Friday, November 20, 2009

Using the DAR GRS - Ancestors and Descendants

My post on DAR Genealogical Research System provides information about the Revolutionary War soldier in the Ancestors section and about the line on the DAR application in the Descendants sections.

I thought I would walk you through the process to get to both sections:

From the Genealogical Research System page on the DAR website, the user can click on the image or the link that says "Click Image to Open GRS." The tabs on the left-hand sidebar shown below don't actually go to the GRS, only the paragraphs on this particular web page.



After clicking on the small image above, this search screen appears in a new window:



On the Search screen, the user must input either the Ancestor's Last Name, the Ancestor's first name, or the Ancestor's Number. I put "Seaver" in the Last Name field and hit "Search" and received 19 matches:

The screen above lists the soldiers and the brief summary of their service. There are two icons to the right of their name - one for the Revolutionary War Ancestor's full record (a soldier icon), and the other for the Descendants Records (a family tree icon).

I scrolled down and found a Moses Seaver that looked interesting, so I clicked on his Ancestor's record:


The Ancestor's Record lists the soldier's name, the service summary, a section for his Residence, a listing of his Spouse(s), and a listing of the Associated Applications and Supplementals.

I clicked on the Descendants Record icon to the right of his name, and this page appeared:

The Descendants Record lists the approved line of descent from the Revolutionary War soldier. In many cases, including this one, several recent generations are restricted from view. However, the generations that are shown provide, for the lineage person from each generation, the father, mother, their birth dates and birth places, their death dates and death places, and their marriage date and marriage place.

Note that the Search box above finds only the Revolutionary War soldier, not the descendants of the soldier. If you click on the "Descendants" tab, the search field there will find the descendants.

The screen shot for the Ancestor search above show a "Simple Search;" there is an "Advanced Search" tab that permits you to filter by Rank, Residence and Pension Number. The "Advanced Search" box for Descendants is different - the user can add spouse, death date and location, etc.

Each search result has a warning (in pink in the last screen shot) that says:

"This listing does not constitute proof of lineage. It is an index to find the most appropriate DAR application to order and cannot be used in place of a record copy. For more information about application record copies,
click here."

A user can click on the link to the Record Copy page and order the application (but not the supporting documentation for the application), for a $10 fee, for the specific line desired.

In many cases, this information is not available in any other online record, or in offline vital records databases. Much of this information was probably obtained from privately held family records.

I was able to add data to several people in the Seaver lines from this database today. I still have more to do, plus the other surnames and Revolutionary War soldiers that I have.

One benefit down the line here may be to connect to distant cousins who have submitted and had approved their DAR applications, or their descendants.

1 comment:

Miriam Robbins said...

Randy, the first three links in your first paragraph do not work.

Thanks for a great tutorial!