Facebook is Your Friend

With so many sites like Geni and Ancestry.com having the digital photo capabilites to match faces with your relatives, let's make it easy for the next generation by uploading the photos of people who are still alive (or only recently deceased). Everybody is on facebook nowadays. Just hyperlink (i.e. steal) their photos from their page and upload them to the geneology website. Most geneology websites are locked anyway and you have to be an actual relative of the person to view them (unless you're about 7 generations back, at which point it becomes public - the only people who would care at that point are vampires and other immortals). Most people have their parents and children on there too. Fill it in for them. If you waited on them to do it. You would be waiting forever! Be proactive. Write/record your history before it is forgotten.

Descendant from Gypsies?

Just got off the phone with the St. Clair County Clerks office who actually called me because they couldn't fulfill my request - which was very nice. Apparently, my maternal grandmother must have gone off into another dimension to die because neither St. Clair County NOR St. Louis County has a record of it. Now, I have long since speculated that the Holt side of the family may perhaps be descendants of gypsies and spies, but I was joking ... wasn't I? Every time, I try to explore that side further, I get a roadblock immediately. Sure, this may happen from time to time with particular individuals BUT AN ENTIRE BRANCH OF THE TREE? What's going on on this side? Black ops? Magical faeries? Well, my Aunt Dee informs me that Glodine Wade Holt DID in fact die at Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, MO - despite what St. Louis County might have heard. So, I will be pressing this matter with them post haste.

FYI, You may contact St. Clair County @ 618-277-6600 for all of your birth, death and marriage license needs. Dialing extension 2378 will get you Mark, the guy I worked with. He's aces. Also, he gave me a heads up on a website called Legacy.com that searches Obituary notices in the newspaper nationally. Happy Hunting!

And so it begins ... in Alabama no less ...

I encountered a problem when trying to locate a copy of Columbus Haywood's birth certificate from 1885. Columbus was born in Huntsville, Alabama and like all things backwards and 'bama (hey, I can say that because I have lived in 'bama and thus know how they roll) they only started recording such things in 1908. So, I sent them a query this morning asking what they suggest I do to locate such records. The nice young lady emailed me back stating I should try ancestry.com -- you don't say? I've never heard of this mythical site that spends millions of dollars on advertising whose commercials are on TV every 30 seconds - what else you got) She then informed me that some counties kept their own records. Since Huntsville is a relatively large city (in Alabama terms anyway), I may actually have a shot of locating a copy of this record. Getting Columbus Haywood's birth certificate could mean finding where his parents Nicholas and Frances were from AND settling a hunch that I have the Frances' maiden name was Taylor. Wish me luck.

If any of your relatives are from Alabama, you may want to contact this office as well. I'm going to paste the email to the bottom of this post. It contains information that may be of interest to you. Happy searching!

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Thanks for your recent inquiry regarding older Alabama vital records. In Alabama, birth and death records were not filed with this office until 1908. Marriages were not filed with us until 1936, and divorces were not filed here until 1950. Therefore, certified copies of such older records cannot be obtained from us. However, I recommend you search two very popular genealogical websites on the Internet, www.ancestry.com and www.RootsWeb.com to see if any information is available on-line. Searching these websites could possibly incur a fee.

Some counties had information on births and/or deaths recorded locally before 1908. Some of those records are available in the Department of Archives and History. For information on their holdings, you may contact them at (334) 242-4435 or write to them at P.O. Box 300100, Montgomery, Alabama 36130. Their website is www.archives.alabama.gov. Marriages and divorces may also be obtained in the county courthouse where the marriage license was issued or where the divorce was granted.


Nicole A. Henderson, MPH
Director, Record Management and Customer Services Division
Alabama Center for Health Statistics
P.O. Box 5625
Montgomery, AL 36103-5625
Office: (334) 206-2679
Fax: (334) 206-2659
Email: nicole.henderson@adph.state.al.us

Family Tree

Crystal here, your friendly neighborhood geneologist. I'm starting this blog to chart the progress of our family tree, give tips to aid your search and give shout outs to people that help me along the way. Check in periodically. I promise to provide information that is interesting AND helpful.