By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
Millie Broka doesn’t look much like a detective. But she and her cohorts spend their time trying to reveal skeletons in people’s closets.
As president of the Wood County Genealogical Society, Broka helps people discover their roots and fill out the branches on their family trees. Digging up ancestry has become somewhat vogue lately, especially with the PBS series “Finding Your Roots,” which researches celebrities and often reveals surprising skeletons with checkered pasts.
But genealogists would like non-celebrities to know that everyone’s family tree has a story to tell. And in many ways it’s getting easier for the average person to do their own sleuth work.
Unlike genealogists of the past, who spent hours with dusty ledgers filled with fading cursive names and dates, most of today’s amateur genealogists search the internet for links to their ancestry. More and more records are being transcribed and are more accessible than in the past.
“It’s easier to go online and look for information than go through records up in probate court,” searching for the key details on births, deaths and marriages, Broka said.
That doesn’t mean that amateur genealogists don’t still run into brick walls. Even Broka, with all her experience cracking cases, hits dead-ends at times.
Broka recommends looking for clues by talking to relatives – before it’s too late.
“I think a lot of times, you don’t get interested in it until you are older,” she said. “Then it may be too late. The ancestors are gone or don’t remember things.”
Start with the present and move backwards. The genealogy office at the Wood County Courthouse Complex has packets that can help get the search started. The journey begins with a five-generation chart, which can be filled with searches through obituaries, census records, probate records and tombstone records, many of which are online in Wood County.
Then be patient. Family trees take generations to grow, so they won’t be untangled quickly. Be prepared for tedious searches through seemingly endless records. Then celebrate when another piece of the puzzle is found.
“Once you get hooked, you’re hooked,” Broka said.
Wood County’s Genealogical Society has gone to great strides to make records more accessible to people trying to dig up their roots. But that only gets people so far.
“Most of our relatives came from the East,” from Pennsylvania and Maryland, Broka said. So as amateur genealogists continue to dig deeper, they are at the mercy of records from other states.
Sometimes, the clues come from unexpected places. Broka believed she had hit a brick wall in her search, when she received an email from her nephew in England. Her nephew had received an email from an unknown distant relative in Georgia. It turned out the family records had been clouded by the fact that somewhere along the line, an ancestor had children prior to being married. The clue enabled Broka to break through the brick wall and continue to dig deeper.
“Those are the skeletons, and I think they’re fun to find. It’s really exciting,” when the pieces fall into place, she said.
Searches are now also being aided by DNA. Broka and her husband, Bob, have had their DNA tested to see what other clues that may reveal.
But no one needs to search alone. The Local and Family History Room at the courthouse complex offers hands-on help, plus access to cemetery inscriptions, county atlases, Bible records, one-room school records and church records.
Other county offices may reveal other secrets:
- Probate Court: Marriage records, wills and estates, naturalizations, births and deaths.
- Clerk of Courts: Divorce records, civil and criminal records, coroner reports.
- Recorder’s Office: Real estate deeds, soldiers’ discharges and veteran grave registrations.
- Auditor’s Office: Real estate tax records, personal property taxes.
- Engineer’s Office: Plat maps of townships, some cemetery plat maps, ditch records.
- Wood County Health Department: Birth and death records.
Other information may be found at the Wood County Historical Center and Museum, the Wood County District Public Library and the Center for Archival Collections at Bowling Green State University.
