Other Records To Search

There are still other records that you may not have considered that need to be taken into consideration. Here are some additional records that you need to take into consideration.

• Obituaries. These are often listed and filed in local libraries or through governmental offices.

• Social Security Administration. In the United States, you can find out if there where any family connections this way.

• Pension plans and records of them can help to provide locations of where payments were sent, family names and information, including beneficiary information such as children or others that funds went to after the person died.

• Passports, these can be found and used to track travel as well as addresses.

• Poorhouse, almshouse, workhorse and asylum records. Although you may not think that your family used these, which are generally locations that people went when they no longer could support themselves, they are very often hidden secrets. Records can point you into various directions.

• Military records can be a helpful tool to you. These can track family, movements and even help you to understand how your family ends up in one location instead of another. It also helps to tell stories about your family's history during wars and even times of peace.

All of these locations are important records to check. Even if you think that your family didn't use these locations, it still can help you to connect the dots and answers questions that may be unanswered.

Because there are so many different records for you to keep track of, here's a tip to help you to organize the information that you find.

Remember that we told you to make family cards that can help you to keep track of each family and how each of them related to each other? Now, create an index card (usually larger ones work better) that has one person on it. List their information on it.

Include any information that you can about each individual person. This will help you to organize their individual histories as well as their families later. Refer back to those cards often so that you can possibly see where people connected, moved, changes or began relationships with each other.

Of course, if you are using a computer program, this information can be easily tracked on these programs, assuming that they allow for it.

Next, we will talk about Where Your Family Came From.