Tracing English Immigrants From Abroad: Difference between revisions

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? Personal diaries and journals  

? Old letters: old addresses may provide an all-important locality  

? Handwritten family histories, biographies, autobiographies in private possession within the family or sometimes found in library/archives  

? Funeral home records: may give excellent information  

? Family Bibles: sometimes give specific localities of vital events  

? Obituaries: often contain locality-specific residence or place of birth  

? Certificate copies of vital records of marriage, death & births: often give parents names and specific place of residence and/or of birth and more  

? Military papers, i.e. discharge, pension, enlistment, court martial, or awards of merit, valor: usually provide a place of birth and sometimes parents names  

? Baptismal records, membership records, letters of recommendations  

? Naturalization papers: from three to as many as five different papers; one or more may indicate specific locale within an England city  

? Trace as many living descendants as you can in telephone directories (particularly ones with uncommon surnames); also in the U.S. try www.zabasearch.com; then—  

? Interview or correspond with—the more elderly members of extended family members and distant relatives which can prove very effective in obtaining clarifying information on specific locales for in-common ancestry and for obtaining assistance in collaborative research efforts  

A word of “caution” for using compiled sources to assist in helping you build your family pedigree: Compiled sources are notorious for containing mistakes, omissions, in-complete data, half-truths or prejudicial nuances in the information cited! Always take the information and consider it wisely and objectively and then weigh it against bed-rock documentary—and when available—statutory (certified) records such as a birth certificate. (For an extensive list of compiled sources to search, see the Appendix.)  

Compiled family history sources include published or manuscript family histories, family pedigrees, local and community histories (especially in U.S.), and donated family research files, biographies and autobiographies. Online archival and (research) library catalogs and inventories grant researchers convenience in determining availability of these local history sources in their collections. Some of these institutions also have additional databases available online for free searches. These institutions and societies may include:  

In identifying the above crucial resources to help prove and to build family pedigrees (above) in big cities, now let’s identify some of the most outstanding indexes to the above records—available either online or at specific locations and which should be searched, first:

===== 1. Census records =====

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; o London Gazette from 1665 at www.gazettes-online.co.uk/&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <span id="fck_dom_range_temp_1247680984646_524" />  

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