2. You may hear from NARA that the Pension File has moved to NARA, St. Louis. This is especially true for many Civil War pensions that were filed or paid past the early 1920’s. At that point, you need to contact NARA-STL to investigate if the pension is really there. One would think that the National Archives would check for you but that rarely happens.

3. When you contact NARA, St. Louis, you may be told that they do not have the pension file and to contact the Veteran’s Administration. Usually pensions that were handled by the VA office have claim file numbers assigned to them. Veteran claim file numbers will start with a “C” whereas widow claim files will start with “XC”.

When a VA held pension closed, it was to be sent to the National Archives for storage but sometimes this didn’t happen. NARA in Washington DC has some of the C and XC pensions that fall between 2,400,000 – 2,650,000 like the two pensions above. The remaining pensions, that have claim numbers (we’ve seen pension index cards that have XC numbers near 7 million) should be in St. Louis or were lost in the shuffle over the last century.

4. If your pension is located in St. Louis, you now have two choices:

A) Pay NARA to provide a black & white photocopy (starting at $80 for the first 100 pages and $0.70 a page after. A 200 page pension would cost $150) and get at the end of a very long waiting line that may range from 2 months to 9 months.

B) Engage a retrieval service like Twisted Twigs. Twisted Twigs Genealogy will personally walk your request into the St Louis facility and make color digital images of the complete pension file for $50, and your wait time (depending on when the pension file is presented to us on-site) averages 60 days or less.

Have a wonderful weekend!

7th Generation Detroit Family Historian and NARA Records Retrieval Expert, Deidre Erin Denton of Twisted Twigs Genealogy and Margaret McMahon, author of “Researching Your U.S. WWI Army Ancestors, have teamed up for a series of blog posts to show you the path to researching the military records for WWI, WWII, the Korean War and more at NARA. Because of your connection to your ancestor, you are the best teller of his story, and with these records you can write and share a very personal military history.

New Years is an excellent time to tally up your family tree for 2017. The goal of this exercise is to calculate the percentage of ancestors you know of up to your 7th great grandparents.

I’ve added a little guide to calculating your family tree in less than an hour if you have a tree on Ancestry.com. A printable guide can be printed from the following link:

Time to Tally Up Your Family Tree for 2017

1. View the family tree pedigree on Ancestry.com for one of your parents.The last generation shown are your 3rd great-grandparents (GGP).

As you click the arrow after each 3rd GGP, their branch opens to show up to the 7th generation.

2. Count how many 4th, 5th, 6th, & 7th GGPs you have and added them to the box indicated on this chart

Ancestors possible for 4th – 7th generation using this chart:
4th generation column – 2
5th generation column – 4
6th generation column – 8
7th generation column – 16

Complete one of these for each one of your parents.

3. Add to the chart and calculate your percentage

After the tally, I usually find that I have neglected several branches for one reason or another. My genie senses tingle and I recall all the new collections added and/or updated on Family Search that I’ve seen and have yet to review for these ignored ancestors. The hunt is back on and I’m carrying a sledgehammer

More than what’s on the record, note what kind of record it is. A marriage will have banns (official announcement of intent to marry), a permission affidavit (an underage groom/bride obtained permission from parent/guardian to marry), a bond (financial promissory note that the marriage will take place and is legal or a fee will be charged), a license (gives permission from the state for the couple to be wed/used as return for state proof of marriage), a return (signed affidavit from the justice or minister that the wedding had been legally performed), and/or a certificate (usually given to the couple as proof of legal marriage). Just because a marriage is noted in a collection does not mean it took place or even took place on that day. Birth and Death records don’t have so many confusing forms, but can have different versions. Stillbirths, for example, may have a combined certificate that shows a birth and death date; although not every state gives a stillbirth a record. Birth and death can have short and long forms, which can have different information on them. Some of them won’t be publically accessible, depending on state.

