I recently read an article in the Washington Post about the documents verifying sale and “shipment” of Solomon Northrup, the author of the memoir, and now Oscar winning film, 12 Years a Slave. The excitement, and validation, of reading an ancestor’s name written in that old-style, curly, elegant handwriting, on a century’s old document reminded me of my experience as a part-time, amateur genealogists conducting my own family research. I literally almost screamed when I finally found my family listed in census records, and cried when I eventually located the actual marriage certificate of my great-grandparents, bearing their “X”s, in a courthouse in Virginia. Even my mother was impressed. I mention the idea of knowing your family’s history in my novel, Life in Spades, as one of the characters tours a family plantation. In case you have been inspired to look up your family, here are a few lessons learned from my time spent in the National Archives and country courthouses. The Census is a good place to start, to give you a general picture [...]