i am trying to help my children with their family tree homework assignment. but i only know a little about the names of my fathers family, and only bits and pieces of my husbands family. my children has to have the family tree reach all the way back to my great- great- great- great grandparents and i am only on my grandparents. i need help im hitting dead ends or nothing at all.what do i do and what do i need. any help will be greatly appericiated.
Start by getting as much informatin that you can from relatives, including full names, birth/death dates and places of residence. Also find out if individuals were in the military.
You can order death certificates for family members from the counties in which they died and birth certificates from the counties in which they were born. You can go online to the county website and search for records or vital statistics to get information such as addresses and costs. When you receive the certificates you may be lucky and there may be parents or relatives names on the certificate. There may also be addresses.
Another good website is Genforum. For example, if you are searching the family name Smith...type "Smith Genforum" in your search engine. It will take you to the Smith Genforum page. There you can post a question about your Smith ancestry and if you are lucky, someone might respond. Occasionally a cousin might respond and help you with leads.
It took along time to find GGGrandfather. My sugestion as you goto different sites write them down so if you are unable to complet that far back ,you at least showed the effort put into it. If you family are mostly born in the state you live go the your lobrary or go to lader day saints LDS.com Not 100% on com.email address. Do the ancestry.com free 14 day trail just cancel on time and check their office hours. you could call at 7pm they closed at 6 your charged . GOOD LUCK don't know if I was much help. Jan749
