Obituaries

In your diligent research, don't forget to check obituaries to assist you in piecing together the complete family tree. Vital records are good documentation, but they don't answer all of the genealogical and historical questions. I've never been one to only search the direct line- I'm a mother so I want all of the family on the family group sheet and then I also have the advantage later of possibly using that information from the horizontal line to find the clue that I might need to solve the mystery of family migration or where the family burial plot might be, and so forth.

Obituaries not only give the vital statistics, they also list occupations, church and fraternal organization memberships, surviving descendants and where they now reside and other biographical details that may be of assistance to you as a researcher. For example, whether or not the ancestor was an early settler, a local official, served in the military, or other notes of interest that the populace may have known at the time but information lost to you in succeeding generations. I especially enjoy the detailed descriptions of personality, acts of kindness and general experiences written lovingly in older smaller community obituaries.