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Show Genealogy begins with U Editor's Note: Michael Cunningham of Gilmer, Texas is the author of our weekly genealogy column, designed to help readers start or increase their genealogy research. Gilmer will answer questions and queries on local, national and even international scale. Questions about your relatives may be addressed ad-dressed to "Ancestor Line, c-o Iron County Record, P.O. Box 1568, Cedar City, Utah 84720. Successful genealogical research begins with you. Now that we have acquired the desire to do this research, we will consider the best pathway to learn the principles. The first priciple is organization. From the very start of your research, you will need to be organized and most importantly be able to maintain this organization. The materials you will need to do this are as follows: two books of postal stamps, 50 envelopes, 50 pieces of writing paper, four plain manila folders, one Atlas of North America, one large map of the United States (showing the topography), and two boxes of colored tacks. Note that these are examples of what you need. In case you are doing research in Canada or England or some other country, simply substitute sub-stitute the maps of countries needed. ' After you have obtained ob-tained these items, you will need to do several things. First, write one of your four grandparents last name on one of the folders. This practice should be carried over for each surname if possible. Second, you should put your map of the United States on a board (it may be cork, plywood, etc.), and hang it on the wall. You will use one color tack to locate places where your mother's family lived and the other color tacks to locate where your father's family lived. A physical boundary map shold be used because physical boundaries were more important and influenced our relatives lives more than our present political boundaries. Thirdly, go and find your old Christmas card address list. If this is not posisble, you need to find the addresses of all your distant relatives that you normally do not talk to on a daily basis. Fourth, take a paper and write a letter to each one of these distant relatives and ask them about location, and vital information of their parents and grandparents. grand-parents. Ask them to include birth dates and places if possible. Fifth, call all your close relatives on the phone that you normally have contact with on a weekly or daily basis and ask the same information. Sixth, take all information in-formation down and put it in the respective folders. You will probably receive a large amount of incomplete information. This will serve as your new leads for futher information a and will be explained more fully in next week's principle -the ' letter campaign. ANCESTOR LINE Ivan S. Pearce, Rt. 5 Box 230, Gilmer, Tx. 75644, writes seeking information on the Moon Family and the Pierce-Pearce Pierce-Pearce families. Any information will be greatly welcomed. |