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Genealogy 101 - Writing to a Town Hall
One of the most important things in genealogy is finding records to verify important connections. Town halls are storehouses of knowledge for genealogists.
To start with, you have to know for what you seek. Take out a piece of paper and write down all of the people in your family tree you know information on. Usually you know at least a few things - where they were born, around when they were born, where and when they died.
Next, break your list up into categories by how sure you are of the data. Put the items that you are very sure of up on top, so you can get those out of the way.
Now it's time to figure out where to write. Just about every town hall keeps track of the births, deaths and marriages in that town. For any US town or city, you can start out at the main state website by visitine
www.state.TWODIGITABBV.us
So for example, California would be
www.state.ca.us
and Florida would be
www.state.fl.us
You should be able to find the town hall or city hall's address by starting at that state page. If not, you can look up the zip code for the city or town at
usps.gov
and then simply write
City Hall
City, State ZIP CODE
Write the town hall and indicate which type of record you are looking for - birth, death or marriage. Give as much information as you can - the full name of the person, the name of their parents, the year range you expect to find the record in. Record searches usually cost between $5 and $10 - you can either send $10 (a check, not cash) or you can ask for them to mail you back or call you back (or email if you're lucky) with the cost involved.
You can go quite a ways back in time by following this method. Each record tends to give you more information about the previous generation. Always start with the town halls and city halls - they are usually your primary source of information.
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Note - Lisa Shea wrote this content for the genealogy site at BellaOnline.com - you might still find this content there as well. That's fine :) I gave permission!
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