LOST ANCESTOR! FOUND ANCESTOR! Asking for Help on the Web

One of the amazing resources I've found is Rootsweb online.  Rootsweb allows you to not only connect with mailing lists but also allows you to post questions that will often be seen by others working on the same line and get you some answers pretty quickly.

Rootsweb is free.

If you go to the Rootsweb Message Boards and go to the localities and categories towards the bottom - you can navigate your way through say the categories such as United States > States > Oregon > (unknown categories) Unknown > Begin New Thread and post a question that will usually get an answer.

I've had some amazing success this way, sometimes with more information than I can shake a stick at coming back at me from other genealogists.

One of the keys is to post a "well informed" query (Some guidelines and FAQ's here).   i.e. "Help me find my aunt!" isn't going to be of any use to anyone.

Here's a query I posted recently:
Delmar H Millican & Marie Sears Wedding? (1918)

I see in various censuses that Delmar H. Millican was married to his wife Marie (Millican) but am not able to find a marriage certification with her maiden name.

I have found both of them in the Oregon Marriage Index on the same date but not able to find their names together on a document.

Delmar H. Millican B~1897, Tillamook, Tillamook, OR
Marie (Sears?) Millican b~21 Nov 1901, California
Marriage 3 Aug 1918, Portland, Multnomah, Oregon

I've attached the Oregon Marriage Index for both names and the 1920 census, though that's pretty close for this work, if anyone has any more info on an actual wedding I'd be much obliged.

I immediately got a response from someone who had a better search of the Oregonian than I did:

Oregonian August 6, 1918 Page 16

DAILY CITY STATISTICS
MARRIAGE LICENSES

Millican-Sears - Delmar Millican 21, 499 North Twenty-First Street and Marie Sears, 18, 505 North Twenty-First Street

NOTE IN ALL THIS THE CITING OF SOURCES (I included a census so they can see the dates, locations and such) and they cited dates and pages and sources.

Now from here I might use this info to go find their headstones!  I could've found their headstones first or visa versa but always use one bit of research to find your next!

Document document document document document!  Genealogy without sources or documentation is mythology!

Another resource is to connect with people via Facebook and Ancestry and Family Search and Findagrave and any way that you can! I use facebook primarily for social networking and make sure that what I post is professional-enough to be shared with the world.  I've connected with 5th cousins who still have my last name and who are now members of the church and work on opposite ends of the family tree together.

 Use social networks!

To see an example of a "Well informed Querry" on Rootsweb, there's this link - here:

http://boards.ancestry.com/localities.northam.usa.states.california.unknown/13419.1/mb.ashx

You'll notice not only is the post "well informed" (anyone can look at it and know just about exactly what is going on or where to start looking) but I also attached copies of the documents I obtained my information from in both screen shots and file-saves (See this entry on screen shots and file saving formats).

The key in this case anyone can download a high-resolution picture of the files I uploaded, check my work, verify it for themselves, and in one case I was told I read the document wrong!  Had I not had a high-resolution image and a copy of the original, I might not have gotten that info!

Some genealogy is like this....always verify people know what they are talking about..