Tonight I was doing some 'fill in the census blanks' searches on Ancestry. Usually I find that it saves time to search each census year directly, but tonight I also used Global Search, just to see what would come up.
In the US we are not as blessed with BMD information as one can be in the UK. Many states did not have statewide birth registration until the early 20th century, so in order to get certificates you have to contact the county in which your ancestor was born, and not all states have information online.
While searching for my maternal grandmother and her siblings, I entered the name of my youngest great-aunt. One of the hits was from the state's delayed birth records. (These are applications for a birth certificate, based on attestations from relatives or family records such as bibles, etc.)
This listed my aunt's current city, the names of her parents, their ages at death, and the source of the information (the family bible).
Running a search for children of those two parents in that set of records yielded results for seven of the ten siblings (but -- alas -- not my grandmother).
In the case of my youngest great-aunt, the date of her application is from 1959 -- after I was born -- and her 'present address' is the city where I visited her when I was a young child, only a few years later.
So I am confident that this is the right family, and the data dovetails nicely with the census records I had already collected (which only go up to 1930).
I don't know who has the Bible now, but I hope that it was passed down to one of my cousins. At any rate, I am grateful to get a peek at it, if only by proxy.
Have you made a similar find lately due to good luck or a hunch? Post it here -- perhaps it will inspire someone to search in a place they might have neglected otherwise.
Happy hunting!
Jan
ID:3008