How to Trace Your Cherokee Heritage
Many people find tracing their families to be a rewarding hobby. Researching American Indian ancestry is an exciting subset of genealogy. The Cherokees provide a challenge because of the way they were split during Andrew Jackson's presidency with the Trail of Tears. Pushed out of north Georgia, the majority were marched to modern-day Oklahoma. Some Cherokee remained in North Carolina. Learning where your family settled will be necessary to find historical documentation of your Cherokee ancestry.
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Instructions
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Getting Started
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Create a family tree. Fill in as many family members whose names you know. Include dates and location of deaths and births. Only list women by their maiden names.
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Order full-image copies of the original record of birth and death certificates from around 1910, or for any 20th-century relative whose information of which you are not sure. These certificates should have parents' names, specific locations and dates on them. Enter this information onto your family tree.
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3
Search the U.S. census records. The census is conducted every 10 years, and all through 1930 are available to researchers. Using your information on your tree, locate your family members on the 1930 census and then move backward in time. Use the Soundex, which is a printed index of all families in the state when the census was conducted, to locate your family. Make a copy of the actual census page that lists them.
Check Official Cherokee Rolls
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Locate the Dawes rolls. The Dawes Commission accepted applications for the tribes occupying modern-day Oklahoma from 1893 to 1907. If your ancestors were in the Oklahoma area during this time period, you should be able to find them in the rolls.
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Find a copy of the Baker Rolls. The Baker rolls enumerated all Cherokees living in North Carolina in 1824.
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Research in lesser used archives. Look for ancestors' names on lists of Indian boarding school students, tax records and those who took the Oath of Allegiance.
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Tips & Warnings
Go through family documents. You might find clues in pictures and sometimes on what is written on the back of pictures.
Locate newspaper obituaries for the deceased.
Libraries often have free genealogy resources.
Keep a research notebook. It is easy to become overwhelmed with an abundance of information.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit old book image by Joanna Redesiuk from Fotolia.com
