Genealogy Jottings

Genealogical research has changed since the last century. More and more information continues to be available online. Nowadays I can fill my days doing research from home.

For my recently discovered turn-of-the-last century ancestor, I have been amazed at the amount of information I could collect about his life in a short time without leaving the house or mailing a letter to the county. A few databases contain enough information for me to create a good profile of his life:

1. FindAGrave.com. My ancestor’s cemetery marker has been photographed and posted here. Someone added biographical information and links to monuments for a parent and a child.
2. Ancestry.com. Here I found both state and federal census records that offer my ancestor’s place of residence and the composition of his household.
3. Newspapers.com. This site has a searchable collection of county newspapers from my ancestor’s lifetime. I learned a bit about his daily life from news items describing his travels, land transactions, and political activities. I also found his 1925 obituary.
4. Glorecords.blm.gov. The Bureau of Land Management’s general land office records give me access to my ancestor’s homestead file and tell me the location of some of the land he owned.

In days gone by, I would have needed to write numerous letters and visit repositories, courthouses, and cemeteries to gather this much data. It would have taken months.

Today, once this man’s identity was discovered through a DNA test (another technological advance in itself), I was able to use 21^st century technology to compile a tremendous amount of information about him in just a few days.