User:Beccac1229/Sandbox37

Step 1: Compile Personal and Family Knowledge
Gather all possible records, knowledge, and information from home sources and living relatives. The knowledge from relatives and home sources may hold the key to finding vital records and ancestors.

Oral Interviews
Oral interviews are extremely important because information from elderly relatives, family friends, or long-time neighbors can provide information previously unknown and lead to finding vital and other records. Information can be learned about physical descriptions, occupations, marriages, children, causes for separation, name changes, and much more.

The requirements for oral interviews include:
 * 1) Know the subject. Learn about them before the interview, such as how they are related to an ancestor.
 * 2) Set up appointment. Tell the interviewee that the interview will be recorded.
 * 3) Prepare questions beforehand.
 * 4) Record the interview in high quality. Write down notes during interview if needed.
 * 5) Transcribe the interview immediately afterwards and keep notes together.
 * 6) Thank the interviewee and be willing to share interview or research with them afterwards.

Important topics to cover in interview:
 * Establish the physical descriptions and racial origins of ancestors
 * Determine citizenship status during slavery period (slave or free)
 * If slave, determine whether a house or field slave
 * Determine how marriages were consummated - by church, civil ceremony, or slave custom
 * Identify parentage of all children born during slavery to a particular female family member or fathered by a particular male family member
 * Identify all slave owners and the sale or death of slave family members
 * If the subject was affiliated with a church, determine its name, denomination, location, whether it had a school or cemetery, and the name of pastors and benevolent societies
 * Identify employers, their relationship to former slave owners, type of job, and length of employment
 * Determine whether the subject was ever a property owner
 * Identify any involvement with the law - who, when, where, why, outcome
 * Identify schools attended - when, where, duration, if graduated
 * Establish linkage with persons of other races
 * Was it acknowledged? By whom?
 * Was it common knowledge or not acknowledged?
 * Try to identify information about names
 * For whom was the ancestor named, ways it is spelled, when or if it changed, nicknames, acquired religious names, and if a slave, how the surname was acquired

Step 2: Research Recent United States Sources
After gathering all known knowledge from family and home sources, then search for records in the United States.Start with recent records, do not try to search slave record first. Race in records is not always reliable. First names, age, relationship, and location are very important.

Slavery and Reconstruction
Find out when ancestors took their surname. About 85% of former slaves DID NOT take the surname of their former master. Some even changed surnames a second time.

Court Records
Post-1864 court records based on "Jim Crow" laws may contain important ancestral information.