Tip Page for April 2003
Roots Web Town Search lets you type in the name of a town and state and find out which county the town is in. If you know the name of the town you're looking for, but not the state, you'll get multiple results. For instance, if you type in Knoxville, you'll get Knoxville, Iowa, Marion--and 21 other Knoxvilles in other states. The name of the county is a link to Roots Web's page of resources for that location.
I hope you all use Google to search for your ancestors. It's probably the best general search engine on the Internet. Begin your search with the word "genealogy" in order to eliminate hits that are irrelevant. The word "genealogy" plus a surname may bring up a number of useful sites for you. For instance, "genealogy Teske" yields over 850 hits. You could narrow that search by looking for "genealogy Teske Iowa" (124 hits) or "genealogy Carl Teske Iowa" (74 hits). In Google it doesn't matter whether you search for "Iowa Teske" or "Teske Iowa" or "Teske Carl" or "Carl Teske"; you'll get the same results.
There's another terrific feature in Google. It has a subject directory, i.e., it organizes lots of links by topic. Genealogy is a subset of the general topic Society in the Google Directory. I recommend that you spend some time exploring the different categories and sites. This is a resource that's easy to overlook, but too good to miss.
Searching Your Family Tree by Richard A. Pence is an old, but useful guide to the basics plus a few extras. I especially like his balanced discussion of "Family Traditions." You won't find any links here, and you may hoot at his estimate of the cost of getting records from the county courthouse; but his advice on looking for your relatives is excellent.
The United States census is one of the richest and best resources for genealogists, especially when you're looking for relatives in the 1850-1930 period. The 1850 census is the first to name everyone in a household and provide some basic information about each one. The 1930 census, of course, is the latest to be made available to the public, an event that occurred last year. One place to learn how to use the censuses effectively is How to Find Ancestors in the US Census on About.com.
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