How to Locate an Ancestor's Records

Find birth records at a state's department of vital records.

By studying official documents that relate directly to your ancestors, you can begin to uncover your family history. Genealogical records can come from a variety of sources, including marriage certificates, wills and probate records, birth and death certificates, tax and court records, immigration records and military records. Start your search for an ancestor's records by browsing through your family's personal belongings and then expanding your search to include online and public resources.

Instructions

Family Sources

1. Collect old documents that your family has stashed away in closets, drawers, attics or basements. Look for birth, marriage and death certificates, newspaper obituary clippings, naturalization and citizenship papers, baptismal records, and military or school documents.

2. Ask your parents or an older family member about an ancestor's full name and about his or her dates and places of birth, marriage and death. Having basic vital information about an ancestor will assist you in locating a record of that relative.

3. Write to or call relatives and ask if they have any records of the ancestor in question and if they can supply you with copies of the documents.

Websites

1. Navigate to the FamilySearch website (familysearch.org) to look through genealogical records and indexes that include birth, marriage, death and census information. FamilySearch is connected to the Family History Library, the world's largest repository of genealogical records.

2. Browse the Ellis Island (ellisisland.org) and Castle Garden (castlegarden.org) websites for immigration documents. The Ellis Island website has ship manifest documents from 1892 to 1924, while the Castle Garden website has information about immigrants coming to the U.S. prior to 1892.

3. Consider purchasing a membership to fee-based genealogy websites, such as Ancestry (ancestry.com) or GenealogyBank (genealogybank.com). Ancestry contains billions of digitized records, including census, immigration, naturalization, military, marriage, birth and death records. GenealogyBank has a digitized newspaper collection in which you can search for an ancestor's obituary or birth, marriage or death announcement.

Public Repositories

1. Visit a local county courthouse in the area where your ancestor lived. The types of records held in county courthouses can vary, but typically, courthouses contain birth, death and marriage certificates, divorce records, probate records, wills and deeds, voter lists, tax lists, court records and naturalization papers.

2. Write to the cemetery where your ancestor is buried to request a copy of your ancestor's cemetery records. Provide the cemetery with your ancestor's full name and birth and death dates.

3. Write to the school or college that your ancestor attended and ask what its policy is about obtaining copies of your ancestor's school records.

Tips & Warnings

• Before visiting a courthouse or another public repository, call or write a letter ahead of time to determine if they store the type of record that you are looking for and inquire about any fees that you may have to pay to obtain copies of documents.

References

• "Tracing Your Family History: The Complete Guide to Locating Your Ancestors and Finding Out Where You Came From"; Lise Hull; 2006
• "Who Do You Think You Are?: The Essential Guide to Tracing Your Family History"; Megan Smolenyak; 2009

Resources

• FamilySearch: Homepage
• The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration: Resources for Genealogists