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chickadee48

Where do you start when most of your family is dead and the ones left don't care. I have been doing research on my family for ten years and come up with nothing concrete on any family having Native American blood. My aunt and uncle on my mother's side remember hearing that their grandparents had some Native blood, but that's all they knew. I did a lot of research in the Augusta County ( Va) Courthouse and found nothing. My father ( Honeycutt from NC ) is like finding a needle in a haystack. Anybody got any advice I could sure us it. Thanks

P.S. I'm new to this site so help there would be appreciated. This is very important to me.

soopashinaab

Look for the one they call Timmy Tiger... she is the absolute bomb when it comes to genealogy research. Timmy Tiger should be able to help.

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I'm A Mutt

The easiest way to do it is start with yourself and work back. Having said that,it helps a lot to learn as much as you can from existing relatives. Where people lived,where they died,did they go into the military where/when did they get married ? Just ask as many questions as you can. North Carolina has a lot of state records online as well as a lot of small historical societies that put their info up or offer it for sale.
You've already discovered that research can be frustrating but it can be a lot of fun too.Just keep trying.
Timmy Tiger really is the master of this subject on this board. I'm just an amateur.

Mutt

Okwataga

T.T. is the bomb on researching our pas.... she would be a good one to talk to .

but as all genealogist say - you start with yourself - your parents - their parents and go back each generation...

look for obits, birth/ death certificates, marriage records....

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Well will wonders never cease.....

ugidali

Hello chickadee48 and Welcome to powwows.com.

Keep searching and get as much info as you can. Try going to rootsweb.com and keep asking your relatives. Some may know more than they let on.
Good luck with that.
Let me know if I can help with anything.

timmy tiger

Thank you everyone for your kind words. I do enjoy the researching.

timmy tiger

Okay, as everyone else has said here before: Always start with yourself and work backwards, it's the only way to make sure that you actually have the correct people that you are actually related to.

Okay, what where you looking for in Augusta County VA? Is that where your family is from? Or the ones that you are looking for is from? And VA is a "Closed record state" and getting information from them is like pulling teeth, oh but it can be done--you just have to keep at it and sometimes go around in circles to get it.LOL

Next you mention your father "Honeycutt" from NC. Okay, now I have run into this name many times and spelled as many different ways as you can think of.LOL When did he die? If he died after 1950 then you have a chance to find him on what's called "Social Security Death Index" and that will list his last residence, but that doesn't always mean that that's where the person died. If you don't know where your father died, that's the first place to start before going on in his family. If you can't find a death record on him in the county that you believe that he was living in at the time of his death--first check for mis-spellings of his name and then check the surrounding counties 'cause if it's a small town that he lived in he may have gone to a hospital or to visit someone in a larger town and died there--I've seen that happen several times. I had someone once come to me looking for where their mother died. They could not find any death record on her, but they were sure of where she died. Well, I found her and she had died in a totally different County, like 2-3 counties away from where he thought she had died. Everything matched: Her maiden name, her age, her being a widow and even the next of kin was one of his own uncles--but he still argued that it wasn't her 'cause he swore that that wasn't where she died.LOL So it does happen.

Websites are good to look at, but sometimes they can have mis-information in them as well. But they are good for a guide and can help lead you in the right direction, just don't always take the info as fact until you actually have the document in your own hands.

And Welcome to the site. I hope this helps you.

103

what i knew living on a small reservation people knews everybody to a limit becasue of the tight nitt community and if you go to the city and still make the connection to the community the people will still know you but thru city life where nobody really cares about you unless you have money even if they are not family and for a couple of generations down the road you want to connect back to the reservation because you have no family and your family wasnot connecting to a reservation I think the reservation will not connect with you becasue your family wasnot around and no one knows you. thats my three million dollar advice

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I'm A Mutt

Services to Genealogists. State Library of North Carolina

Here's the link to the NC state archives. I hope it helps.
Mutt

*Powwow_Princess*

I just wanted to say that if your family is mostly from Virginia, if they are Native, this will be hard to track. Back in the day, Virginia had a policy where on forms you could ONLY be either black or white, no native, no asian, no mixed no nothing. Now today this has proven to be extremely detrimental to current tribes within Virginia who must prove their ancestry, which is hard to do when you ancestors were willnilly listed as either black or white simply from appearence. I would have to say that this policy has sadly been one of the most sucessful in eradicating Native peoples at least on paper. This is just a bit of info I can share...hope it helps and good luck, don't give up because once you start finding answers you will be so thrilled. I am personally trying to track down ancestors from Red River Canada/Minnesota.