Nicaragua Quick Start Guide

Nicaragua Quick Start Guide

Nicaragua: Ancestor's birth, marriage, or death location unknown
FamilySearch Indexed Records: Try searching in the indexed records for the name of the ancestor if they were born before 1900. Limit your results to the country of Nicaragua and the name of the department if known. If there are no results, you will have to find more information from home sources or by asking family members.

Contact family members: If you do not have even a minimal amount of information AND have no idea of where and when to look, you need to contact family members who might have that information. This could be older aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc.

Nicaragua: Ancestor's birth, marriage, or death location and names of the parents, children, or spouse are known
FamilySearch Indexed Records: Try searching first in indexed records. Try a variety of searches with the ancestor's name, or with parents' names, or just by parents' surnames AND using the option to limit the locatliy by the country Nicaragua and the department in Nicaragua.

FamilySearch Browse Images: If there are no results from the previous search for the ancestor or any siblings, you will have to browse images for the locality. Civil Registration began in 1879 in Nicaragua. Catholic Church records are available for the Diocese of Managua only. If they were living in this area, these are also a good choice as they cover all time periods. If you can find the ancestor in both record types, that is best as you will get more information to advance the pedigree. Records for Nicaragua are only available online.

Research Strategies
Who to search for? If you don't know the names of the parents, but you know the name of the spouse and/or the names of some of his children, begin with a marriage search (if they married in Nicaragua and you know the place). Or begin with a search for the birth/baptism record for one of their children (if you have an approximate birth date and place).

Finding a Locality

 * Google
 * Wikipedia (The Spanish version works best)
 * by Julián N Guerrero C FS Library INTL Book 972.85 E5g.
 * Try a keyword search in the FamilySearch Catalog for Nicaragua Gazetteers.

Online Resources
For other online resources please review the Wiki article Hispanic Genealogy Resources Online.