Another thing that depends on state is when records were created! While many states have existed for centuries, most states haven’t required records to be created until the early 1900s. So here’s a handy little pinup to use which lists the first year that states required records:

Now, remember, this is just the start of regulated required record keeping for the BMD. The older the state, the older its record collection. They’ll just be less reliably curated earlier than these dates. They may not be kept at the state level, so you’ll need to contact the county or parish. They may be church registries instead of government licenses or certificates. Even if the records are out there, you also need to remember privacy laws for each state can vary. The more recent the record, the less likely you’ll find it online; the more likely that you have to be named on the record to retrieve it; and the more likely you’ll need to prove your relationship to the people named within should it be available. First and foremost, these records are created for government purposes. They’re wellsprings of information, but they weren’t meant for us when they were created. Whatever state you’re researching, research more than just your ancestor. Know your record rights and what you’ll have to do to get them. Not every archivist knows their own rules, so be forearmed on whether you have a right to the records and how you can obtain a copy. Many states recoup their administration and storage costs by charging a fee for these records; know that fee up front too.

And there you have it, the basic understanding of the BMD collections that will help you build a solid foundation for your tree. You’ll branch past them into church records, newspaper announcements, and family ephemera, but these records will be reliable sources if you know where and how to look.

~ Ana

The answers to those questions may be found in a little known online resource that I was recently turned onto by a friend who was shocked (SHOCKED) that I’d not heard of it before. There is a website, WorldCat.org, that I have used for years. If you’ve not used it for research (or school) before, it’s a great site for searching over 10,000 libraries around the world and finding out which ones may have a book, CD, DVD, or article that you need. I’ve been able to use it to find a book and then do an interlibrary loan when my local library doesn’t have it. For out of print items it can be a Godsend. So imagine my surprise when I didn’t know about ArchiveGrid. Housed on World Cat’s site, this wonderful “new to me” tool searches libraries, archives, museums, and historical societies to find primary source materials.

The home page is a great starter space that is very clean and to the point. The upper right has a search bar (which I’ll dive into in a minute). If you want to check out the collections in local archives, or you want to check out archives near where you’ll be vacationing, the main page provides you with a map and list tool for finding archives by area. Enter a location or select a state and you’ll be given a list of archives nearby. Click on the archive name and you have the option of getting their contact information or perusing their collections. A perfect way to plan your trip and inquire about the rules of researching on site before you even get into the car!

Let’s say you want to research, but you don’t know where. Or perhaps you’re like me and looking for possible overlooked archives that you didn’t even know had records you needed. That’s when the search tool comes into play. The results in list view will have the title of the collection in blue, followed by a short description and links for contacting the archive or getting more information about the collection. There is also a “save” function if you want to bookmark a hit while you check out the other possibilities. You can access those saved links via the shopping cart in the upper right corner.

The search is the typical Boolean, which means you can use the operands AND, OR, NOT and parentheses. Quotation marks will tell the tool that you mean exactly that phrase, whereas AND means any time those words appear in the description or title together or separate. Add a tilde (~) and 1, 2, 3, or 4 to an exact phrase and the search will look for the words within 1, 2, 3, or 4 words of each other. An example, if I’m looking for the “Normandy Invasion” and I add ~4, my searches will include the exact phrase and anytime Normandy and Invasion appear within 4 words of each other. Parentheses help when you want to refine your search. In the above picture, I’ve searched for Indian School and received 11,398 hits. No parentheses as I don’t want that exact phrase. But let’s say I want to search for schools, but I know I don’t want the Carlisle school. I can refine my search and exclude all Carlisle mentions with (Indian AND School) NOT Carlisle. (Combining two operands requires both to be present, which is why I now use AND when my original search did not). That refinement example will knock off about 300 records. Still a ton of possible records. How else can I make this search more manageable?

