Climbing your family tree
by Susan Larson
Is there a trunk of old
family photos in your attic or basement? Wonder where you inherited red hair
in a family of brunettes?
Wish you could journal or at least identify the faces in the heritage photos
you're working on?
Don't despair, with work (fun work!) and organization, you can unlock your family
mysteries and begin preserving these treasures from the past to share with generations
in the future. After all, isn't that what scrapbooking's all about?
Begin your research with family sources. Look for names, dates and places in
family Bibles, obituaries Better yet, ask your relatives for information. If
you're lucky, it is likely that a grandma, great aunt or long-lost cousin may
already have the information you are looking for.
Organize the information you find, and record it on pedigree charts and family
group record forms (available at no charge at the cyndislist and familysearch
web sites listed below). I use a large 81/2 x 11 three-ring
album, and add a new section each time I find a new branch of the tree. I keep
information organized by family name. It's important because very quickly four
grandparents turn into 8 great-grandparents, 16 great-great grandparents and
so on.
See how far you can get using family sources. Once this information is documented,
you can begin filling in the holes or traveling further back in time. This can
be done by: requesting or looking up local records and using the Internet.
1. Local records- before the Internet, the best way to research family history was to write to or travel to a county courthouse or state records building and look through indexes and big dusty books of records. To be honest, this is still the best way! But as people are short on time (and money) to travel to all the places their ancestors may have lived (image being on a wild goose chase and finding out after spending an afternoon in a remote courthouse basement, that this John Smith really wasn't your great-grandfather!) If your family lived in the area where you now live, I recommend that when time and resources allow, to dig in to this traditional form of research. You don¶t want to miss the thrill of discovering the actual census listing your ancestor's family or better yet, the signature of a great-grandfather on the land deed for his farm.
2. The Internet brings
some of these records directly to your home computer. There are several sites
(www.ancestry.com and www.geneaology.com) that you can pay an annual subscription
fee (approx. $70-100) and view U.S. census records on screen. There are many
excellent free resources on the web, including:
• www.cyndislist.com —Cyndi has cataloged virtually every genealogy
site on the web. Go here first, everything below and so much more is linked
from this site.
• www.familysearch.org
—the official web site of the LDS History Centers. You can type in even
minimal information about an ancestor and something might come up! www.rootsweb.com
(A database of local genealogy societies and individuals who have records online
and, in some cases, will look things up for you in certain areas.
• www.ellisislandrecords.org —If your ancestor came to America between
1892-1924 you may find him or her in the Ellis Island database. Unfortunately
this is a small time frame so most ancestors (mine anyway) came way before this
time.
Regular search engines are also helpful. On a whim, I once typed in my grandfather's name in a Yahoo search (it's an unusual one —Yackley) and lo and behold, up came a my mother's family tree on a distant cousin's web site that I never knew existed. It took this line of the family back to 1692! It pays to check.
And it pays to check back again. I have some last names that I periodically put into the search engine, and after a year and a half, one recently paid off. It led me, of all people, to the wife of my dad's second cousin who had recorded three generations of our mutual family that I hadn't found before. Which leads to another benefit of family research -- becoming acquainted actual, living relatives! I can now count on the encouragement and genealogy help of at least five second or third cousins whom I had never even met before.
Family history isn't a chore. It's a fascinating way to learn more about the ancestors who paved the way for our generation and the generations to come.