Transcription
Stop right there. You clicked on this video for [music] a reason. Are you interested in finding your family and tracing your lineage? Are you a heritage American? Or maybe you're a foundational black American like myself? Or maybe your family immigrated to America during this past century. Whatever the case, have you ever asked yourself how far back you could trace your lineage?
Well, if you're interested in finding your family and tracing your lineage, you're in the right place. [music] If you watch this video, I'm going to show you step by step how to find your family and trace your lineage and be able to download historical records to keep forever for free. There are millions of Americans that don't know their family roots. Some people only know their parents. Some people have never even met their grandparents or have any knowledge [music] of their extensive family history. Maybe you grew up in foster care and you were adopted or aged out and all you have is the names of your birth [music] parents. Or maybe you just know your parents and were never raised around your extensive family. So therefore, they don't have any knowledge about their previous generations.
Some people are lucky. In some families, you may have a family member that serves as the family historian. And in some cases, [music] there is no historian. So that means you have to be the historian. With the advent of technology, records that were once uneasy to obtain are now readily available in digital form at the click of a button and easily downloadable for your personal storage. If you don't know where to start, I could show you how I was able to trace my lineage for free using a free website. If you stick around, I'll show you step by step how you could trace your lineage and save the records to keep forever.
The web application that we will be using is familyarch.org. Familyarch.org or is a free database that allows you access to a multitude of records for free, such as the US Census, birth records, marriage records, death records, military draft and enlistment records, immigration and naturalization records, land records, land deeds, court records, newspaper, cemetery, [music] and burial records.
Some people may ask, what are the benefits of tracing your lineage? Well, number one, tracing your lineage restores continuity. Tracing your lineage also helps to heal historical gaps and ultimately it helps an individual to reclaim their history.
Just some quick history for you. [music] The United States has kept a record of population count of every resident in the United States since 1700s. This record is called the US [music] Census. The first US census was conducted in 1790 and carried out by President George Washington. The US census [music] has been conducted every 10 years ever since. After the 13th [music] and 14th amendment, the 1870 census was the first census where formerly enslaved black Americans were able to be counted as [music] full persons. Prior to this, every census counted black [music] Americans as three-fifths of human beings.
It's amazing the things that I was able to find with my history, such as US census [music] and military records of my great great greatgrandfather. For example, take a look at this Civil War enlistment record from 1865 of my great greatgrandfather. [music] He served in the US colored troops. I was also able to find him in the US census of 1880. Take a look at this other record of another one of my relatives that was a tribal identification [music] card for the Chalk Tall tribe. Take note of the race that's listed as Negro. [music] Or how about this military draft record of my grandfather?
If you stick around, I could show you step by step how you can find your [music] family and trace your lineage and download historical records all for free. For this tutorial, I'm going to use [music] Kanye West as our example. I was able to find Kanye West, his family, and trace his lineage all the way back to 1850. So, now let's get started, and you can follow along as we go.
The first thing you want to do is go to your search engine and type in familyarch.org. And then we want to create a free account. Now that you're done creating your free account, if you follow along, I'm going to show you step by step using Kanye West's family how to locate a family member, trace their lineage, and be able to download historical documents. Let's go.
Okay, family. We're here and now we're going to dive into this and I'm going to show you step by step how to be able to locate a family member, trace your lineage, and download historical records. So, after you've created your free account, this is what the family search.org homepage looks like. And as I've stated previously, we're going to be using Kanye West as our example to be able to locate a family member and trace their lineage. So, we know that Kanye West is a celebrity. So, therefore, all of his information is public. We know that Kanye West was born on June 8th, 1977 in Chicago, Illinois. He was born to his mother, Donda West, and his father, Ray West. So, for this example, we're going to be focusing on Donda West, and we're going to trace her history back to slavery. So, okay, let's go.
Now that we're on the homepage, if you can see my mouse cursor, you're able to follow along. The first thing we're going to do is go into the search bar. And within the search bar, we're going to select records. After selecting records, it brings you to this search engine right here. And so what we want to do is select more options because when you select more options, it gives you additional search features to help you narrow down your search. And as you can see down here, it shows different sort of life events and dates that you can enter in, which also helps to narrow down the search for the person that you're actually looking for. And so for this, we're going to select any because we know that Kanye West was born in Chicago, Illinois, and we know he was born there in 1977. So, because we're searching for DA West, that's an actual life event that we could actually tie to her to try to help narrow down our search. So, the first thing I'm going to do is type in her name, her DA as her first name, and then West as her last name. Then I'm going to select make sure we want to make sure any is selected. And then we're going to type in Chicago. And then as you can see, it gives you different uh locations to be able to select. So Chicago pops right up. We're going to select Chicago. We know that Kanye West was born in 1977. Another thing I forgot to note is these check boxes here. It says match last names exactly. So that's what we want to check because we want to search exactly for how this name is spelled. So once you do that, then select search and let's see what pops up.
