1. Brenda Cherry Barney Levantino Syosset Public Library September 22, 2010

3.  Get organized › Be methodical › Take careful notes  Create an interview worksheet – › Who › When they were born › Names of parents, siblings, spouse, children, etc. › Where they have lived and worked › Dates of death and burial location for deceased family members.  Persevere.  Remember – this should be FUN!

6.  Yourself! › Record all the information that you have about yourself.  Date of birth  Place of birth  Places you have lived  Schools you have attended

7.  Your parents – include all available information about them. › Date of birth › Place of birth › Date of death/place › Schools, employment, etc.

8.  Record all the same information about your brothers and sisters. Then your spouse and your children Then your spouse and your children  Again, be as specific and detailed as possible.

9.  Talk to everyone in your family.  Review family records – bibles, photo albums, scrapbooks.  Create a worksheet for all family members – › Who they are › When they were born › Names of parents, siblings, spouse, children, etc. › Where they have lived and worked › Dates of death and burial location for deceased family members.

10.  Other family members – memories, oral history.  Family records – bibles, photo albums, scrapbooks.

11.  Public resources include websites and databases.  Print materials  Public records – county clerk records, military records  Census records

12.  Syosset Public Library offers access to two genealogy databases: › Ancestry.com (library edition) › Heritage Quest

14.  Census and voter lists  Birth, marriage and death  Military  Immigration and emigration  Newspapers and publications  Card catalog (which is a listing of the available databases)

15.  Heritage Quest includes images of records for 1790-1930. You can also look for books and periodical articles about local history and genealogy.  Heritage Quest has selected records from the Revolutionary War Pension and bounty-Land warrant files.  For African American genealogy research there is the Freedman’s Bank covering the years 1865-1874.

17.  Search by name - BUT – Heritage Quest Census search can only be done with the Head of Household name.

19.  A project of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, offers free online classes and resources for African- American, Jewish, and Hispanic researchers as well as access to birth, marriage and death records.

22.  Genealogist/family historians page › http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/ http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/  This is the official government tool for accessing census, military, immigration, naturalization and land records.  Much of the material available through the National Archives is not directly accessible online – it must be ordered by mail or at an NARA facility.

25.  Castle Garden › www.castlegarden.org www.castlegarden.org  This website provides information on immigrants arriving between 1820 and 1892 (when Ellis Island opened).There is information on more than 11 million immigrants.

27.  Ellis Island › www.ellisisland.org www.ellisisland.org  Includes records of immigrants, crew and passengers at Ellis Island from 1892- 1924.Search by passenger name or name of ship.  There is an excellent tutorial at this site in the Genealogy Learning Center. This explains how to get started with your research and how to find additional clues about your ancestry.

31.  Immigrant Ships › www.immigrantships.net www.immigrantships.net  Includes sites to research emigration, immigration and naturalization, 100+ passenger list sites, ethnic research, libraries and archives, passenger ship types, descriptions and images, and additional worldwide maritime information available both on-line and off-line.  Covers from the 1600s to the early 1900s.

32.  www.Italiangen.org www.Italiangen.org › This website provides access to naturalization and vital records for Nassau and Suffolk counties, as well as New York City, regardless of the country of origin of the immigrant.  www.jewishgen.org www.jewishgen.org › Links to many databases for Jewish ancestry research. › Excellent tutorials and instructional materials.

33.  Use a pencil!  Refrain from using abbreviations; you can forget what they mean and the next person who looks at the material might not be able to decipher the meaning  Write dates in this form: date, month, year (and spell out the month)  If you are unsure of the date, use the abbreviation ca

34.  For a list of additional websites and online resources please see the Recommended Websites page on our Library website.  Print resources – we have added current titles to our collection.  Stop by the Reference Desk – our Librarians are always happy to help.