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Ancestry.com Training – ron ray eaglequestpro.com/share
Customize your
Home Page
Set up Trees
You can even import
a tree from Family
Search with 4
generations.
Ancestry allows you to Request and view ordinances
(uses FamilySearch), Transfer a person’s information,
You can even Add relatives from FamilySearch
to your Ancestry Tree.
Family Treeschoose tree hover
over person Profile click on Family
Search icon (next to Story View) (Sign in)
 Choose what you want to do.
Two other great features are the Collaboration and the
Learning Center.
If you are working on a line and get stuck, you can
go into one of the Message Boards and see if
anyone else has posted information about that
family. You can also explain about the family you
are trying to find and others working on that family
will eventually find your note and try to share
information with you.
The Learning Center has lots of great video lessons on many research topics.
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However, Ancestry’s greatest strength is its Search capabilities.
You can search by topic such as Census or
Birth/Marriage/Death or Military records. You can view
and search records for a particular area such as Texas,
just by clicking on it and choosing the types of records
you want to search. You can search other countries as
shown near the top.
Choose your topic and search it.
If you can’t find who you are looking for try lots of different ways to search. Perhaps the indexer misspelled
his/her name or names or they are just initials or maybe the person is going by a middle name or nickname.
Try searching for other members of the family. See who the neighbors are in one census and find the neighbor
in the next census, see if your family is still living around them by checking a few pages before or after the
neighbor. Learn how to use wildcards in searches. Perhaps Cathy was spelled Kathy or Kathrine or
Catherine… wild cards can help. How to use wild cards (?,*) are in the Appendix.
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Beginning Your Search:
When you first start searching for a person you usually want to search in a general way with just a few criteria
such as First Name, Last Name, approximate date of birth, general birth place (Mississippi not Carrollton,
Carroll County, Mississippi) and possibly a general place he/she lived. You don’t want to get too specific and
rule out hits that are about the person you are searching for. If you get too many hits, then gradually narrow
down the search with more information such as spouse or children or a parent (depending if you want to find
them as a child or an adult).
When searching for women, if you want to find them as a child or when married search with their maiden
name (and initials, and nicknames and middle names). If you want to find them as adults after marriage,
search for them with the last name of their husband; that is the usual way they will be on the records.
Preparation
Define a goal. Who is it that you want to find?
Gather known information about that person/family.
Start from what you know. That is usually one generation later than what you want.
If you want to find out information about a 4th ggrandfather and 4th ggrandmother, then
start collecting records of them with their children and get to know them very well. The
mother and father are likely where the children were born, wills/probate records state
members of the family. Land ownership is often transferred/sold to relatives. Older
parents may live with or nearby children…etc.
Develop a timeline right from the start. This will keep you focused and keep you
looking in the right locations for the right people. Just like the law enforcement folks or detectives use a timeline
on their walls to help solve a mystery, so must we use a timeline to be sure we are searching in the right places
and for the correct person/s.
Example:
Goal: I want to find out the birthplace and parents of Gustave H. Hartzke.
Gather known information about that person/family: I was told he is listed on
the 1900 Census for Dewey Co, Oklahoma living next to a family named
FieldKamp. He is supposed to have married one of the daughters of the
Fieldkamps (Minnie). Check family trees on ancestry.com as well as
FamilySearch.org for information about this family and check sources to be sure
about the information.
The timeline: start from known records and add to it as your research finds more
information. (OR- You could just use a family group sheet for your timeline)
From this:
Timeline for Gustave Hartzke PID# 9MHH-V8B
Gustave H. Hartzke b. ~1865 Germany
1900 Living next to Fieldkamp
To this (With more research as your findings increase):
Timeline for Gustave H. Hartzke PID# 9MHH-V8B
Gustave H. Hartzke b. Apr 1865 Posen, Prussia (Germany) to Michael and Susannah Hartzke
~1879/80 Immigrated to US
1897 Naturalized citizen
1881 July - sailed from Bremen, Germany – Arrived Baltimore, MD Jul 1881
1900 Living next to Fieldkamp
1904 Mar 23 - md. Armina (Minnie) Fieldkamp b. 17 Jan 1888 IL or NE (source below)
1909 son Carl born (from 1900&1930 Census) in Little Robe, Dewey Co., OK
1910 Census shows md and living next to Fieldkamp in Harper Twp, Dewey Co, OK
*Note they had one child and it was living in 1910, but name not listed
ETC…
Note: all websites mentioned in this lesson and a lot more have links on eaglequestpro.com/share
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Now you are ready to begin
The website is ancestry.com, but there are several ways to get there. If you are at the family history library you would
click on the Genealogy Websites link on the Patron Desktop, then click on Ancestry.com for a free session. If at home
