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Sunday, 20 November 2016

Arts & Humanities: Genealogy: “Question: Ancestors?” plus 5 more

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Arts & Humanities: Genealogy: “Question: Ancestors?” plus 5 more

Question: Ancestors?

Posted: 20 Nov 2016 12:58 PM PST

Many regulars will tell you that you don't start online. There are lots of websites. Many have records and subscriber submitted family trees. You must distinguish the difference. Subscriber submitted family trees are not records but must be personally verified with records before accepting anything in them as fact. Even when you see the absolute same information on the same people from many different subscribers that doesn't mean it is accurate as too many people copy without verifying. There are also websites that only have subscriber submitted family trees and I have a tendency to view them as trash websites. No way do the websites hire people to verify what their subscriber submit as it would be far too costly.

Probably FamilySearch.org and Ancestry.Com each have more records online than all the others put together Still distinguish between records and family trees. Now no way are all records online. Many times they have the original images and sometimes only an index but even when a record is only on an index it is far less costly to write the county courthouse or state library or whatever and get a copy than to travel many miles across country to get it.

FamilySearch.Org is entirely free. Many public libraries have a subscription to Ancestry.Com you can use for free.

However, you need to start with yourself and work back one generation at a time, documenting everything as you do. You have your birth certificate? It has the names of both of your parents including your mother's maiden name. How about your parents and grandparents? Do they have theirs? Also death certificates usually have the names of both parents of the deceased including mother's maiden name.

Talk to living family. Maybe some have some birth, marriage and death certificates on your ancestors. Maybe they have some old family bibles, old family photos, wills, deeds, letters from elderly and deceased relatives that can shed a light on your ancestry. Depending on the religious faith of your ancestors, baptismal, confirmation, marriage and death records from their churches can frequently be just as helpful if not more so than civil records. Maybe some of your family have certificates on your ancestors from their churches.

After you have gotten as much as possible from living family, go to a Family History Center at a Latter Day Saints (Mormon) Church. They have records on people all over the world, not just Mormons. If you find anything in their database you would like to view and print off a copy of an original document, they can order microfilm for you to use there for about $5. I have never had them to try and convert me nor have I heard of them doing that to anyone else that has used their resources. A lot of their volunteers are not Mormon. Just use the following link to find the nearest Mormon FHC.

https://familysearch.org/locations/cente...

Once you have done some of the above, you will have a better idea what to look for online

Question: Does historical coat of arms of your family name/surname have a symbol in it such as an animal,cross,arrow,tree,plant etc. Can you describe?

Posted: 19 Nov 2016 08:44 PM PST

Coats of arms have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with surnames. The surname product business is a scam. Don't be fooled.

Coats of arms were/are granted to individual men not families. When a man was granted one all sons were encouraged to apply for their own and get one similar to their father's but differenced by cadence marks. When the father died the eldest son set aside his differenced coat of arms and took his father's.

Also not everyone with the same surname shares the same ancestors. When they were started in Europe about 1200 A.D. it was not to identify a man as a member of a family but just to better identify him on records. There were too many men with the same given name in the same proximity and they had to have a more efficient way of identifying them. When they got through legitimate sons of the same man could have wound up with a different surname and still each could have shared his with others with no known relationship, even within the same nation or kingdom. So there can be several men with your surname each having their own coat of arms, all completely different, and most men with your surname probably will not be entitled to one at all.

Don't waste your money on any of those being sold. If you put it on your wall a person familiar with heraldry who saw it might not laugh at you to your face or make some put down remark but they will be smiling to themselves. They are junk, maybe expensive junk but junk nevertheless.

Now in some continental European countries men were allowed to assume a coat of arms. They weren't granted by a heraldry authority but still they don't belong to families. Poland is an exception were they belonged to dynastic families.

Question: Can anyone provide me with a photo of a specific person from a 1975 Marion County, WV high school yearbook?

Posted: 19 Nov 2016 07:33 PM PST

I'm looking for a picture of a woman named Jessica (Alice) Custer, who I believe to have been a high school freshman or sophomore around 1975.

I'm not sure which high school she attended, but I know she resided in Marion County area.

She's my biological grandmother, and I'd really like to know what she looks like. Any help is appreciated.

Question: Everyone with the last name Wertz, where does it come from?

Posted: 19 Nov 2016 11:58 AM PST

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