Brian Freedland: If your parents don't know who their parents were, you are stuck. Buying their birth certificates would be useless, since it would say "Unknown" where the mother and father were supposed to be. We could give you lists of Upshaws and you'd be clueless.http://ssdi.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/ssdi.cgihas 2,282 Upshaws who died in the USA. One could be your grandfather, but you would not know it.Some problems don't have solutions.There are basically NO on-line free data bases of adoptions. You have to go through courts to find birth parents, and in some states they won't let you. If your parents were not adopted, you'd start with their birth certificates and SSN applications....Show more
Maynard Phoubandith: There is more than one surname in your family. What is your mother's surname?Grandparents? Upshaw Name Meaning and HistoryEnglish (East Anglia): probably a habitational name from a lost or unidentified place named with Old English upp ‘up(per)! ’ + sc(e)aga ‘copse’, or a topographic name with the same meaning. Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4...Show more
Tillie Wynott: There is an excellent tutorial for those new to family research at http://rwguide.rootsweb.ancestry.com/; everyone starting out in genealogy should understand the basics and this tutorial covers them. After you complete the tutorial, follow the instructions in the next two paragraphs unless the money is a problem, then do what you can without spending money and proceed to the free websites. It’s a bit long but hang in there because there is a ton of information on how to find free genealogy information.The person you know about is you, so, start with your birth certificate, which has your parents, and then ask your parents for copies of their birth certificates, which will have your grandparents on them. Then if you grandparents are living, continue the process. You will experience a pro! blem depending on when you grandparents or great grandparents ! were born, in that; birth certificates did not exist before the early 1900s. Nevertheless, you need to get back to 1930 with personal records because those types of records are not available to the public for 50 to 100 years depending on the jurisdiction in which they are held.By copying or ordering these documents, you have gone to relatively little expense and you have three generations plus yourself and you have it documented with primary documents. That will give you 2 parents, 4 grandparents, and 8 great grandparents names to start researching. You can now use death certificates, marriage records, census records, immigration records, church records, court records and many other sources to research your ancestry. Maybe if your parents see that you are serious they will reconsider and help you, if not, try you grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins or anyone that might be willing to help you get the information you need to begin researching on the free websites. Your publi! c libraries will most likely have both Ancestry.com and Heritage Quest free for anyone to use while at the library and with a library card you should be able to use Heritage Quest at home…Heritage quest is more difficult to use but it does have a lot of genealogical information as does Google books.Another free online resource is the Latter Day Saints/Mormon site, which has many free online records at www.familysearch.org and original documents on their pilot site at http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.h... . They have also just added a new Beta site that has a few more databases, which you might find useful at: http://fsbeta.familysearch.org/s/collection/list . In addition to their online records, they have Family History Centers where you can go for personalized help with research and look at microfilm and while they will not do your research for you they will help you, a lot. They only charge if they have to order something specifically for you or you need! photocopies and their charges are minimal. Look on the home page of th! eir website to find a location near you and call to check hours of operation. http://www.familysearch.org/eng/Home/Welcome/home.... .Additionally, USGen Web is another free online resource at http://www.usgenweb.org/ . This site is packed with how-to tips, queries and records for every state and most counties within those states. Then, there is Rootsweb at http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ a free site hosted by Ancestry.com where you can search for surnames, post queries on the message boards and subscribe to surname mailing lists. Also, be sure to check each state that you need information from as many have their own projects, for example, the state of Missouri has a great website that has many free source documents online at http://www.sos.mo.gov/mdh/ and South Carolina has many free wills and other court documents at http://www.archivesindex.sc.gov/onlinearchives/sea... Also, Family Tree Magazine’s 101 Best Websites, 2010 http://familytreemagazine.com/article/101-Bes! t-Web... You may have to register for their free newsletter to access this list but you will find that helpful also.And the only site that is included on this list that has some links that are free and some that are not is Cyndi’s List but it will be well worth your time to look through the list for the free websites because of their quality: http://www.cyndislist.com/ A final gems of wisdom: you can search our archives for “free genealogy†or “free ancestry†to find more on free sources. Also, if you get stuck, you can come back here to ask questions or get specific help....Show more
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