Summary view to our rescue! I can refine my search using six categories. They are automatically sorted by highest number of hits, but you can re-sort alphabetically if you know what you’re looking for by name. So let’s say I know I want to look at Moor’s Indian Charity School (under the Groups option). I will be returned to the list view of all collections referencing that school, which is a list of only 35. I can revisit the summary view and choose a name from the People list, say, Eleazar Wheelock. I now have a very manageable list of 13 collections that are dealing with Eleazar Wheelock and his correspondence or involvement with Moor’s Indian Charity School. Perhaps he’s an ancestor, or maybe he’s someone who’s name has come up in my research and I want to see if researching him will help me find the relative I seek.
Now I picked Eleazar for a reason. You see, Mr. Wheelock founded Dartmouth College and Moor’s Indian Charity School. Search for Eleazar Wheelock and you get 158 collections. But I just want the Indian school, so I refine that search back to 14 (thus illustrating the point of trying several searches in general and specific modes to catch the “odd duck” collection). Now, being the founder of Dartmouth, I may know that contacting them will get me some of his correspondence and journals. But in the 13 collections, only 7 are housed at Dartmouth. The New Hampshire Historical Society has a collection of his letters to a colleague, mainly financial. The Connecticut Historical Society has papers dealing with donations to the Indian school, as well as correspondence between Wheelock and cousins, with surnames like Pomeroy, Choate, and Occom. The Newberry Library has two letters. One is from Joseph Johnson, a Connecticut Mohegan who was a student at Wheelock’s Connecticut Indian School. The second letter was from Mary Occum, wife of Samson, who wrote on behalf of her son Aaron who was a student at Wheelock’s school. Now, I happen to live quite close to the Newberry Library, so I can make inquiries about these letters and see what details aren’t provided in the description. I also happen to have friends in Connecticut, so I could feasibly make an excuse to see them and do some research. Of course, they’re genea-friends, so they’ll probably want to come with me. So we’ll check out what other collections are available from the Connecticut Historical Society and make a day (or three) of it. Can you say fun?

So my search has now given me new archives, new names, and new possibilities. Two days in and I’m looking for possible ways to break through brick walls as well as finding journals and correspondence from ancestors to flesh out their story. Right in the middle of a search for the founding families of Fauquier county I realized I had work today and had to make that decision of whether or not I really wanted to be a responsible adult today. You know, my friend was partly excited to introduce me to a new fantastic research tool and partly apologetic for my future addiction to ArchiveGrid. I, on the other hand, am very excited to introduce you to this great resource and in no way sorry for enabling your obsession. I recommend a timer on your phone so you’ll know when to come up for air. Or food. Or work. Or family. I mean, if you have to.

~ Ana

What To Test
The first thing you need to know is there are three kinds of DNA tests available direct to consumer. The first and oldest is the Y chromosome test. This test is for men only and traces the direct paternal line back through time. Depending on the test level chosen, this one is accurate for matching to other men who have tested between 4 and 29 generations. Very cool if you think there might be a paternity issue in your family line or you don’t know your paternal line. Also cool if you just want to know where your male line migrated from since the beginning of time. Not cool if you need to know your father’s mother’s line……. she doesn’t have a Y chromosome!

The second test is the mitochondrial test (mtDNA). Mitochondria are passed from mother to children, so both genders can test, but it is limited to the direct maternal line. A son will have his mother’s mtDNA, but he won’t pass it on to his children. This is a great companion test to the Y chromosome test if you want to know your direct maternal line. However, because mitochondrial DNA doesn’t mutate as often as Y chromosome DNA, the accuracy isn’t there. Being an exact match can indicate a common ancestor lived hundreds if not thousands of years ago, rather than the more recent connection found in Y chromosome DNA.

While the first two tests are good tests, and I’ve had both done in my family, they are restricted to the direct lines. This leaves most of your ancestors out of the mix. Autosomal DNA is what you’ll want to get tested if you’re looking to find cousins or confirm ancestral lines. This tests the autosomal chromosomes, that’s 22 pairs of chromosomes, and the X chromosome. The X is passed down strangely, and has its own rules for matching. There’s a lot of resources already covering how to use that information and I’ll go so far as to shill for the Facebook Group Gedmatch.com Discussion Group as one such place to get into the real meat of chromosomes and understanding them better. For now, just know that autosomal chromosomes are a mix of your ancestors from all lines, so using their information will get you cousin matches from any ancestor in your tree. Autosomal tests will give you cousins that match you within 8 generations, most of whom will be in the 4th to 6th cousin range. This is the test we’re discussing today.

