I spent Saturday at the Grand Rapids Public Library’s main branch. A group of wonderful volunteers and staff have created a fantastic series of workshops and talks designed to help a group of eager, new researchers learn more about their African American ancestry. Saturday’s focus was learning how to find information in three databases: Heritage Quest, Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.
All of the new researchers were able to come up with a name, residence and birth year for at least one ancestor who was alive in 1940. That’s usually enough information to leap right into the 1940 or 1930 census. From there the volunteers started explaining what information could be found in the census, point out new information and start looking for new records. It’s simple, quick, effective and keeps our new researchers’ enthusiasm high because now they can learn about the research process while they are looking at records about their family. However, in some cases that method ends in failure. That’s when it’s time to return to the basics. Not only do you need to start with what you know, but you may have to close the gap between 1940 and 2018 AND you may have to walk away from the computer.
We had two researchers facing this problem. One researcher hit a brick wall before she found any records. The other hit a brick wall after we quickly found full birth and death dates for his grandmother and great-grandmother. Both of our new researchers had something in common—they knew their ancestor died in Grand Rapids. continue reading…