Records 1970 to 2009
In doing your family research sometimes you might concentrate on the very older records and documents. However, in any good research you do need to start with the more recent records – beginning with yourself and your parents and their siblings.
Using the free FamilySearch.org site, they have records from phone directories, tax assessments, property liens, driver licenses, hunting licenses, civil and criminal court records, vehicle registrations, and voter registrations. All of these are considered ‘public records’, open for anyone to view.
From these records a researcher could locate full names, birth dates, addresses, phone numbers, occupations and even names of other relatives. On the FamilySearch.org site the records cover mainly from 1970 to 2009 within the United States, especially with birth information for those born 1900 to 1990.
As you do a search, remember different spellings for a given name or surnames might exist. Sometimes a person only used their initials instead of a full given name. So you will need to check out variations, such as Gregory and Greg for a given name.
If a listing is found, click on ‘preview’ to the far right or on the highlighted full name to view more details. Occasionally there might be an image of a record also available. 
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