Where To Test
There are several companies that provide genetic testing. For genealogical purposes, you’ll have the choice of Ancestry.com, FTDNA, or 23andMe. Each one has strengths and weaknesses, and which one you choose will depend on your end goals. I would recommend investigating the sites of each on your own and reading the Terms of Service. Know what you buy before you buy it. And if there is no great rush, wait for a sale! Now, if you’re hoping I’ll tell you which is the best, I just won’t do it. I will say I tested with two of the three and chose not to use the third as it presented no additional benefits. I will also warn you away from any other company than these three if your goal is to cousin match. National Geographic has a test that is super serious and helps researchers understand genetics better, but it has NO cousin matching at all. So if all you want is your ancestral origins and possible ethnicity makeup, spend money here and help the science. But your data is nontransferable and useless in any other goal. Also, avoid AncestrybyDNA.com. It’s not the Ancestry test and lots of people have confused it with the real Ancestry.com test. Sadly, the results are nontransferable and useless for cousin matching. This one is often seen on Groupon’s site and looks like a really great deal for DNA testing. It’s not.

What You Get
There are some basic differences between the three sites and your ultimate genetic goals will dictate which you use. FTDNA tests not only autosomal, but also Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA. They store your sample, so you can buy and upgrade tests at any time. So if you plan to start small and go big later, this is the place to be. 23andMe offers limited health information and some estimates on Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA, but they don’t actually test the Y or mitochondria in the autosomal test. The science behind their estimates is sketchy at best…. but to be honest, the science behind genetic health information is sketchy too. If that’s your bag, get on with your bad self, but personally I see no point in paying 23andMe just for that information as there are sites that do it for free (or $5) from one of the other two site’s data. Finally, Ancestry.com is straight autosomal. No Y. No mitochondria. All three will give you ethnicity estimates and they may vary on that as the science is, again, new and a bit sketchy. But all three will cousin match you, which is what genetic genealogy concerns itself with. In that regard, consider size of database and responsiveness. Ancestry.com has become the place where people test if they want to actually connect the dots on their tree and confirm family information. Responsiveness of other testers to inquiries is varied on all three tests and I would recommend you give people time to respond and accept it if it never happens. Overall, I’ve found other testers to be helpful and excited to share data.

What’s Important
There are a number of tools to help in organizing your genetic research, but whether you’ll use them or not really depends on how tech savvy you are. At the core, however, let me tell you that you need to just start at the top of the list. Each site will give you a list of testers that match you and that list will usually be sorted by closest estimated relationship to furthest. Start with the closest. Whether you make paper notes, add them to a tree in progress as you confirm their connection to your real tree, or create digital archives of data won’t matter. Start at the top, and here’s why: by confirming the closest relative first, you’ll find links to the further relatives. You’ll also not get overwhelmed and lost. Lists can be several hundred pages long once the databases have been thoroughly compared (244 4th cousins myself!). You may use tools that bot crawl your lists and sort them for you, but if you’re diving in for the first time, I can’t emphasize enough just starting at the top. Each site has the ability for matches to connect a family tree to their tests, and in this regard Ancestry.com does the best job. If they don’t have a tree available, message them and move on to the next one. You won’t be able to connect everyone immediately, but just like any puzzle, you work the pieces you know and it will build the picture for the ones you don’t.

Next Steps
No matter your organization or your tools or where you tested, the most important part of genetic genealogy will always be genealogy. The better the research, the better the matching. You’ll have good luck if you have adequately researched every line of your ancestors back to your 7th great grandparents… but how many of us have every line back that far? Surely we lose someone somewhere (especially women with no maiden names). More than just the ancestors, how far down you’ve brought each line into the living descendants will help when your matches haven’t gotten very far in their own research. But no matter how far in one direction or another you go, accuracy will be key. You’ll need records to confirm you lines and give you names of descendants or ancestors to follow to find the ancestor that you have in common with your genetic cousin. Inevitably, you will find a genetic cousin who doesn’t seem to fit. Maybe it’s because of a name change that broke the line. Maybe a paternity issue. Maybe an unknown adoption. Don’t let it be because you picked the wrong records and followed the wrong ancestor in your research. Don’t let a glorious royal lineage blind you to the fact that yours was the cook and not the king. Check and then double check your research. DNA is not labeled. When you take these tests, it’s up to you to connect the cousin to the ancestor. Some will be easy. Some will seem to take forever as you eliminate possible lines when matches don’t match a known cousin who tested. But every genetic cousin is your blood, in one way or another. Another piece in your puzzle, another line in your story. Once you’ve tested, don’t give up on the real research.

~Ana