First Step into the Uknown

      The second trick to this free ancestry search is finding other people currently searching for the same family members. Although there may be few who are searching for your grandparents (my mother was an only child) and your great-grandparents, by the time you go to search for great-great grandparents there have been three generations of people who may be searching for the same relatives you are. The further back your search takes you the more likely it is that others have already found and recorded the information you seek.

     Finding others became a necessity when searching for my mother's side of the family. I knew my grandfather's name. I knew he shared a name with his father. I located their family census record in the upstate New York town where my grandfather was born. That census record told me my great-grandfather's birthplace was in Ottawa, Quebec, Canada in 1889. I now had my search terms. Joseph T. Morrissette b. 1887-1892 Ottawa, Quebec, Canada. What I discovered was an earlier census from when my great-grandfather was a child in that upstate New York town. It showed his mother Mary J. Morrissette and his father Alexander Morrissette. It told me they immigrated in 1892 and that they were married in 1884. That meant there might be a marriage record in that area of Canada. It also gave me their approximate birth years.
     So I searched. Ottawa, Quebec, Canada for Alexander Morrissette birth year 1855-1860. I always give a range of years because you never know who wrote down what as was discussed in this post. Unfortunately, I did not find any Canadian records. That was where my search on Familysearch.org ended. My next step? Google. Really is there anything Google can't fix? 
     I input all I knew of them. Since google does pull all things that have even one word in common I found myself scanning through dozens of pages of search results. I looked at the years. 1897, nope that wasn't him. Married 1867, no another dead end. Finally I had a bite on the L'Heureux family tree. Alexandre Morrissette and Marie Baulne. They had the same birth years/marriage year and were in the same location. Though the names are slightly different I can see how the recorder when writing the US census could mistake Marie Baulne and transform it to Mary Baune.

     I believe these are my great-great grandparents because all of my search terms added up. Do I wish I had someone who could sit and verify that yes this is the right track? Absolutely. Ultimately though even the pro's are doing just what I am doing. Matching up search terms as close as possible to help others find the path that made them.