What would be the best way to obtain family history, death or birth information

Question:

What would be the best way to obtain family history, death or birth information on very old relatives?

I need to know exactly where I originate from. Who exactly my paternal and fraternal great, great grandparents were. I can't get any information from other family members. I think I know a few of the towns were some could have possibly lived.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: There are lots of variables that can make your search easy or hard. It's up to you how organized you get and how persistent you'll be.

Write down everything you know. Contact churches and funeral homes in the area that you know your family has been involved with through the years to see what records they can share with you. Check out birth, marriage and death certificates, old obituaries, everything you can think of that will flesh out who you were related to and when/where they lived.

Go to local libraries to find old phone books and city directories...some city directories go back to the 1830s. See where people lived.

Go through the reference section of the libraries to find local histories and biographies of prominent people. It's amazing what you'll find there.

Contact the archivists at local newspapers to see what records they have of stories about members of these families. That's their job...to make old stories relevent to new readers.

Check land records with the County Recorder of Deeds and wills on file with the County Probate Court.

Check with the County Clerk for the records they have available and what hours you'd be able to visit their offices to go through them. They're usually huge old books that have the original handwritten records just sitting there for you to look them up.

Once you get a feel for these people, take a trip to your state capitol and start researching at the State Library and State Archives (usually located conveniently near each other). There you'll find records that range from petitions for Naturalization to military service to draft registrations to civil service records to old census records...both the censuses conducted by the federal government and by many states who did their own.

Along the way, check out sites like Rootsweb and Genealogy.com. There you'll find people who are researching in the same families and same towns you're interested in and who are more than happy to share experience and give direction.

There's an awesome project called USGenWeb where volunteers from across the country set up sites for each county in the country. They give links to local resources, introduce local residents interested in helping others, and let you know what's available in that county that you might never have considered before.

Then you can have a cup of coffee and figure out if you're a genealogy addict yet. Most of us get there quickly...