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What Should I Remember When Searching?

Some Specifics for Searching

When searching your family genealogy you should understand the best way to write information or input information that you are researching. You may be surprised to learn that by simply inputting information a specific way may improve your findings. Here are some tips to help you along:

When putting in dates of birth or death for genealogical research, you should use numbers to show the actual date and the first three letters of the month followed by the entire year. For example: 11 Nov 1999
If you are writing down a location, such as a city, you should be very specific. Not only should you write down the name of the city but also the county and the state in which it is located. You do not need to spell out the entire name of the state, you can use the state abbreviation.
Looking through a family member's last will and testimate can also give you valuable information such as birth dates, siblings, and children. This can give you valuable information when searching more than one family member.

Here's one very important tip to consider: if you are tracing your genealogy back hundreds of years, not every city was considered to be in the same state as they are currently located. Cities may not have been called the same thing as they are now. It is important to research what the names of places were when your relatives were born.

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