Friday, June 24, 2016

How to find out if you have a DAR Patriot Ancestor!

Maybe you know already or maybe you are interested in finding out: do you have a DAR Patriot Ancestor? There are, as far as I can figure, over 200,000 Patriot Ancestors on the official DAR list. Of course there are many more than that number who served in the military or gave civil or other patriotic service and are just waiting for their descendants to find them and show them to the DAR by way of an application.

I've has so many people ask how to get onto the DAR web site and check to see if their ancestor is listed that I wrote up a How To sheet for it with step-by-step instructions. And it is.

How to find the Genealogy Record System or GRS
and see the search page for Ancestors in the DAR database.

1. go to http://www.dar.org/

2. find GENEALOGY at the very top and click there.

3. In the middle of that page you'll see a column heading that says "Genealogy Research, GRS".

4. Under GRS at the top of the list is "Ancestor Search", and click there.

5. That will take you to the Ancestor Search page. You can enter what you know here but sometimes less is more so a last name and a first name is often enough to start. 

6. If it's an unusual name or a name that could have many spellings then use the "Advanced Search" feature. You'll find the link to that on the right. Advanced Search lets you use Soundex. Using Advanced Search and Soundex will bring up more results to choose from.

7. If you've used Soundex or there are more than one men of the same name, they will all come up in the search results. Then you'll need to narrow the selections by birth and death dates as well as locations.

8. Click on the ancestor name to see the details page.

By this time you should have a pretty good idea if your ancestor is already recognized and verified by the DAR!

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