Genealogy 101: Gathering family history information

A map of lesser-known records
You know that your great, great Aunt Violet exists because you have photographic evidence. So why can't you find any information on her? After checking records at home and online, the next logical place to go is right to the source: the records in the city or town where your family lived. From these you can work up to provincial, county, and then federal records. Here's what you can expect to uncover:

City records
The most likely sources of information will be church and city directories, city and county histories, hospital and mortuary records, newspapers, cemeteries, obituaries and tombstones.

Cemetery records usually indicate where someone is buried, who is buried in the plot, who owns the plot, and sometimes the cause of death. Tombstones often have information not recorded in the cemetery records, such as who is buried next to whom.

County records
These are often found in the county courthouse and may include birth and death records, wills, deeds and mortgages, marriage licenses, voting lists, and court records.

Court records
These are some of the most underused genealogical resources available. They are not the easiest records to research, but those who take the time to pore over them will reap many rewards.

Provincial records
Most of these are housed in provincial archives and in public libraries. Items found at the provincial level may include birth and death records, censuses (federal and state), land records, and military records.

Federal records
Federal records can be found in several places, but many are available through Canadian Genealogy Centre

Of course, much of the most valuable material is not going to be labeled and filed in a card catalog under "genealogy." Here are a few library sources that often hold keys to family histories:

Newspapers are a great source of local, national, and international family information.
Telephone books can sometimes be helpful, and many libraries carry a national selection from past decades.
Directory of Directories (yes, there really is such a thing) is the master file of directories, among which you'll find the International Cemetery Directory, listing more than 8,000 cemeteries and their addresses.

Combatting common research mistakes
You're not alone. Everyone who is sifting through records of yore runs into the same roadblocks. Here's how to surmount the research challenges that all family researchers face.

Not everyone with your last name is a relative. It seems like common sense, but once you get online and a wave of information is coming at you, it's easy to get caught up in the excitement of making connections.

Be wary of ready-made family trees that you can order. They are usually full of people with your last name, people who may not have any connection whatsoever to you, which makes them little more than phonebook entries.

Always confirm information by looking at the individual source. There are mistakes everywhere in genealogical records. Many documents have been transcribed numerous times, or orally handed down, providing fertile ground for spelling errors and other inconsistencies.

Remember the telephone game you played as a kid? You would whisper, "A lazy dog jumps over a brown log" into someone's ear. And by the time the message has passed through a dozen people, it has changed to, "A hazy fog went over the downed log." Mistakes should be expected in information gathered from different sources. You will invariably find discrepancies, and you'll need to determine what is fact and what needs further research. All this double-checking is time consuming, but not as much as pursuing a false lead.

Reading old records: What to watch for Finding family information is only half the battle. Once you locate old records, you have to read them. And the older the evidence, the harder it is to translate. Inconsistent spelling and unclear handwriting can make this a difficult task.

Watch for outdated word meanings, terminology, location names, and boundaries. If you assume that county lines and city boundaries have remained the same since the 1850s, for example, you're likely to wind up looking for information about the wrong places. Check out Cyndi's List (below) for some Internet tools that help researchers access old maps, medical-term explanations, and other keys to understanding the past.

The last word
And if you aren't already overwhelmed, visit amazing list-maker Cyndi Howell's
Cyndi's List Canada Sites. She is very thorough and with over 242,000 links, Cyndi's List is a virtual card catalogue of international genealogical information on the Internet. If you can't find what you're looking for on this list, then it probably doesn't exist online. It's a great tool for ferreting out some of the lesser-known resources.

Have fun!