It’s an amazing resource but at the same time I wonder if it doesn’t open up possibilities for fraud. (Just a vague wonder since I am not of a nefarious turn of mind, and I can’t imagine what use anyone could have for the data.)

We had puzzled over the information about my husband’s grandfather for some time, because when his son (my father-in-law) was born, the birth certificate listed a fictional place for the father’s birthplace. This grandfather had been a wandering-musician train-hopping hobo during the depression, and was long estranged from both his family of origin and from the child he fathered, so we had no information to go on other than his name and death date. We had come to an utter dead-end.

Then one day, working in the family history center (we were newlyweds then, and loved that calling), my husband had a prompting to look in the SSDI (this was long before the electronic databases, so it wasn’t as simple as it is today) for this grandfather, who had passed away in 1973.

Sure enough, there he was. We sent away for a copy of the SS-5 that he had personally filled out as a young adult, and voila! there was the name of his birthplace, his parent’s names, and their address. The birthplace was 1500 miles and many states from the one on my father-in-law’s birth certificate. We soon discovered that in the actual home-town, there were many relatives remaining, and a road that passed near the homestead was named after the family.

So listen to Ardis. This is excellent advice she’s giving you.