Was my forebear's Mandarin dictionary any good?

[kjthistory]

One of my ggg-grandfathers had a brother named George Carter Stent, who was born in Canterbury (Kent, England) about 1831. As part of my family history research, I'm writing up a narrative of his life.

Amongst a number of other works, in 1871 George published "A Chinese and English Vocabulary in the Pekinese Dialect" followed in 1874 by "A Chinese

Comments

[kjthistory]

By 1940 I'm guessing that the surnames will be spelt the same on the certificates and on the census, but the further back you go the more you have to be creative in thinking about the variations - not just in the spelling differences, but how the indexers have read the handwriting on the census form. I have found Cates indexed as Cater, for example, and Haydon spelt as Headon and Heydon.

It's true that a lot of detailed information is not available online until at least fifty years have passed, but indices are available, and that may well be enough to get you started. The index will probably tell you the names of the parties, the year, presumably the State and perhaps the county or even the town.

I would suggest your first step - after talking to relatives - would be to buy one or two monthly family history magazines. Most of them have a "getting started" page, and just reading through the letters page and the problems page will give you lots of ideas on how to go about things. Also, if you have an unusual name anywhere, it's always worth googling it. (That's how I found George in the first place: his niece, my gg-grandmother, was Clara Carter Stent, and I didn't know what the Carter was about so I googled "Carter Stent" and up he came - I'd always wondered where he'd got to!)

The second step would be to do some general googling around terms like "family history" "< surname > born , town name >". This may give you some interesting results of other people's research, but will also lead you to various online databases.

You should also try familysearch.org - they have US Social Security Death Records iirc.

If I'm wrong and you are in the UK, PM me and I may be able to help in more detail. If you just want clarification or discussion of something I've said here, leave a comment in reply.

[cattiechaos]

Thank you so much for your thorough reply! I am indeed from the U.S. although my parents hail from two different counries. For that reason I am unsure if I can access the files of those countries unless I go there in person. They came over to the U.S. in their mid-20's so I can find a marriage license but other than that, not so much. I think that I'll go about researching how to access the files in those countries in addition to asking around my family. Sorry this is such a short reply, but I really do appreciate the effort you put into this! It really helped and it's rather inspiring to see someone so passionate about tracing their family lineage. Once again, thank you!

[kjthistory]

You're very welcome. I've just remembered - most people recommend Cyndi's List online, although I've never used it myself. The website familysearch that I mentioned above has records from many countries, and I imagine that with such a strong history of recent immigration into the States there will be books about how to trace ancestors back to various specific countries. There are also lots of forums you can probably track down, and I bet they have threads for the countries you're interested in. Good luck!