What to Keep Your Eye Out For

As is with any type of study, it is very important that you know exactly which records will be pertinent to your research. Your best bet would be the kinds of documents that are filed and compiled by governments – often, these types of documents would reveal the major life events connected with a particular person or family. Licenses, permits, and reports documented in a particular place serve to create a good skeletal picture of a person's life and times. Therefore, you may want to skip over to local, regional and national archives that are likely to have copies of these documents. Should you have trouble doing this, however, you may want to search the internet for extensive resources of census records.

The most essential of the records that you need when conducting a genealogical study would be birth records, death records, marriage certificates, divorce records and adoption records. Secondary to those would be church records which would include baptismal records, membership records, death records, records of religious rites of passage (such as confirmation and bar/bat mitzvah) and memberships. You may also want to take a look into records that pertain to emigration, immigration or naturalization, criminal and civil activity, work, school, wills and property. Oral histories may have inaccuracies, but bring life to the ancestry, the way photographs, diaries, letters, passports and photographs do.

For some who are doing research on someone who is not part of their family, biographies/biographical profiles, autobiographies, newspaper articles and obituaries are very helpful records to start with.