The best primary source for birth information of an ancestor is a birth certificate. But what if you don’t have a birth certificate for your ancestor? You can get information about their birth from others sources, but they may not be a primary source.

What are Vital Records?

“Vital records include birth certificates, death certificates and marriage records. They are records which document the birth, marriage or death of a person and can be very beneficial in genealogical research. Certified copies of vital records can be used for many things such as verifying age, getting social security benefits and in receiving death benefits from life insurance policies. They are used widely in genealogy in verifying dates and other information.”  www.vital-record-online.com

  If you need or would like a copy of a birth certificate. Family Tree Magazine has a great article about finding and obtaining your ancestors birth certificate. You can read it here! After you obtain your ancestors birth certificate, don’t forget to put a dot in the color your have chosen for that family on the upper right corner, and then file it in your history book for that family.

Happy Family History Friday! Love, Joy

So here is another post about color coding your Family History. Continued from the post found here. This is my pedigree chart. As you can see, my grandparents are Blue, Green, Red and Yellow.  Now on the bottom line, my maternal grandmother’s line is Yellow, but when you get to the great grandparent’s on that line, the Yellow continues back on the White family line, while the Dye family line is now Orange.  The reason why the Dye (maternal) line is Orange is, because I have a ton of information on these two families. On all of the other lines, I only have enough to fill up one book, for each grandparent’s family. Someday, when I have a ton of information on all my families, I will add another color to the maternal side of all of my great grandparent’s.

Now some people say, “Why color code your family lines?” Here are the reason’s I do it:

1-I am a very visual person.

2-While organizing my papers, I just put a dot in the color (I use permanent markers) of the family they go with in the upper right corner of the paper and then I know, at a glance what family that information goes with. Also when researching, I make a copy of the source, (e.g. census, maps, birth certificate, etc.) and simply put the dot in the upper right corner, and now I know which family to file that copy with when I get home.

3-When you get back a ways in your pedigree, there are going to be more and more sir names. How will you know which family they are connected to and how they are connected to you? You would know, if they had a color assigned to them. Or, you can just memorize all of them.

4-What if your family lines connect, like cousins married etc. or have the same name? Once my mom met a woman whose maiden name was Green, she married a man named Green. How hard would it be to keep those records straight? Ouch! This woman was thrilled to learn how to color code her family history, and said that neither one of the Green lines would be assigned the color Green. They would be Red and Blue! I love that!

So take a little time on Sunday or whenever, go through all of the papers you have inherited and start to organize. Pick a color for each of your grandparents and go from there.

Happy Family History Friday! Love, Joy