Discover your Family Tree
Archive for March, 2010
Family Trees
Mar 15th
Many of us are interested in our family trees, and some of us are even fortunate enough to find them ready-made. A lot of books, both the paper version and available on the internet, have been written and published about people’s family trees. In this article we will discuss different types of books that record people’s ancestry, and the different types of information that will be found in them.
First, there are descending and ascending family histories. The descending variety is the most common and starts with a single person or couple. This person could have been chosen as the starting point of the family tree because they are the furthest back someone has been able to find documentable information on or because they were the immigrant person or couple or because they were famous for some reason. Parents and siblings of this person or couple may be recorded but the emphasis of descending genealogies is on who they married and who their children were. They follow the children’s children and their children on down the line. The last generation before publication can number into the thousands.
Ascending genealogies start with the person who wrote the book and work up the line to their parents, grandparents, great grandparents etc. You get the picture. Siblings and spouses are included as well but not the spouses’ parents.
Good family trees will include much more than just names, dates and places. I’ve seen some that don’t even do a good job at that! Good family trees will include information on each person’s occupation, military service if any, health, education, wealth, and perhaps a physical description. They may also include maps, photos, copies of censuses, letters, wills, probates or inventories. And good family trees will include documentation so you can find the original source if you want.
I have also seen family trees that are just that – pictures of trees that includes family information. These are more convoluted to follow and give less information but are good for the visually-minded. Each branch extending from the main trunk (which could depict either the original couple or the person who published the book) is a child or a parent, and the smaller branches and twigs represent the next generations.
Pedigree charts and family group sheets are often bound and available at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, and at public libraries. These can be cumbersome to figure out especially if there is no numbering system on the family group sheets. This is when pedigree charts act as an index.
Some family trees are used as decorations. I see them framed in homes and in libraries. Often you see so-called genealogies of Biblical proportions – literally – going back to Adam or even further. I would like to see their documentation!
You should be particularly suspicious of royal family trees. It seems to be a mark of some pride to tie into royal lines when, in actuality, not many of us actually do. In the days before DNA testing, any illegitimate mother could claim that her child was the son or daughter of their favorite royal male person. And, if usurpers to thrones wanted to prove that they were the rightful heirs, they claimed the “divine right of kings”. In other words, they hired genealogists to come up with family trees that went back to Adam, proving that they were predestined (or of Royal blood) to be the rulers. This predestination came complete with the ability to rule in God’s behalf and with absolute authority. If genealogists wanted to keep their heads on their shoulders, they came up with the requested family trees.
Whichever type of family history you find, use it with wisdom. Some are better than others and, unless you just want the decorative kind to show off, it is always best to have documentation.
My Family Tree
Mar 7th
For as long as I can remember, I have been interested in learning about my family tree. I hope you don’t mind me sharing some of the things I found about my family tree.
My father’s parents divorced when my father was still young and the oldest of three boys, and my grandmother had raised the children by herself. Later, my father bought a business from his uncle, and his grandfather was a frequent visitor to our home so I knew most of his family except for his father, who I never did meet. As I grew up, we often visited my great aunt and uncle and my father’s cousins who lived on a farm. My great aunt had a lot of family photos and stories which she shared with me. Just recently Ken, one of my father’s cousins, came for a visit and we had a great time talking about the family and great memories!
When I was ten, my family took a road trip to the west coast. On the way we visited others in my family tree whom I have not seen since, but I remember meeting them and listening to some of their stories. I have some of the family photos they gave us. We did not meet the adopted brother of my grandmother and great aunt. It turns out there was a good reason for that. Ken explained to me, when he visited last month, that the boy was one of the children taken across Canada by train after World War I and lined up at the railway station for people to come and choose, like so many heads of cabbage. Being a farmer with two young daughters, it is understandable why my great grandfather wanted another male, so he chose Wilfred. I presume he was older than my grandmother. At some point he left the family and moved “west”. Not long ago, I found the death certificate of an infant son of my great grandparents on Ancestry.ca.
I called my father’s father’s father “Grandad”. He told me that his family came from the Alsace-Lorraine region between France and Germany. It turns out that was not quite true. According to census records, my family tree came from England! In fact, his grandfather’s cemetery tombstone identifies him as “English John” to differentiate between him and the twelve other men with the same name in the village. When Grandad went to live with his sister, I remember there being a huge old family Bible on a bookstand in the front hallway. I found out much later that no names, dates or places had been recorded in it.
My mother’s side was completely German – they spoke German, cooked German food and were devoutly Lutheran. My mother’s grandparents died before I was born so I never knew them, but I did meet her aunts and uncles. Generations before, the family had immigrated to Canada in 1848 to join other family members. We knew where they were all buried, and the local library had a great collection of genealogical records for the county. Many of these records are now online, and cemetery records are available on the Ontario Genealogical Society web site.
As I grew older, I joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and realized why I was so interested in my family tree. I have followed my family tree on both my father and mother’s lines back to Germany, England, Scotland and Switzerland. I would love to follow my family tree into Ireland but that ancestor came over so early that records in both Ireland and the United States are scarce and I have been unable to locate him.
There are a lot of things I would love to learn yet about my family tree. Unfortunately, records end at some point in time either because they were not kept any earlier or they were destroyed or I simply cannot pinpoint exactly where the immigrants came from. The only way I was able to locate German records to continue my family tree was because my 2nd great grandmother kept a journal. There are a lot of sources you can use to trace your family tree.