you could type in Ancestry.com for the Internet address. Ancestry.com is now free to members of the Latter-Day-Saints
Church. Most public libraries also have free access to Ancestry.com.
When you are starting a new search, you want to be general in your searches and see if you get
lucky. Then put in more filtering information a little at a time to narrow down your search if needed. Keep in mind that the
way you think a name is supposed to be spelled may not be the way the person recording the name many years ago
thought he heard it or spelled it. Also, the person interpreting the record for computer search may not have correctly
guessed the old hand writing. As you can see there are lots of reasons to be general in searching and try many different
ways and spellings in your searches. If you get too many hits, you can always narrow the search down with more filters
i.e. place names, dates or listing family members. A person or the recorder of the record may have put down a
middle name, a nickname or an initial for the person you are trying to find instead of the name you are searching
for. You may need to search for different family members. You may need to search for neighbors and then see if
you can find the one you want living nearby i.e. in census records or tax records.
To start with, we will hover the mouse arrow over the Search tab and select ‘Select All …’ We will put the name as we
know it ‘Gustave Hartzke’ in the appropriate name fields and hope we get lucky. Since the name is an unusual American
name, that is all we are going to put in for filter, then press ‘Search’.
Change your results per page to 20 and check at least
two pages or until the possible hits do not seem
reasonable.
The 1900 Census hit shows Gustave’s last name is
misspelled.
That is one reason you always need to
check the original records and see for
yourself what the name and information
should be.
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Squeeze out every possible piece of information from records
The original census record shows last name as Hartzke not Hartgke. It shows him living next door to his future wife,
Minnie Fieldkamp. Gustave is nearly 24 years older than she is and he waits for her to get to age 16 before he marries
her as later research will show. There is great information about Gustave’s citizenship and immigration, which can lead to
actual birthplace and more. To become a citizen a person leaves a paper trail for petitioning for citizenship as well as
Naturalization papers. In Gustave’s papers he says he came to the U.S. in 1883 and lived here for 17 years and is now a
citizen. These dates and places need to be compared to later census and other records. Also, note where he and his
parents were born.
Results also show the 1910 Census shows Gustave and now wife Minnie still live next to her parents.
Now we see that he says he came to the U.S. in 1881 and he is a Naturalized citizen. He now says he is 22 years older
than Minnie. Of special note is that Minnie has had only 1 child and 1 child is living, but not mentioned. We need the
1920 Census, but it was not found with the last Ancestry search.
A new search method is needed. Even if we used a wild card search like ‘gus* hartzke’, it still might not find him. We
need a focused method, one for just the 1920 Census. Hover mouse arrow over Search tab at top and choose ‘Census
and Voter Lists’. Select the U.S. Federal Census and the year 1920. Put in Gustave Hartzke, Birth Year of 1865 +- 2
years, born in Germany, lived in Oklahoma. Click Search. He is there, but it is hard to see because Gustave uses a
nickname and his wife does not use her Minnie nickname. So it is a little hard to find him. Next we use the information
from public trees or FamilySearch to search for their son named Carl, by changing the search filters to Carl Hartzke, born
1909 +- 5 years, born in Oklahoma, Father = Gustave Hartzke.
Hint for census searches: try other family member names or, if necessary, even previous
neighbors (census is usually done by going neighbor to neighbor) to find the family you want.
Now when we click on Carl Hartzke we
find that he is 11 years old so he would
have been the child mentioned on 1910
Census. Parent’s ages are 24 years
apart which fits with our Gustave, the
birthplaces fit… We found them.
Immigration and Naturalization records may contain dynamite for brick walls.
Some other key things are here to help us in our goal of finding birthplace and parents of Gustave. Gustave is naturalized
in 1897 and in this Census he says he comes to U.S. in 1880. Now we have a year, 1897, to look for Naturalization
papers in local court records. We also have a range of years to look for immigration shipping records to see at least what
port he came from and if any relatives were with him.
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We also need to check the 1930 Census for any other clues. It says the Immigration year is 1879.
Now, we need to zero in on the databases for the area they lived. Or in other words, we need
to search all the databases that they may be found while in Oklahoma.
Keeping our goal in mind, we want to particularly search for records that would have clues of parent names and
birthplaces for Gustave. The records may be immigration, naturalization, marriage, military pensions, land application
papers that one might get from the National Archives, and the like.
Back to Ancestry.com we go. Hover over the Search tab, click on ‘Search All’, but this time we scroll down to the map of
the U.S. and either click on Oklahoma on the map or on the word Oklahoma under the map.
A list of possible databases then shows and since
we have a range of 1879 to 1883 for when he came
to the US… let’s start there. Click on the link to
‘View other’ under the Immigration topic.
