some conversations with our family prop up some name or person whom we are so intrigued by, that we try to know more about them. It is a pretty common activity for people. After all, we all want to know who we are, where we come from, what kind of people were part of our family, where they lived, what they did, and a whole lot more.
However, while trying to find out about your ancestry, it is pretty difficult to determine the starting point. You might not have much to go on. Furthermore, considering they lived a long time ago, there is no means for you to simply do a quick exercise to find them. One of the major reasons behind this is that there weren’t many tools in the previous generations that helped people document basic information. In fact, if you find any information about your ancestors, it can sometimes be nothing less than a miracle.
Lucky for us, we live in the era of digitalization and information. You can find documents, articles, and written material that dates back centuries, and you can search for it too. So, if you’re wondering how to go about it, let us help you. In this article, we’ll take you through the different ways in which you can know who your ancestors are.
Talk to the Relatives
Start simple with a conversation. Reach out to the people who you think were closest to a specific ancestor and talk to them. You’ll most likely learn about the most basic details, including name, age, when they were born, when they passed away, who their relatives were, and more.
Talking to near and dear ones is an exhaustive process, but it is the best place to begin if you know nothing about a person. In fact, you might even hear some stories or anecdotes or get a history lesson about a particular person. The upside to this is that you can narrow your search further and get your hands on all the necessary information relatively easily. So, do not forget to reach out to the closest living members of the ancestor.
Public Records
Usually, government and other publicly available records will be your next step. Once you know a person’s name, age, and the place they lived and died in, you can check the public records. Most county and state governments have these census records available for your perusal. All you need to do is go to the town hall or the county office where the person resides and start sifting through people’s files.
The process is quite tedious because it requires manual labor. Since there’s no way around it, you can take someone with you, who can help with the search, thus making your job easier. However, there are a few downsides to this method.
First, not all counties/state offices maintain proper records, which are really old. In fact, their files might be lost, and you will never find out about your ancestor. Second, the clerks in these offices take a lot of time to respond and give you access to the files. You need to complete numerous formalities and procedures before you can start the actual search and filtration process. Don’t be disheartened if your efforts yield no result in such cases. We’ve still got a few avenues left.
School Records and Yearbooks
If you somehow know where the person has studied, you can go to their school, college, or university. Educational institutions have yearbooks and records of everyone who studied there for decades. They would have likely preserved their alumni records for even a century if the place is old and historic. Thus, going to such places can be a good place to learn about an ancestor. If you’re looking for someone in your grandparents’ generation, chances are you might even find a yearbook with their name and photograph in it. So, this method is a good way for you to find out about what the person studied and a tiny window into who they were during their school or college days.
No Name Search
Let’s say you have no details about the person you seek. You might know just their location and maybe their date of birth. Don’t fret, as there’s still a way for you to search for them. You can perform no-name searches on certain aggregator platforms where the tool will list out all people who lived during a particular period in a particular location. Once again, you will have to go through several thousands of records to be able to find your ancestor, but it will be worth the shot. In fact, if you’re looking to include them in your family tree or trying to understand the family history, it is even more important for you to try.
Search with People Legacy
Sometimes you might have a name and maybe the person’s location. However, you might not know when or where they passed away. In such cases, platforms such as People Legacy come to your rescue. The website works across the United States and keeps track of all cemeteries. Thus, all people who have been buried in any cemetery across the country will have a record on this website.
If you have the full name of the person and their location, you can simply type in these details and click search. Once you do, you’ll get a list of all people with that name in that place, and you can narrow down the person you’re looking for.
The platform also is linked with another page known as Veripages which gives background information on the person. So, if you want to know more about your ancestor, you can access the People Legacy tool. Besides this, the website also lists all the relatives of that person, along with their birth and death dates. So, in case you don’t find much about the person itself, you can try to search about their relatives and then use that to learn about the person you are interested in.
Search on Peoplelegacy.com
Check out the instructions to research your ancestry on this website.
- Visit the website www.peoplelegacy.com
- On the home page, enter first name, last name, and city/state.
- Click the “search” icon.
- Alternatively, You can click on “Cemeteries” at the top of the page.
- You will see a page with a list of cemeteries in the United States, with places arranged alphabetically.
- On the row of any state, you would find “Cemeteries” and “Memorials”.
- Click on “Cemeteries” or “Memorials” and you can get further details like the address, map, phone number, burial list, and working hours.
Conclusion
Thus, above are the top five ways in which you can search for your ancestors. Usually, the entire process is time and energy-consuming. In fact, traveling to different states, counties, or schools would cost you a lot of money. Thus, it completely depends on how important it is for you to know about the person. Are you doing it as part of a personal project, or want to create a family tree? You might even be doing it because the person seemed important, and you might want to know more about them. Whatever the reason, understand what you’ll be spending and what you’ll get, then take the appropriate course of action.
FAQs
What are the ways to know about my ancestry?
There are numerous ways to go about the process. You can start talking to the closest living relatives, search on aggregator platforms, look for their schools, and a whole lot more.
Can I find out about my ancestor through a public records office?
If the office is known to maintain its records properly, there’s a good chance you’ll find out about your ancestor. However, you’ll need to know their basic details and spend considerable time searching through the files.
Are aggregator websites online helpful in finding out about ancestral history?
Many websites are quite valuable, and you can learn a lot about your ancestral history through them.
