Re: Ancestry, searches for N.A. ancestors

Kim Sweeney (sweeney@ssc.wisc.edu)
Tue, 21 Mar 1995 08:07:34 -0600

O 'siyo all --
Michael Wright posted a question to the list asking how he might go
about tracking down his ancestry, in particular a grandfather that was
reputed to be Native American. For any of you who would like to or
need to do some genealogical searching for whatever reasons, I would
like to recommend ROOTS-L, a genealogy list. There are just scads of
resources out there, and CDs have taken the genealogy world by storm.

In particular, I'm thinking of one CD I saw advertised in an on-line
catalog that reputedly contains records of Native Americans from the
1750s to 1960 ($59.95). You can get everything on CD or from various
libraries these days -- census data, vital records, legal information
like land grants, property transfers, wills, etc. The trick, of course,
is that your ancestors must exists somewhere on paper. And a number
of our ancestors went to great pains to make sure that they did not (and
I can't blame them at all). Additionally, the people on that list are
really great resources at how to go about tracking ancestors down, keeping
records, where to look when you think you've exhausted all possibilities,
etc.

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-- Kim Sweeney
sweeney@ssc.wisc.edu