Step Six - Confirming the Relationship

At this point, even if you only have one name after all your research, you need to verify that this person is indeed related to you.

Again, I am much luckier than others because there was only one recorded Eduard Bompasse that came over to this country according to my present research. People with names like Adams, Smith, Jones and other common ones will have a great more difficulty in proving that the Smith they found is 'their Smith.'

The Resources Section shows just a few of the major genealogical research web sites. These are the largest and most popular, and contain a lot of free reference information. However, keep in mind that they do not provide this information because they just like to. They are in business to make money, and offer many services at a nominal cost either through subscriptions, sales of available data, or software programs to make your search easier and organized.

After I found my Civil War relations and examined my spreadsheet, I realized that I had Union and Confederate family members with different name derivatives scattered all over the country. The task to verify their relation to me seemed immense given the large number and different state locations that I had discovered. To verify each individual one at a time would be an achievable, but tedious and time-consuming. I was intelligent enough to realize I needed some help in this enormous task.

An internet search for genealogical sites and resources located literally hundreds of web sites available. There is shareware and software that can be purchased to assist in creating and maintaining a family tree that is searchable, printable, and easy to use.

There are also thousands of family name sites, where individuals have posted their family information, corresponded with others within their family tree, and have a large library of data available for public use. Again, I was fortunate in locating a 941-page family tree researched and published by Lynn Albert Bumpus, which provided me with a lot of basic information. There are others similar to this within the internet. These families are glad to share their information with you, and are a virtual library of information at your fingertips.

Some of this information has been published in book form as well. A search through the larger book-seller web sites did not provide a lot of information, but these family web sites will provide some information on the title or availability of the books that someone in the family unit published in hard copy. I was surprised to find seven books published about our family tree.

I have chosen a two-step program to link the thousands of my relations together, not only to prove the relationship of the Civil War ancestors, but as an overall link to my family past. First, I downloaded an excellent software program that provided all I needed to work on this project. I hesitate to endorse one product over another, as there are many very nice and user-friendly genealogy software programs available. The features I looked for included the ability to generate reports and print them, such as the family tree, book form, pedigree, family names, etc.

I also determined that the best way to link all of my family history was to use the resources of others, called downloadable GEDcom files. As many families have discovered with their genealogy software, the data they create and save can be in a format called GEDcom. Many of them post this data at their family research sites, or to the other public resources mentioned earlier. This is a fast and easy way to reference others' material in your own research.

The software I chose not only allows me to view these files, but also allows the merging of the GEDcom data into my data files. As you merge the data, it compares previous and new data, correlates it, and organizes it. Their data then becomes your data, saving hundreds of hours to research what others have already researched in your family. I was able to merge nearly 5,000 relations including birth dates and locations, siblings or children, and other vital information in about three total hours using this function. This task would have probably taken a few months of diligent, serious work and typing to produce the same results.

This method is not only less frustrating and tedious, it rapidly proved the ancestral links to each one of my Civil War relatives.

GEDcom File Resources

The absolute best current resource I found is the Church of the Latter Day Saints Family Search web site located at http://familysearch.org/eng/default.asp . This site is not only easy to use, but contains literally millions of names and free family information and data that has been collected over nearly two hundred years as part of their religious genus.

This web site allows for international search as well, linking those European relations with those that came to America so long ago. It contains a lot of information on performing family research, other resources, family web page links, and lots more. What's more, a researcher can bank on the reliability of the data collected as proof of family links and heritage as needed. The other genealogy web sites are quite good as well, but I found the best results was using the data if this site as a primary resource, and the others for additional verification or other information on my relations.