Kelly Bice
- Member for
- 14 years 6 months 23 days
- Find a Grave ID
Bio
My work on Find a Grave focuses on preserving family history, reconstructing forgotten lives, and documenting the social and historical context surrounding the individuals I research. I am especially interested in connecting people to their families, communities, migrations, occupations, military service, and the broader historical events that shaped their lives.
Much of my research centers on 19th- and early 20th-century families throughout the Pacific Northwest, Midwest, South, Red River Settlement/Manitoba, New York, and immigrant communities from Ireland, Scotland, England, and Canada. I enjoy piecing together difficult family connections, identifying previously unknown relatives, and preserving details that may otherwise be lost to time.
My memorial write-ups are typically built from a combination of historical and genealogical sources, including:
- Federal and state census records
- Birth, marriage, and death certificates
- Parish and church registers
- Cemetery records and headstone analysis
- Newspaper archives and obituaries
- Military records, pension files, and muster rolls
- Land, probate, and city directory records
- Immigration and naturalization documents
- Historical maps and local histories
- Archived photographs and family documents
- DNA research and kinship analysis when appropriate
- Fold3, Newspapers.com, Findmypast, FamilySearch, Ancestry, Chronicling America, and local archive collections
I also place strong emphasis on historical context. Rather than listing only dates and names, I try to explain where families lived, why they migrated, what industries or communities they were connected to, and how larger events such as wars, westward expansion, epidemics, religious movements, or economic shifts and how they influenced their lives.
When conclusions are uncertain, I compare multiple independent records and look for patterns across timelines, locations, naming traditions, census placements, witnesses, occupations, and family associations. In some cases, this process helps identify transcription errors, undocumented relationships, or misattributed parentage that may not be obvious from a single record alone.
Above all, my goal is to treat every memorial as a small act of historical preservation. Whether someone lived a highly documented life or left behind only fragments of records, I believe their story deserves care, dignity, and remembrance.
My work on Find a Grave focuses on preserving family history, reconstructing forgotten lives, and documenting the social and historical context surrounding the individuals I research. I am especially interested in connecting people to their families, communities, migrations, occupations, military service, and the broader historical events that shaped their lives.
Much of my research centers on 19th- and early 20th-century families throughout the Pacific Northwest, Midwest, South, Red River Settlement/Manitoba, New York, and immigrant communities from Ireland, Scotland, England, and Canada. I enjoy piecing together difficult family connections, identifying previously unknown relatives, and preserving details that may otherwise be lost to time.
My memorial write-ups are typically built from a combination of historical and genealogical sources, including:
- Federal and state census records
- Birth, marriage, and death certificates
- Parish and church registers
- Cemetery records and headstone analysis
- Newspaper archives and obituaries
- Military records, pension files, and muster rolls
- Land, probate, and city directory records
- Immigration and naturalization documents
- Historical maps and local histories
- Archived photographs and family documents
- DNA research and kinship analysis when appropriate
- Fold3, Newspapers.com, Findmypast, FamilySearch, Ancestry, Chronicling America, and local archive collections
I also place strong emphasis on historical context. Rather than listing only dates and names, I try to explain where families lived, why they migrated, what industries or communities they were connected to, and how larger events such as wars, westward expansion, epidemics, religious movements, or economic shifts and how they influenced their lives.
When conclusions are uncertain, I compare multiple independent records and look for patterns across timelines, locations, naming traditions, census placements, witnesses, occupations, and family associations. In some cases, this process helps identify transcription errors, undocumented relationships, or misattributed parentage that may not be obvious from a single record alone.
Above all, my goal is to treat every memorial as a small act of historical preservation. Whether someone lived a highly documented life or left behind only fragments of records, I believe their story deserves care, dignity, and remembrance.
