Genealogy Searches

[Dakota Rose]

I'm working on the family trees for both my mom and dad's families. I'm really having a hard time because the Russian and German names are really difficult to spell. So far I've been on Ancestry (expensive) and Ellis Island. I've also found some naturalization records, but I just can't find immigration records for some of the family because of the name issue.

How many of you are working on, or have worked on genealogy stuff? What's worked for you or where are you struggling? Maybe we can all help each other.

[PirateLover]

My mom and my fiance's brother have used ancestry. I know my future brother in law had some issues with spellings. I think he tried to focus in on locations-if you knew where the person was living at that time, you could narrow it down and look at census reports and stuff to see if any names were similar and go from there. I haven't done any research myself in awhile although I'd like to get into it. I need to talk to my mom. We know basically all the genealogy on both of my grandfathers' sides since they were 2nd generation, but with my grandmothers' I'm not so sure. Good luck and if I find out anything to help I'll pop back into this thread!

[DisneyDog]

Have you checked with your public library to see what they have access to? I am a librarian, and we have subscriptions to both Ancestry and Heritage Quest. Ancestry is definitely more expensive than Heritage Quest, but I think that Heritage Quest is better. I found my relatives in Heritage Quest and could not find them in Ancestry.

[Tinksalot]

I had some luck on the Latter Day Saints website. www.lds.org then go to family search.
Good luck! :fingers:

[thrillme]

This is quite a challenge without the aid of "older" relatives. My grandmother had some luck many years ago when she went to a church in the town her mother was supposedly born in. She was able to find "birth records".

The problem you are facing could be because names were changed either by the immigrants themselves because they're names were difficult for Americans to spell and pronounce OR...I know one incident in our family...the captian of the boat coming to America was so frustrated trying to prounounce all the crazy german names that he took the first letter or two of their name and added "Utz" to it.

Of course many corrected their names once they reached America others just ignored the change and used their true names (but the record still reflected xxutz).

I know too we dropped "e's" our of our name in one case and in another they switched the "ie" to "ei" because mispronunciation was soooo common.

[Dakota Rose]

All good advice. Thanks. :)

I wanted to throw out there that if anyone is in my boat (no pun intended) and their ancestors naturalized since 1909, the naturalization records will contain the immigration information. I just discovered this last night after posting here. You just need to know what county and state they were naturalized in and find the right department for your state. Starting with the State Historical Society is a good idea.

Also, I found a lot of info (until this stopping point) by just typing my relative's name into google. Of course this only works if, like mine, your relative has a fairly uncommon name. :)

[diz_girl]

I'm starting to do this for my DH's father's family. A few years ago I visited the town where my DH's father was born and when we were there we visited the local cemeteries and I took some photos of the family's gravestones to get some birth and death dates. I'm finally doing something more with the information. My DH's grandmother is from Wisconsin and DH may have some cousins that he's never met.

The town (Dunkirk, NY) has a clerk's office that I am in the process of contacting to find out more information. Of course, they only have information for those who were born, married or had died in that town. I'm trying death and birth certificates first. Once I get the death certificates, I can then look for obituaries, which may have information on other family members, like crazy Uncle Stanley who drove his car into Lake Michigan. I'm not sure what he was doing there, since Dunkirk, NY is on Lake Erie. For my husband's grandparents and great-grandparents, there is only a year of birth on their gravestones, but the town is willing to search the entire year for certificates. Also, the town is willing to look for a range of years for marriage certificates.

My father did this for his family (and a little of my mother's family) on and off for about 15 years. His records go back to one ancestor born in Poland in the late 18th century. He actually wound up visiting cousins that he found in Poland.

I know that the Social Security Administration makes public the social security numbers and information for the deceased.

As for the immigration records, if you're sure that they came in through Ellis Island, then keep plugging away with the spelling. But if not, they may have come in through Boston or Philadelphia. There's an interesting page on the Wisconsin Historical Society about passenger lists for immigrants. Go to their Website - it's Wisconsinhistory dot org. Then select Genealogy from the list on the right and Immigration is one of the topics on the Genealogy page. I don't know if North Dakota has an organization doing similar work.

[DisneyDog]

Did you family live local to where you live now? You could also contact the local historical society. I know our historical society will do research for you. They are amazing.

[Ian]

My Uncle does a lot of genealogy work for our family tree and I think he's done most of it just by tracking back from known living relatives. I know he did some stuff with searching birth/marriage/death records, but I'm not sure how.

One of the issues we have is that on the Italian side of our family, the last name was Americanized when they first came to this country and no one (my Grandfather included) was ever exactly sure how the original name was spelled. It was either Liquori or Ligouri.

[BelleLovesTheBeast]

My families heritage is also German and it's really difficult to locate information. I have found that in my grandfathers family....there are 3 different spellings of the last name.

As far as with Ellis Island they are still updating those records. I haven't been able to locate my great grandparents because we believe they came over a year or two prior to what has been listed.

I've been locating family members that I know when the were born or locations and trying different spellings. That's helped some. Also look up the census...that gave me a lot of information to start with.

I wish you luck....I too feel your pain. Germany is the hardest to look up too because of the war destroying so many records.

[Dakota Rose]

I've tried all the "reasonable" and "sounds like" spellings I can come up with and still I end up stuck. And what's worse is the side of my family that is supposedly Russian might actually be Jewish so that adds a whole new level of complexity as they may have changed their names at some point. Ugh!

I'm thinking of looking at immigration records from Canada. They may have come to Canada from eastern Europe and then in to ND that way. Idunno. Any pointers on looking up those type of records?