So all of these different records pop up for D West and it pinpoints her in Chicago during the 1970s. As you can see, these are records for residents, right? But then if you scroll down, you see obituary. So, we also know that Kanye West's mother passed away. So, let's select obituary to see if this is her. And as you start to scroll down, it gives you a profile and actual records that ties this person uh this document to the person. So, look what's listed on the record. Her obituary lists Kanye West. So therefore, we know that this is Donda West, the actual mother of Kanye West. But if you look to the right hand side, there's already a profile that was created for this person with additional records attached to that person, right? So if we're looking for Donda West, there's so many records that are available for free that ties this person um to who we're looking for. So as I stated, there seems to be a profile already created. So I'm going to select D West or Donda Claren Williams. So Donda Claren Williams is the maiden name of Donda West before she married Ray West. So look, it even uh provided us with her maiden name. But if now that we're in her actual profile, we're going to scroll down and look what it it lists all her different family members that are attached to this profile. So it shows her children um and then it also shows her parents. So we know that Donda Claren Williams birth parents are Portwood Williams Senior and Lucille Eckles. So let's just try to select her father Portwood Williams Senior as and it also shows the birth date right here. He was born in 1915. And then up here it shows sources. So these are all the sources, historical records that verify that these are the family members associated with DA West, also known as DA Williams.
So now let's go back to details. We're going to go back to the father. And now let's select the father. And then we're going to select person. And now we have the profile for just the father of Donda West, which is Portwood Williams Senior. And so now if you scroll down to his profile, you'll also be able to see that it lists his parents and his children. So Portwood Williams, his parents are listed right here as John Williams and Clara Jones. Now look how far back we're already going. We're already into the 1870s. So now if I select Portwood's father, which is John Williams, and then it allows me to search his profile. Now we're into John Williams profile. Now, if we scroll down, look what it shows. See, it shows who John Williams was married to, and it also shows his children. So you see Portwood down there listed as his child. So now we're going to select his father, John Williams, who was born in 1852. So I'm going to select John Williams as profile. Now we're in John Williams profile. And if we scroll down, look, no parents listed. So this is as far back as the records will take us at this time. But John Williams was born in 1852. Mind you, black Americans were uh were not emancipated or freed until 1865. So therefore, John Williams was born into slavery. He was born as a slave. So that means that Kanye West is a certified foundational black American. Let's go.
So now that we're on in John Williams profile, we're going to collect uh select sources. And now this gives us access to his records, right? So now if I wanted to download this record to keep it shows us the different records. So this is a record. This is the 1880 US census that lists John Williams as well as the different family members that are associated with him. So John Williams lists his family members within this record as well. But if we want to view this original document, we're going to just select view original document. And look family, it shows us the actual uploaded digital form of this real actual document, the US census from 1880. And if you want to download this document to keep for free, you select this download button right here. You select download and it gives you different options to download, right? You could download it with highlights that actually highlights um him within this document. um or PDF record image with no highlights or a JPEG file or just not download it in at all with no record image. But we're going to select PDF record image with no highlights and then I'm going to select download.
Okay, family. So, it's downloaded. So now after watching this tutorial, I was able to demonstrate how you're able to locate a family member, um, trace their lineage, follow their profiles back in time to see how far their records go, and then also be able to locate the record, and download it to keep. So, I hope this helps you um, in your search to find your family and trace your lineage.
But some quick tips to help you while you're on your search. So, the deeper you get into searching for family members when it comes to the US census, you'll start to notice that sometimes there could be slight discrepancies in terms of how names are spelled. For example, Pearly Williams may be spelled as Pearl Lee Williams or Pearly Williams or Pearly Williams. So, as you can see, there may be three different variations that pop up within the census within different census that were taken um at the time, but it's important that you follow the family members that are listed within the census. And this is how you know it's the same individual. Also, the birthdays will match. But it's just something to note, family, that when you're searching for family members, you may search under one name and then not notice that that family member's name was misspelled differently on a different census. So when you're in your search finding family members, make sure to check all different variations of names. And then if you come to a dead end on one name, check the other names as well. and you'll see that it leads continues to lead to a um a deeper trail for you to follow.
But um that's it family. I hope you enjoyed this video. I want you to like and subscribe. It helps me out a lot. And until next time, this is the preach perspective and I hope that this was helpful for you. Let me know in the comments if you were able to locate some of your family members and trace your history. um, especially if you're a foundational black American, let me know if you were able to trace your history back to slavery. Okay, that's it. Peace and love. I'm out.