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Historical Research

Randy Daytona

Randy Daytona

Cold War Relic
pilot
Super Moderator
Perhaps a thread where we can list different sources for historical research would be useful. Not sure if anyone else is doing this but I find it quite interesting. Does anyone have resources they can recommend: both research sites as well as the more mundane how to enter, categorize and link the families?

General: Find A Grave:
www.findagrave.com

Find a Grave - Millions of Cemetery Records

The World’s largest gravesite collection. Contribute, create and discover gravesites from all over the world. Find a Grave - Millions of Cemetery Records.
www.findagrave.com www.findagrave.com

Archives for US military records
www.archives.gov

Request Military Service Records

Veterans and their next of kin can get FREE copies of their DD 214, and other military service records including Official Military Personnel File (OMPF), Replacement Medals, and Medical and Health Records.
www.archives.gov www.archives.gov

Search For Soldiers - The Civil War (U.S. National Park Service)

www.nps.gov www.nps.gov

Specific states:
South Carolina
The South Carolina Military Museum and Confederate Relic Room

Confederate Relic Room

www.crr.sc.gov www.crr.sc.gov

The South Carolina Department of Archives and History

Home | SC Department of Archives and History

scdah.sc.gov scdah.sc.gov
 
Treetop Flyer

Treetop Flyer

Well-Known Member
pilot
The operations room is an interesting follow but in regards to his Guadalcanal content, he’s basically producing animations of drachinifel’s content. The latter is a great follow for WWII and WWI ships and battles.

And as mentioned repeatedly on this site, Neptune’s Inferno by Hornfischer is a great book on the naval battles of Guadalcanal.
 
nodropinufaka

nodropinufaka

Well-Known Member
Treetop Flyer said:
The operations room is an interesting follow but in regards to his Guadalcanal content, he’s basically producing animations of drachinifel’s content. The latter is a great follow for WWII and WWI ships and battles.

And as mentioned repeatedly on this site, Neptune’s Inferno by Hornfischer is a great book on the naval battles of Guadalcanal.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the rev. drachinifel is a another great YouTube channel
 
VMO4

VMO4

Well-Known Member
Several yeas ago, as an adoptee, I researched and located my birth parents. Wrote a book about the process, available on Amazon, ....but I digress, The sites Randy mentioned are pretty good, there is also a site called Fold3.com run by Ancestry, which is a depository of military records. While there are individual portals into many of these sites, an Ancestry membership allow you to search all the databases at the same time. Ancestry is not free, and it is not perfect, but probably the most user friendly way to search multiple sites in this area,
 
OscarMyers

OscarMyers

Well-Known Member
None
VMO4 said:
Several yeas ago, as an adoptee, I researched and located my birth parents. Wrote a book about the process, available on Amazon, ....but I digress, The sites Randy mentioned are pretty good, there is also a site called Fold3.com run by Ancestry, which is a depository of military records. While there are individual portals into many of these sites, an Ancestry membership allow you to search all the databases at the same time. Ancestry is not free, and it is not perfect, but probably the most user friendly way to search multiple sites in this area,
Click to expand...

We can access Fold3 data too through the free military portal of ancestry.com. Only problem is that I can’t link free accessed data to my account. I have to manually move photos and info over if I want it in my ancestry.com tree. It’s still a pretty awesome perk. It’s a bummer so many WWII docs were lost in the archive fire years ago.
 
Griz882

Griz882

Frightening children with the Griz-O-Copter!
pilot
Contributor
taxi1

taxi1

Well-Known Member
pilot
VMO4 said:
Several yeas ago, as an adoptee, I researched and located my birth parents.
Click to expand...
I've had a number of new cousins and uncles pop up due to their doing what you did. Mind = blown. Glad you were able to close the loop!
 
VMO4

VMO4

Well-Known Member
taxi1 said:
I've had a number of new cousins and uncles pop up due to their doing what you did. Mind = blown. Glad you were able to close the loop!
Click to expand...

Thanks, it was quite the journey. My wife said she learned more about me in those nine months of searching and writing than in 28 yeas of marriage. Military docs were a big part of my search because due the early 60's social stigma with unwed mother pregnancies, there was no info on my birth father anywhere. The military docs allowed me to reconstruct his life in great detail. He died in 1969 from cancer, but I was able to reconstruct his entrance as a MARCAD, getting his wings, married a girl in New River whose father became his sea daddy and used a WWII connection with the 2 star 2nd MAW CO to keep him out of Nam. What a long strange trips its been.
 
J

JustAGuy

Registered User
pilot
Thanks to an uncle that was deep into this I got involved with my dad when I was younger well before Ancestry.com or online anything was really available. Back then it was mostly word of mouth as well as multiple trips to the National Archives in DC pulling out original land records and things like that signed by relatives. That alone was pretty cool to be holding the deed to land purchased in Oklahoma back at the turn of the century. Federal census data (mid 1800's-1940) was huge as well, but am pretty certain all those have been converted digitally by this time.

On that note, family bibles tend to have history written in them, especially from the 1920-1950's range. Those along with simply sitting down with relatives and getting them to tell you whatever details they can think of is helpful. I helped with an uncle research his side and being able to compare what I found out via Ancestry and bounce it off stories and names that his relatives could provide was greatly helpful in making sure I was on the right track.

I personally use Ancestry.com now for all my work and am up to over 4k people in my tree with not much research to current relatives other than immediate family (IE Grandparents and down) so mostly 3rd generation and beyond back to the 1100's on a few different lines.

There are limitations to what Ancestry can provide, but it's a fantastic tool to start out with and if you are frugal and wait for deals can generally get a 6 month subscription on sale. I find that I get all into it and reup the subscription, and by the time 6 months rolls around I have burnt out a bit and let it lapse for a few years before starting again. The next time I dive into this I might opt for the world subscription as I have some European roots that I would love to see if more information exists on them.

This time I also got a subscription to Newpapers.com. Yes, you can go to individual newspapers and find their archives, but being able to search for a name, specific marriage or obituaries, date, state, and even county really made things go much quicker. Obituaries are fantastic pieces of information because they many times list relatives still living (Which Ancestry won't show you) as well as spouse information.

I will also back FindAGrave as many times folks post obituaries on there as well as pictures of headstones with spouse information and dates if you don't have them already. Also handy to be able to search a cemetery for similar last names to turn up other relatives.

Lastly, never underestimate the power of Google. When I couldn't find what I wanted on Ancestry or Newspapers, sometimes just typing in a name, date, and obituary in the search bar would turn up what I was looking for.
 
jmcquate

jmcquate

Well-Known Member
Contributor
Regional Historical Society's are great. Some are large organizations, some are small shops run by passionate volunteers.
 
P

Pags

N/A
pilot
If you start getting real old then the church is a good resource. Several people in my family wrote down family histories for the various parts of the tree. A lot of the research came from going to churches in the old country.
 
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