Seeking advice and tips for a good thing

[bucolic_frolic]

5. Do your genealogy and write down your family lore, even if it's incomplete or scrambled or nonsense

Verbal lore gets distorted over time, because people don't listen, don't remember, or are soused at family gatherings when they learn of great great uncle Elmer twice removed.

I had a tale that a family member fell off a wagon and was killed by a horse. Trouble is, when I contacted a third cousin twice removed, he has the paperwork - death certificate - to prove it happened to his dad, not my g-g grandfather. This did not happen twice I'm sure, and besides the death certificate for my ancestor was sclerosis of the liver - he drank too much or the wrong stuff.

So every little detail particularly if from pre 1900, can help with location, migration, etc. Census records became more detailed as time moved along. Don't expect much prior to about 1860. THen they added occupation, place of birth, birth of parents. Ship's manifests same thing.

Draw a family tree. Spend time on ancestry and all its free competitors, often ancestry is free in a library. Get a close relative, granddaughter to help with the record keeping. Maybe even digitize the information.