Tag Archives: vital records

Genealogy Isn’t Free? An Oratrix? It’s Follow Friday!

What I’ve Been Reading This Week

What I’ve Been Writing This Week

Tuesday’s Tip — Two New Links You Must Check Out

We all know that family histories, local histories, indexes of vital and the sort are awesome for finding nuggets of gold.  Check out FamilySearch’s Family History Books beta site:

http://books.familysearch.org/

Second link, courtesy of Mark Lowe: Bouvier’s Law Dictionary, which can be found in google books:

Notice the dates? These were the references that law clerks and the like used as reference in the 1800’s in the south.  Want to know about what a drove-road is and what it means? The information is there.

Remember, don’t look if you just have two minutes! Trust me!

Tuesday’s Tip: What To Do When You Start Researching A New Place

Every state and county handled vitals and other legal documents differently.

The state of Virginia in its infinite wisdom decided NOT to record births when my great great grandfather Charlton Wallace was born and also not to record deaths when he died.  His parents are still my brick wall.

The Ancestry.com Wiki has put the entire contents of two books online that will help you understand what was recorded when:

The Red Book specifically will help you figure out what was available when.  I do a lot research in Virginia.  If I click on Virginia Family History on the Red Book main wiki page, I see information about the state.

If I click on Virginia Vital Records I see an overview of the what was recorded and when.  It helps to know birth certificates were recorded in 1824 and that you need to prove a birth date some other way.

You can also drill down to the county level.

And all of this is free.  You don’t need to be an Ancestry.com subscriber.