By Shannon Bennett, Student

Another great course is wrapped. US: Vital Records, Understanding and Using The Records is a required course for the American Certificate, but I feel it would be a great one to take if you are struggling to find those elusive BMDs in American records. While I did know a lot of the course information already I hope you could see from my prior posts how it wasn’t just a retelling of information which a majority of long-term researchers may already know.

I touched briefly on the websites and resources included in the course a few posts back, but I wanted to talk to you a little bit more about those here. As usual with National Institute courses there was a fantastic reading list and suggestions where you could learn more information about what the instructor taught. This course was no exception.

In fact, I am still going through some of the suggested resources. However, I thought I would touch on a few that I think would be useful to you in your research. Luckily, these are all online so you can research them to your heart’s content from your computer or tablet. There is also the added bonus for the two books listed that you do not need to worry about having to order them through interlibrary loan or purchasing a copy (The Source is a HUGE book by the way).

• Ancestry’s Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources
• Daughters of the American Revolution
• FamilySearch Research Wiki
• The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy

I hope you take the time to explore these resources. For American research they are considered go-to sources and vital to helping you break down your brick walls. I used them through the course to give me more insights into what I was learning as well. Plus I continue to use them as a road map for my current research.

Overall I was pleased with the course and think you will be too. It was not too basic but not so advanced that a newer genealogist would get lost. I am pretty sure you can glean some useful gems from it.

Well thanks for sticking around to see how it all turned out! Another basic level course done and I am chugging along to the next one. Up next is the course Google for the Wise Genealogist.

See you online!