Am interested in beginning genealogy research for DAR application. Website advice re:how & where I start?

Question

I already have dates and names but need to find out how I can actually prove... getting death certificates, birth certificates, finding out if my info I have already is accurate like places they were born and died. Any help or advice would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Here is the main DAR site with answers to your questions:

http://www.dar.org/natsociety/content.cf...

For other generations back to the Patriot, one or more of the following items would usually be considered acceptable proof: cemetery records, tombstone inscriptions, obituaries, probate records, wills, census records, Bible records, local histories, and well-documented genealogies. Relationships between generations MUST be proven.

How Stuff Works:

http://history.howstuffworks.com/revolut...

Here is another good site:

http://www.learnwebskills.com/patriot/do...

So, start with your birth certificate and then your mom or dad (the one that's also the descendant of the soldier). You might be able to just ask a relative for the first few generations (like your parent, grandparent).  If you run into problems getting them and you get to 1930, then go to census records, which can get you to 1790.  Ancestry has all the census records or if your local library has a subscription to HeritageQuest then you can use that.  The National Archives and Record Administration might be one place to get records. (www.nara.gov).  They will have military rosters, rolls, etc.

Answer 2

I am going through the same process.  First, contact your local DAR chapter and tell them who your ancestor is that you believe was a Revolutionary soldier.  Have them search and see if anyone has already joined under that soldier.  If someone already has, then all you have to do is piggy back on them by proving your direct link from yourself to the point where your and that person's tree branch off from each other, because from that point back to the soldier, they have already proven the link.  So, you may not have to prove your link from you to the soldier, but maybe only from you to your great-grandfather or something like that.

Once you figure out how far back you really need to go, then the use of birth / marriage / death records, and census records, wills, land records, etc...........anything you can find as a primary paper trail to prove the link is what you need.  They will not accept "family history" such as family bibles or written genealogy, a copy of someone's undocumented research from a genealogy site, etc.  It MUST be an actual paper trail of legal documents.

EDIT:  In response to the below person's statement about using census records back to 1790.........census records will not help with this before 1850.  That is because it was not until 1850 that census records listed all members of a household on them.  Before that, they only listed the head of the house, which tells you NOTHING about who else was there.  Example:  If you need to prove that John is the son of Mark Jones in 1810, the census is no use because John's name will not appear on it as a son of Mark Jones.  Only Mark's name will be listed; so you cannot definitively prove that this Mark Jones is the same one that is John's father and that John was in this household, or that this Mark Jones even had a son named John.  Anything before 1850 will require more substantial documentation than census records, like wills that name heirs, widow pensions (if they had them for this war), etc.  So, census records are excellent source from 1850 to 1930, but not before 1850, and not for the year 1890 because most of the US census records for 1890 was lost in a fire.