Genealogy: Online Searches

As a genealogist, you will probably start experiencing sleepless nights trying to figure out the maiden name of your great-great grandmother. Well, you may not have sleepless nights, but you may spend a significant amount of time thinking about and trying to find resources that will give you the answer to that crucial question. Although you're looking for information on a specific person, names are an important building block upon which your research depends. Often, a good research strategy is to look for information on a surname (your family name) and then focus your research on particular individuals with that surname.

We will give you some tips that will help you with your first online search by covering the basics of a name search, presenting some good surname resource sites, and showing you how to combine several different Internet resources together to successfully find information on your family.

Try a Unique Name
Selecting a name sounds easy, doesn't it? Just select your last name and you are off to the races. Unfortunately, depending on your surname, you may have quite a bit of trouble finding information that's relevant to your family.

The first time you begin researching online, try to begin with a surname that is semi-unique. By this we mean a name that doesn't take up 10 pages in your local phone book, but is common enough that you can find some information on it the first time that you conduct a search.

Also, consider any variations in spelling that your chosen name may have. Often, you can find more information on the mainstream spelling of the surname than on one of its rarer variants. For example, if you are researching the surname Helme, you will have better luck finding information under the spellings Helm or Helms. If your family immigrated to the United States in the last two centuries, they may have "Americanized" their surname.

To find various spellings of the surname, you may need to dig through some family records.

Narrow Your Starting Point
If you aren't sure how popular a surname is, try visiting a site like Hamrick Software's surname distribution site.

At Hamrick's site, you can find the distribution of surnames in the United States based upon the 1850 Census, 1880 Census, 1920 Census, and phone books from 1990 to the present. All you have to do is enter your surname, select a year, and click on the Display button. The result is a new Web page containing a color map displaying the distribution of your surname.

A good reason to check out the distribution maps is that they can be used to identify potential geographic areas where you can look for your family later on in your research. This is especially true for maps generated from data from the 1850 and 1880 Census. If you hit a wall and can't find additional information online about a particular individual or the surname, start looking at records in these states in the hopes of finding more clues about your particular branch of the family.

Use a Name That You Know About
In addition to picking a name that you're likely to have success researching, you want to use a surname that you know something about. If you have a family line where you know the names of your great-great grandparents, use that surname rather than a name where you only know your family line as far back as your grandparents. The more details that you know about those persons possessing the surname, the more successful your initial search is likely to be.

Select a Grandparent's Surname
Having trouble selecting a surname? Why not try the name of one of your grandparents? Using the surname of a grandparent can have several benefits. If you find some information on the surname, but you aren't sure whether it's relevant to your family, you can check with a grandparent or other relatives to see whether they know any additional information that can help you. This may also spur interest in genealogy in other members of your family, who can then assist you with some of your research burden, or produce some family documents that you never knew existed.

With a name in hand, you're ready to see how much information is currently available on the Internet for that surname. Because this is your first step in a long journey to discover your family history, it's important to keep in mind that you want to begin slowly. Don't try to examine every resource right from the start. You are more likely to become overloaded with information if you try to find too many resources too quickly. Your best approach is to begin with a general survey of resources followed by a look at specific sites. And keep in mind that you can always bookmark all of the sites you see during your survey, so that it's easier to return to them when you're ready for more in-depth researching.

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