From Randy (a cousin discovery!!) over at Genea-Musings:
it's Saturday Night -
time for more Genealogy Fun!!!
Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:
(1) What is your favorite record type or resource? Not a website, but a type of record - e.g., census, cemetery, land, etc. Why?
(2) Tell us all about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, in a post on Facebook, or on Twitter.
Here's mine:
My favorite record type is obituaries. While I realize obituaries are not primary sources, they are still valuable to me as part of my genealogy "toolbox." I have found the names of parents, siblings, children, and sometimes grandparents. I have found the deceased's date and/or place of birth or the date they got married, along with the name of their spouse(s). I have found occupations and what their hobbies were. Every once in awhile, I can find a cause of death. It's a goldmine of information, especially for someone from a branch of my family that I am not as familiar with.
I know that the information provided in an obituary comes from a family member or friend of the deceased. I am sure that many times, the obituary is a group effort made up of several family members and perhaps even funeral home staff. So there is bound to be some mistakes along the way. Just today, I found a mistake in my sister's obituary. I was listed as Sue Tapley of North Carolina. So I know it happens. However, I have found that there are mistakes in all types of records. If it is information I did not have before, the facts I find in an obituary, even if not entirely correct, puts me on the path to finding the correct information!
My favorite type of obituary is a long obituary, full of information about the person's career, organizations they belonged to, and hobbies and interests they pursued. The perfect obituary includes the person's maiden name, their mother's maiden name, the full names of their children's spouses, and to which child each grandchild belongs to.
I find a lot of obituaries on Find-a-Grave that have been transcribed or copied by members and added to a person's memorial page. If the person passed in the last few years, I do a Google search with "the person's name, year (if known), location, and [the word] obituary" in the search box. I can find some older obituaries by doing a search on Newspapers.com (for which I have a paid membership). I have also found obituaries on Ancestry.com where someone has uploaded them to a person's page. I have subscribed to obituary announcements from funeral homes in my hometown. Many years ago, I found an entire display of index cards with obituaries on them in my hometown's library. What a find!
Obituaries have been invaluable to me in piecing together relationships, for example, for my Schwalls line. Finding the names of parents or siblings in an obituary was so helpful in putting together that part of my family tree, since the members of that family are so dang elusive!
Long obituaries are wonderful. I have found quite a few in the 20th century, but before that, if one even exists, it usually says something like "John Smith left behind a wife and children."
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