How to Find Out Your Ancestor's Occupation: Cheap Genealogy
Finding out when your great-grandfather was born, died and when he married that girl from Ypsilanti is interesting, but our ancestors become more intriguing the more we learn about them, such as what they did for a living.
In many cases, obtaining your relative's occupation may send your research in directions you hadn't anticipated. Perhaps your great-grandmother was a university president (mine was, back in the 1890s) or maybe your grandfather's brother was mayor to a large city. This information can lead to newspaper articles or county records that glean further information into the lives of your ancestors.
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Instructions
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Start out with your ancestor's full name and, hopefully, the state and town or area where she lived. Did his father own a company? Many times children worked for their fathers or uncles. Or they worked for the same company as their parents had.
If your ancestor was from a farming community, don't assume he was a farmer.
Gather any other relevant information you have. Look through old family letters, bibles and cards. Check for saved newspaper clippings.
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Look at the size of the community your relative was from. If he was from a small, farming community, the local newspaper might be the best place to begin searching.
If it's a larger city you'll be dealing with, there is less of a chance of finding your relative in the newspaper archives.
Either way, use online maps or an atlas from the library to plot out the area your relative hailed from. Be sure to have the name of the town, county and which town is the county seat. This will help in researching later.
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Try online resources first. If your ancestor had an uncommon name, run it through a search engine and see if anything comes up. There are several free online genealogy databases that may have information (links below) or you may run across other researchers who have more information on your relative than you do.
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If it is a smaller community, contact the local library first and ask if they have newspaper archives. Library branch information is easily accessible by using a search engine. If the library doesn't have newspaper archives during the years your relative was working in the area, use the search engine to find the contact information for the local newspaper; call and ask if they have archives the public can search.
In larger communities, start with the city directory. City directories were published for most mid-size to large cities during much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They provide the name of the head-of-household, spouse and the occupations of both as well as the home address. Check with the local library to see if their genealogy department has city directory archives.
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Obtain the Death Certificate. These can be obtained through the county where your ancestor died, and they often list the main occupation of the deceased during his lifetime.
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Contact the funeral home that attended to the burial. Funeral homes often have a good deal of family and personal information, including military history, names and addresses of the family of the deceased as well as his employment history.
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Apply to the National Archives for copies of your ancestor's military records. These take several weeks, and there is a fee, but often employment history was provided.
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Resources
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