This document provides an overview of a genealogy research class, including: - The class structure which consists of discussion and hands-on computer labs each week covering different topics like census records and vital records. - An introduction to genealogical research processes like collecting direct and indirect evidence to find answers about ancestors and sourcing information by citing sources. - An overview of types of genealogy sources and how to evaluate primary vs secondary sources and original vs derivative sources. - A discussion of popular genealogy websites like Ancestry, FamilySearch, FindAGrave and search strategies for using different web browsers and keywords.

1. Welcome
Genealogy Research
Class

2. Are you related?

3. Class Structure
•1st Hour: Discussion on Topic
of the Week
•2nd Hour: Hands on Lab with
Computer

4. Schedule
• Week 1 – Sourcing and Citing your information, Using the Web
• Week 2 – Census Records
• Week 3 – Vital and Church Records
• Week 4 – Deeds, land grants, land warrants and Homestead
• Week 5 – Estate’s
• Week 6 – Immigration Records
• Week 7 – Special records
• Week 8 – Thinking outside the box

5. • Genealogy is playing a detective, looking for evidence.
DIRECT EVIDENCE, that is, relevant information that seems to answer the research question all by itself;
INDIRECT EVIDENCE, that is, relevant information that cannot, alone, answer the research question;
rather, it must be combined with other information to arrive at an answer.
• You find clues about your ancestors, do more research, and hopefully find answers to your questions. Like any
good detective, you keep notes on what you find as you go along.
• Sourcing takes this note-taking one step further -- it involves referencing the proof for each fact you add to your
family's history.
• Sourcing is what ultimately ties the entire genealogy community together. We all rely on each other's work to some
degree, whether it's a pedigree chart sent by your cousin, ancestry.com or family history written two centuries ago.
Sourcing your work ensures that anyone who picks up where you left off doesn't have to retrace your steps and can
have confidence that your facts come from reliable sources.
• Before we get into the details of how to cite sources, let's take a brief look at genealogy. The genealogical research
process involves finding our ancestors by collecting sources that, when combined with our own knowledge, skills,
and intuition, result in evidence from which we draw conclusions. The most important cited conclusions are parent-
to-child links.
• A source is the record, however obscure or informal, from which we get our information. A citation is the link that
connects a source to our conclusion.

6. Types of Genealogy Sources
Original vs. Derivative Sources
Original sources are records that contribute written, oral, or visual
information
Derivative sources are, by their definition, records which have been
derived - copied, abstracted, transcribed, or summarized - from
previously existing sources. Original evidence usually carries more
weight than derivative evidence.

7. Primary vs. Secondary Information
Primary information comes from records created at or near the
time of an event with information contributed by a person who
had reasonably close knowledge of the event.
Secondary information, by contrast, is information found in
records created a significant amount of time after an event
occurred or contributed by a person who was not present at the
event. Primary information usually carries more weight than
secondary information.

8. Using the World Wide Web

9. Ancestry.com came out at the top of the list in the number one position. No surprise there. Ancestry gets more
than three times the traffic of any other genealogy website. In fact, by our estimates, Ancestry.com alone gets
about 15% of all internet traffic related to genealogy.
FamilySearch has regained the number 2 position, slightly edging out Find A Grave. FamilySearch is the larges
free genealogy website in the world. It is also arguably the most important source of ancestral records. Many of
the records found on major subscription websites like Ancestry and FindMyPast originate from FamilySearch.
Find A Grave this year came in at number 3. It is still going strong and it is still free even though it is now owned
by Ancestry.
Genealogy.com moved up one position to number 8. This website is owned by Ancestry. It has a dated look to it
and is full of (mainly) dated material. Ancestry announced last year their intention to shut the website down.
However, it is hard to imagine Ancestry giving up such a brilliant website name as genealogy.com. Most likely,
the website will be reconfigured into a new format.
MyHeritage.com moved down one position to number 5. They still remain the largest family tree website. MyHeritage
runs a variety of language and country-specific websites with website names of myheritage.xx (such as myheritage.it,
myheritage.nl, myheritage.pl, etc.). In fact, by last count, MyHeritage had over 30 different websites. MyHeritage.com is
their flagship website.
Geni.com slipped two positions down to number 7. It is also a family tree website. Geni.com was purchased recently by
MyHeritage. The transition was a bit rocky. The website changed the Terms of Use for existing long-term subscribers,
which ended up alienating some users.

11. Web Browsers
Many of us use the Web every day to seek our information and
documents for our family’s genealogy research.
A Web Browser is for retrieving and presenting information on the
World Wide Web.
Each web page is identified with a uniform resource identifier (URL)
An “address” where you can find a web site (www.google.com)

12. Spiders
Each Web Browser uses its our spider program, to search the WWW for
specific information, scanning and content, Theses are called web
crawling or spidering.
The Web Browser then uses the search index to display search results
and lists a brief explanation of each specific web page.
Different Web browsers will yield different search results, so search
more that one!

13. Google vs Yahoo
Search “Texas marriage records”
Google 4,330,000 results
Yahoo 5,640,000 results
Google has ancestry.com #6 in search and familysearch.org #2.
Yahoo has ancestry.com #17 in search and familysearch.org #19

14. Each Web Browser has its own sort criteria to display the search results
• From the spiders
• From the amount of times a spider finds a specific word of phrase
• From companies who pay to have their web listing at the beginning of
the search results and therefore are not dependent on spiders for
placement.

15. Keywords
The more words used in a search the narrower the search will be
The less worlds used in a search the broader the search will be.
Search Houston, TX marriage records – Google 334,000 results
Yahoo 2,710,000 results
If you are looking for an exact phrase, put it in quotes.

16. Search
David M Ellington and Mary Malone Dupuy
Google – 32,200 results
Yahoo – 112,000 results
David M Ellington married Mary Malone Dupuy
Google – 17,800 results
Yahoo – 25,200 results

17. Research Log
• I strongly recommend you to use a research log to keep tack for your
research. On the log you can kept track of web site’s, dates and each
search criteria you used.
• This will keep you from repeating searches during that session.
• Gives you a log for future searches or repeat searches you do.

18. Using Ancestry.com
Using familysearch.org