The Family Tree Toolkit: A Comprehensive Guide to Uncovering Your Ancestry and Researching Genealogy. By Kenyatta D. Berry, Skyhorse Publishing, 2018, 267 p.
1)
Starting Your Family History
2)
United States Records Research3) Other Records
4) Immigration and Naturalization
5) US Military Research
6) Ethnic Ancestry
7) European Research
8) Adoption Research
9) DNA
Each American state is featured on its own page with a chart detailing state birth, marriage, and death registrations, their beginnings and availability, and which online databases currently have those documents in digitized form. The book does a good job describing the contents of state records and how these records might benefit the genealogist.
Some
of the topics in this book are examined briefly. The eight-page chapter on
European research skims the surface of this area of study, mentioning
only select countries and would benefit the researcher who has just
discovered they are of English, Irish, German, Italian or Jewish heritage. The
chapter on DNA is also short, only six pages long, and presents a general
overview of the benefits of DNA testing for genealogists.
The
chapters on US military research and Ethnic Ancestry, which covers African
American and Native American research, are more detailed and provide timelines
of key events, as well as tips for researching in these specialized subject
areas.
The
text is simply written, and is presented in large font, which may be of benefit
to individuals who have difficulty reading small print. The author focusses
almost exclusively on online records such as those available through Familysearch.org,
Ancestry.com, Fold3.com and on other online databases, with very little
discussion about in-person research at archives and local history repositories.
It is likely this guide will require regular updating to keep it current because
of its focus on digital records.
The Family Tree Toolkit provides researchers with a quick tool to determine
which U.S. records are available online and where. For the genealogist looking
for a more comprehensive guide to US records, Alice Eicholz’s classic The Red Book: American State, County, and
Town Sources, or The Source: A
Guidebook to American Genealogy, edited by Loretto Dennis Szucs and Sandra
Hargreaves Luebking will provide greater detail about in-person research in archives and
other repositories.
