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When the Record Doesn't Exist: Strategies for Determining Vital Data About Your Ancestors

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Presentation Description

Vital records do not survive for all time periods, or they may never have existed. Many regions in the United States, for example, didn’t start recording vital records until the late nineteenth century. In this online lecture, Chief Genealogist David Allen Lambert discusses how to ensure you are doing an exhaustive search, provide information on alternate sources, and how to draw conclusions from multiple sources when a “smoking gun” record doesn’t exist. We will also discuss how to narrow a timeframe when even less information can be found.

INSTRUCTOR

David Allen Lambert has been on the staff of American Ancestors since 1993 and is the organization’s Chief Genealogist. David is an internationally recognized speaker on the topics of genealogy and history.

Lambert has published many articles in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, the New Hampshire Genealogical Record, Rhode Island Roots, Mayflower Descendant, and American Ancestors magazine. He has authored and or co-authored in the published genealogies presented to David McCullough, Ken Burns, Angela Lansbury, Michael and Kitty Dukakis, Nathaniel Philbrick, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino.  He has also published eleven books including A Guide to Massachusetts Cemeteries (American Ancestors, 2018), and Vital Records of Stoughton, Massachusetts, to the end of the year 1850 (Massachusetts Society of Mayflower Descendants, 2008). David received his B.A. in History from Northeastern University. David is an elected Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston, Mass., and a life member of the New Hampshire Society of the Cincinnati and the General Society of the War of 1812. David also serves as the tribal genealogist for the Massachusett Tribe at Punkapoag in Massachusetts. 

Areas of expertise: New England and Atlantic Canadian records of the 17th through 21st century; American and international military records; DNA research; and Native American and African American genealogical research in New England.