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eLearning Series: Geneology
My Family Tree is Important to Me
( 50 articles in this series )
Vital
Statistics In Geneology Research
Vital statistics can provide priceless information
when doing genealogy research. The pieces of information they
can provide that can prove essential are:
- Birth
- Marriage
- Death
- Birth
of children
Here’s how to use these pieces of information effectively.
In researching an ancestor that you know lived in a particular
state, checking his birth record will give a complete name
and the names of his parents. Checking his marriage records
will show the name of his spouse. Checking his death records
will show how long he lived. And it will show survivors, children,
which allows checking on the date and place of birth of the
children.
Why
is this information important? Because tracing a family
tree is akin to following a trail with many branches. These
days there are many records of a person’s life and many of
those records can be found online. In years past it wasn’t
that easy. However, everyone had these vital statistics, these
basic pieces of information, saved. If someone moved and dropped
out of sight, then checking the marriage records of his children,
and the birth records of their children may give an idea as
to the town or area a person may have moved to and allow for
easier tracking. Some jurisdictions in those days kept more
extensive records than others did, and by following the trail
of breadcrumbs and being a diligent ancestor detective these
lives can be traced.
It
was also common for people to have large families in previous
years. Birth records of children will give the names – the
full names that are not used by people at times, and can make
searching for the children easier and more accurate. Take the
name John Smith for example. This is a very common name. But
the birth records will show the full name, which may be John
Wesley Smith or John Adams Smith. This information will make
it possible to track someone who might otherwise have slipped
into the woodwork of history.
Death
records are also useful. People, as we’ve said, moved
in those days and many times when they moved it was so far
from the old home area that they never returned. Death records,
which give a cause of death, can show what eventually happened
to someone and since they are kept in the region of death,
it usually shows where that person was living when he died.
Then a search of that particular area may turn up children
or other family members. Then checking their birth records
will show if they were located in that area at the time of
birth, and marriage records will show if they were there at
the time of marriage. In turn, the children may have had children.
Checking the death records of the child will show who survived
the child, more than likely, their children. Then checking
the marriage records of these children forms a more complete
picture. In this way a family tree really begins to resemble
a family spider web more than a tree. Branches can travel,
and branches can intersect.
Many
times vital statistics will show evidence of a name change. Name changes for new immigrants were common. Sometimes the
name was changed by the immigration official at Ellis Island
because the old name was hard to spell or hard to pronounce.
If for example a man immigrated using the name Schmidt, and
he came over around the time of World War I, when anti German
sentiment was running high, he may had changed Schmidt to Smith,
the English version of the name. While this world allows the
new immigrant to blend into American culture easier it would
also make it more difficult to find him when doing genealogical
research, and if the researcher didn’t know the name had changed,
then it would send him in the direction of England rather than
Germany when trying to trace the history back to the old country.
Vital statistics will many times show the birth name.
Also when women married they would change their last names.
Death information will usually contain a maiden name and the
time of birth. Using this information a person can more easily
trace the female side of the family back further. Vital statistics
are a vital tool.
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SolveYourProblem.com
: 2006
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