Can not find birth records for ancestors?

Question

I am trying to find the names of my 5th great grandparents, but I can't find my 4th great grandfather's birth records, nobody's records go back that far. I'm on ancestry.com, and I've tried other sites. I've tried a ton of sites, but I cannot find it. Can I still find their names? How? I'm so desperate, but I can't afford a genealogist. Please help!

Answer 1

You haven't mentioned Familysearch.org. Have you tried that?



You so far have done very well..... but eventually you will hit brick walls. Then it's time to re-evaluate where you are in terms of research. Perhaps a collateral study of siblings of your ancestors would lead you to the same goals... that is, go around your brick wall instead of through it.

Answer 2

It is possible there are no civil birth records at all. Depending on his religious faith, sometimes church records such as baptismal, confirmation, marriage, death can help or someone with an old family bible. Sometimes we have to put an estimated year of birth in records if we can't find them. Many states did not start recording vital information such as births and deaths until the first quarter of the 20th century. Some started mid to late 19th century. So when it comes to civil records it is according to when he was born.



However, never accept information from a family tree that was uploaded to a website without verifying. Even if 20 people have the same information as too many people copy without verifying. Actually if you find any of your family in an online tree and you know the information is wrong those that run the websites will tell you that is between you and the other subscriber. They don't get involved. It would be too costly for them to hire people to verify all the info people submit. Family trees online should never be viewed are records.

Answer 3

You say you used familysearch.org but have you used your local LDS Family History Center? There are still more records on microfilm, microfiche, in paper form and book form than has been scanned and put online so far. They also have wonderful volunteers that can give you their expertise at research. You do not need to be a church member to use one.



Have you tried the Regional NARA Library? Use their website to see what records they have for the areas you are looking. www.archive.gov



Look for early church records. They contain birth, marriage, death and baptism entries. The 1930's WPA program employed people in communities to microfilm local records, be they governmental or civilian. (ie:Court house ledgers of recorded filings of deeds, births, probate or club and church membership ledger/records).



A person born in 1815 may have had a father that was a militia man or sailor during the War of 1812.



Have you tried www.archive.org? They have scanned older texts and some are published family genealogies. Spell out the state name as some records were created before the adoption of the standard 2 letter shorthand for the states. Use to be people used TEX, ILL. MONT, CALIF, ORE etc instead of TX, IL, CA, OR and the search engine will not find sources using just TX etc....so use Texas, New York etc. Also spell out the word County, using Co will get you "company".



What about the death records of your generation born to the generation you are looking for? Also you may have to save up for a trip to the NY State Archives or wait till they have all their collections digitized and uploaded. Same with NY County Library you are looking in.

Answer 4

If you have an idea of where he was born, you can look at the 1820 and 1830 census in that location and make a note of any men with his surname who are the right age to be his father, and who have males in their household the right age to be him. Those will be your "suspects." If you're not sure exactly where he was born, you'll have to take a guess based on his earliest known location, or where he was married (hopefully he was living at home when he met his sweetheart, and hadn't ventured off someplace else yet).



When you have a list of suspects, you can begin looking at their records to see if they mention your ancestor as a son. Wills and other probate records are the best place to start. If his father or mother left a will, hopefully your ancestor will be named in it. If they died without a will, their property would have been equally distributed among all their legal heirs, and those records will give a complete list of their children.



Land records are another good source. You can look in the deed books at the county courthouse and find all the records of your ancestor buying and selling land. People often bought land from or adjacent to their parents and/or siblings, and sometimes the relationship is stated in the deed. You may also find deeds of gift, when your ancestor's parents gave him a gift of land or other property when he married or reached legal age. There are other helpful records at the courthouse as well. Perhaps your ancestor was involved in a lawsuit or family squabble that went to court, and family relationships may be spelled out in the records. You probably won't find any of the above records online; you'll need to travel to the courthouse or visit a library or archives that has these records on microfilm.



DrJ's suggestion of looking at his siblings is a good one, too. Your ancestor may not have a death or marriage record that names his parents, but perhaps one of his siblings do?



Hope this helps! Good luck!

Answer 5

most of the Irish considered necessary stats are kept in a imperative registry in Dublin yet unhappily there became a significant hearth and bigger than 0.5 the files were destroyed - this became contained in the days previously pcs or microfiche, at the same time as all that they had were the hand written files. So there are significant gaps in tracing Irish ancestors. even with the indisputable fact that, once you've any theory of the position your ancestors were born, you're prepared to get entry to the parish files contained in the church. most of the church homes kept their very personal files and a number of them (no longer all, regrettably) are acceessible.

Answer 6

This is EXACTLY the reason why internet genealogy doesn't help........



How have you got back to where you are now? You mention lots of websites and bmd 'records' however if you have only ever typed in a name, clicked and up pops information which you have copied then sorry but you will hit brick walls when the website runs out of databases to draw from. NO website has all records and never will, you need to step away from your computer and look at records.........



This situation is why you never start research online you start at home with records you already have there, which gets you back for free 3-5 generations, HOWEVER and far more important it teaches you what records are and makes it easier for you to recognise, problem solve and so you avoid brickwalls, it teaches you what is available and we are all learning about that all the time, after 30 years of researching I am still learning about records which are available to me ( but they are not online)



Number one stop being 'desperate'................ for you this is a hobby, not a life/death situation.....



Number two realise that genealogy is like a jigsaw puzzle, you research to find the pieces of the picture which is slowly built up and often it is like a jigsaw which is no longer in the box so we have no picture guidelines to follow..........



Number three genealogy is NOT a competition about how far we get back,but about quality of information.



............and remember ONE mistake and you no longer have YOUR ancestors in your tree...... so make sure each generation is correct before you jump to the next, or you will end up with a collection of unrelated names and hit brickwalls, at this point many people give up or they continue to defend their collected information get desperate and just copy and paste anything they can find regardless of if they know it is right or not just to continue to search.



It took me 15 years to find the information about ONE man, my great grandfather and with that line I couldn't go further until I had all his information, yet on his lines I am back now with full recorded cited records to the 15th century.



You need to be clinical, and unless you are you will find you hit this point each generation so look at what you do know and that is ONLY what you can PROVE.

Prove= a REAL record, which you have a copy of or have seen and can cite, so the ONLY research you have done online is when you have seen an image of the record NOTHING else is research, it is just copy and paste information which you can't prove.



You say your 4th great grandfather was born in 1815, so what RECORD PROOF do you have of that?

As you haven't found his baptism record or you would know his parents names and the baptism record is the obvious record you need to find..... you say it is NY, so where in NY and what religion was he, so which church records do you need to look at.....



Have you found his marriage banns, as his parents may be written on that.



I am NOT a fan of familysearch, however many organisations around the World have documented, transcribed and scanned images of records and given then to the LDS under a contract which requires them to offer them for free to the public and so this is a resource IF it is an image and a CLUE to where to look if it is only a transcription...so if a transcription says "baptised on 25 April 1815 at PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH,​MONTICELLO,​SULLIVAN,​NEW YORK" then you need to look at images or the real records for that church and make sure the transcription is correct ( as many of familysearch transcriptions are just IGI/collections and are not correct)



https://familysearch.org/search/collection/list#page=1&countryId=22&dateRange=dateRange4 some information that might help you narrow things down and when you get all the information you can from that side of the pond and get everything you can before you attempt to jump to my side of the pond and start looking in Ireland as if you think it is hard work now, it is even harder for someone who doesn't know another countries record system...then and ONLY then this may help you, which is an Irish/UK based website http://familytimeline.webs.com/

Answer 7

You can post names and dates here and someone will come along to help. Without specific information, you will only get general advice.