by Carol Cooke Darrow
I’m going out on a limb here and say that you are still having trouble finding your ancestors on Ancestry.com. I know – you’ve searched and searched, and finally come to the conclusion that they must have been out of town when the census taker came to call. So I’m going to state for you “Carol’s Foolproof Method for Finding Your Ancestors.”
1. Always start with Ancestry.com.
2.Always do a complete census study for each family you are researching.
3. Always search every census starting with 1940 and going backward.
4. Always record (write down on a family group sheet) all the brothers and sisters, their birth years and where they were born.
5.Now that you know the county and state where they lived (based on the census), you can look the family up in www.findagrave.com to see who is buried in that county with your family name.
6.When you have done all that, you can look at www.familysearch.org for marriage records for the brothers, sisters, parents and grandparents in that state and county.
This work should take you a good month or more. Don’t skip back and forth between censuses. Start with 1940, then 1930, then 1920, then 1910, and so on.
Once you have applied this method, I would certainly welcome your feedback. My email address is cdarrow944@yahoo.com.
Carol Cooke Darrow, CG, teaches free genealogy classes at College Hill Library, 3705 W. 112th Ave., Westminster, on the first Saturday of the month. Call 303-404-5555 Adult Desk to reserve a seat.