by Peg Lewis

Created on: June 27, 2008   Last Updated: July 02, 2008

Finding Isabelle - A Study In How To Do Family History Research

Family history research can be fascinating or frustrating - fascinating when your ancestors pop up and seem to tell their stories, frustrating when they seem to be hiding! Through sharing how I finally found Isabelle - after more than 20 years of searching - I will give you some ideas on how to find the ancestors who are lurking around the next corner, just out of sight.

As a child, I was interested in my roots, so I asked my parents about our ancestors. They had only limited interest, and information about just the people they had known in their lives. It was a starting point, but I wanted more. I just didn't know how to connect with more.

Years later I discovered the National Archives, where federal census records were kept on microfilm. I remember the day when I 'found' my grandfather as a young boy, living with his parents and a large number of brothers and sisters. I knew it was my grandfather's family because some of the names were familiar. I also found unfamiliar names of siblings I didn't know about. This was my mother's father's family, so I went back to my mother and asked some more questions. Jogging her memory in this way gave me a few more tidbits of information about her antecedents, and I really felt like I was getting to know these dear folks.

The census records became a fruitful source of information. I learned to use the index to narrow down my search, and after several visits to the archives and the Family History Library in Salt Lake City UT, I found out a great deal about ancestors no one in the family had ever heard of. At that point the internet was not the great source of genealogical information that it is today, so every discovery was hard-won and cherished. I found missing loved ones, and I also found a few mysteries.

Isabelle was one of these. Bear with me while I share some details - they will help me tell the story more easily, and if you follow along, you should be able to find tricks to help you solve your own mysteries.

I had been searching for more information about my grandmother, whose name, I knew, was Ida May Tanner. Her parents' names were still an unknown. I was frustrated in trying to find Ida because she was born after the 1880 Federal Census, and the 1890 census had been destroyed by fire. Finally the 1900 census was released to the public, and I went looking for her there.

She had to be a teen by then, and so would probably be living with her parents. I knew

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