Remember to start general or you could weed out
your desired record on your first try. Since Gustave
chooses to go by different names we will use a wild
card approach. For name use ‘gus* hartzke’. Put
1865 +- 5 years for birth year and Germany as
place of birth.
Let us try the Immigration and Travel
database (catalog)
Keep the search general (not many filters), just
‘Gus* Hartzke’
.
The top three results will be very
important to us.
Gustave’s arrival date is confirmed,
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also the ship name and arrival port and departure port. When checking the original record, it does not look like he came
with any of his immediate family.
Then ‘Google’ the ship name ‘Brauschweig’ in Google images and get a picture of it. From searching Google, you can
also find stories about its voyages.
And what about the other two possible hits about his Naturalization process
We don’t know where he lived before Oklahoma or how he got to Oklahoma.
Here is a possibility with the correct names and date of Naturalization. Note
possible record location for future court record search. Naturalization papers
have a great deal of information, including birthplaces.
Dewitt, Arkansas County, Arkansas.
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Next we check for death and marriage records.
Under the Birth, Marriage, Death Records section for Oklahoma, check all that apply.
When checking for any Hartzke in Social Security Death Index we find Minnie’s record:
I couldn’t find much on marriage records so I switched to
FamilySearch and used the information we got from
Ancestry.com to look for a marriage record.
Found their marriage information and
certificate and it lists Gustave’s birthplace
as Posen, Prussia!!!!
This is what we have been looking for! Now how to
find the parents?
The Wiki at FamilySearch often has great
suggestions and information about where
and how to search when you get stuck.
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Wiki.FamilySearch.org has lots of information on where and how to search…great resource.
Go to the family search wiki (near top of eaglequestpro.com/share).
And click on the Germany, Posen Church link. Then click on it again near the top to read about finding records from
Germany.
So let’s check the birth and baptisms for the Gustave H. Hartzke in Posen, Germany.
Start-up FamilySearch.org. We want to narrow the search to Germany, click on Europe
near the bottom left of the window. Then type in Germany to limit the databases
(Collections) to those about Germany.
Then select the top database… Germany Births and Baptisms…
Search for Gustav Hartzke
Is this fellow the right one? Looks good,
right name, right place, right birth month, one
year off on baptism/christening year. Good
chance this is him.
Would be nice to find a record that shows Gustave
Hartzke had a middle name of Herman. Perhaps a
death record (cemetery, funeral, newspaper obituary),
but this looks pretty good.
You might also see if there is a way to check if this
Gustav was still in the area after 1881 (if so then not
our Gustav).
[This Gustav does not show up again here].
Looks like the right Gustav and this shows who his parents are as well. Also confirmed by
Land Records from NARA (National Archives) which contained Gustav’s Immigration and
Naturalization records.
He had to include his Naturalization records to prove citizenship before he could receive land from
the Federal Government. We sent for and received a folder from the Archives about Gustav.
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Appendix
From Ancestry.com
What are wild cards and how are they used?
Ancestry offers wild card searching capability as well when searching any of our online databases. Wild cards are special
symbols that are used in searching to represent some number of unknown letters in a word. Ancestry uses both the asterisk
(*) and the question mark (?).
Wild cards can be an effective query tools if you are searching for words or names with alternate spellings, but don't wish to
view all the extra hits that other methods (such as Soundex) searching can create. You can also use wild cards to view all
words that begin with the same stem. For example, a search for fran* will return hits on words like Fran, Franny, Frank,
Frannie, or Frankie.
Additional wild card searching examples could include:

If you want to search for names that differ only by one letter, use the question mark (?) wild card. A search for
Johns?n will return both Johnsen and Johnson.

You can search alternate spellings with the asterisk *, which represents 0 to 5 unknown characters. The query
Johann* will search for Johann and Johannes. A query for Smel*er will search for Smeltzer and Smelzer,
among others.

You can now put a wild card first, such as *son or ?athew to catch all spellings and variations.

Either the first or last character must be a non-wild card character. For example, Han* and *son are okay, but not
*anso*.

Names must contain at least three non-wild card characters. For example, Ha*n is okay, but not Ha*
Wild cards work with both Simple & Advanced search, and both Old & New search. They also work with exact matches,
and they will give you a lot more flexibility in how you retrieve records.
Note: wild cards do not work with Soundex matches, only exact or ranked.
Shortcuts:
Clicking on leaves at top= Return to home page
r = revise (edit) search
n = new search
Helpful hints:
When you click ‘Search All’ and Advanced Search is hidden: there is an estimated birth field
that you can use to calculate the birth year.
When Advanced Search is not hidden: under First and Last names click ‘Use default
settings’ to set the way it searches i.e. Phonetic, Similar and Initial searches.
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