I've thought about tracing my mother's side of the family to see how far back i could go. I've been to a few sites where my mother's maiden name was not found. If i don't know the first names of my ancestors can i still trace a direct line back from me? If so, where might i do that? Thanks,

Kalena

The only reliable way is to get copies of certificates (Marriage, birth, death) and slowly move back in time tracing one to the next.

As an example. Your mothers marriage certificate should list the place of her birth, where she was living at the time and possibly the name of her parents. You then get her birth certificate which should tell you the full names of your grandparents (including your grandmothers maiden name) and sometimes things like, names of other siblings, place and date of marriage, their age at the time of the birth and so on.

So.... you then move onward and backward.

Here is a very good site I would recommend. I suggest you start by checking out some of the links under the heading "Beginners".

http://www.cyndislist.com/

Good luck.

Thanks, Nellie. I'll have to check that out.

Something I found useful when doing a geneology of my father's family, of which we knew almost nothing including names, was getting Social Security Applications. We knew my dad's grandmother's married name, so we got her SSA. On there had her maiden name. So then we searched for her birth certificate (we knew what city she'd been born in). On that we found her parent's full names. And so forth. It was very time consuming (you have to wait for them to process it and then wait for them to mail it....) and they do charge, but it was the only reliable way we found to find people.

I no longer have the address, but if you call the Social Security Admin in your state they should be able to give it to you. Good luck!

The most amount of fun that I've had tracing my family back was when I inherited 3 boxes full of old family pictures.

The real treasure was that even the oldest pics (dating from the late 1800's) had company logos (telling me what city they lived in) and writing on the back by the person who owned the pics.

The bad part was that the writing on the back mislead me to think that my grandpa's half sister was actually my great grandmother.

So from now on, after all the fun, I'll have to get a second source to verify what I find. The pictures will make it easier for me to find the public records, though, because before I didn't even have the names.