Discover your Family Tree
Genealogy
Genealogy
Feb 10th
People can be interested in their genealogy for a lot of different reasons. It may be simple curiosity or they may want to know their medical history, their family’s place in history or to prove an inheritance. When I worked in Edinburgh, Scotland, searching other people’s genealogy I did several searches for heirs of people who had died in Scotland with no immediate kin. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints may also want to trace their genealogy with the goal of having proxy temple ordinances performed on their behalf, with the eternal goal of sealing families together.
Having an interest in your genealogy and knowing how to go about finding it are sometimes two separate things. There are a lot of different places to start and along the way you will start learning about your family history. Genealogy is the accumulation of names, dates and places but your ancestors were much more than facts. They lived lives just like yours – with joy, hopes, sorrows, disappointments and challenges. If you really want to learn about your ancestors, please do more than search for the easy stuff. Find out what was happening around them historically. I recently found out that an adopted great uncle was one of the Orphan Train children who was sent “out west” by perhaps one of the two main societies in New York City but, since my family lived in Canada at the time, he could have been one of the “British Home Children” sent from England. According to http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/maritime/archive/displayGuide.aspx?sid=12&mode=html&sorStr=&serStr=&pgeInt=&catStr, between 1870 and 1914 more than 80,000 children were sent to Canada alone as part of the Farm School Movement. Since Wilfred was probably born in the early 1900s, he might have been part of this group. He left home at an early age and perhaps under less-than-desirable circumstances because my great aunt and grandmother would not say much about him. Another mystery!
Whether or not you are searching for your genealogy for the purpose of temple work, you can begin by seeing what other people have already found on your genealogy. Everyone can access the free web site www.familysearch.org to see what information is there. Those who are not members of the Church will not be able to access temple information but everything else is available to them. Use caution and document what you find there. You can also begin your genealogy by talking to relatives, visiting cemeteries and looking for photos, newspaper clippings, diaries or journals, letters, mementos such as military uniforms or papers, school records etc in your own home or those of others (with their permission, of course). Attend family reunions and ask lots of pointed questions. Ask whether a book of genealogy has already been published. The more you learn about your genealogy, the more blanks there will be to fill in and the more questions you will have.
When you start gathering information, it is essential to organize it in some way. However you start, it will likely change and expand as you go along. Try starting with paper and pencil. They are portable and you can enter the data into a software program later if you wish. Make long-lasting copies of photos and other documents and keep them safe. There are two basic forms that your genealogy will take – pedigree charts and family group sheets. Both are available in paper form or can be printed from software programs. Pedigree charts begin with you and show your parents, your two sets of grandparents, their parents and so forth. Each family group sheet shows a couple and all their children, and may include room for spouses but no other details on them. Every ancestor will appear at least twice in your genealogy, once as a parent and again as a child.
As you continue your search, you will get into original records kept mainly by churches and governments. This may involve using microfilm or locating web sites that specialize in the kinds of records that will give you the information you need. At some point though, everyone comes to an end of the records and their research. That is the sad part!
Free Genealogy Search
Feb 1st
Nowadays, a lot of us may feel overwhelmed by the amount of instant information that is currently available on the internet with regards to doing our genealogical research. When I started my degree program in family history at Brigham Young University “back in the day”, we took courses in paleography and history as well as in research sources for different geographical areas. BYU offered a bachelor’s degree and one could go on to become accredited in certain countries by taking a lengthy and exhausting two-day exam. Today much of that has changed.
I’m giving away my age here but I’m not sure the internet had been invented when I graduated. We used resources provided by the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, some of which was available at the university. We made frequent trips to Salt Lake. Except for the cost of gas, doing genealogy research was free.
Today much of that has changed. We rely more on the internet to do our free genealogy search. It is convenient and, other than the cost of subscription to an internet provider (which can be eliminated by going to a public library or internet café), there is usually no charge. There are many good, reliable sources for doing free genealogy searches. Most of them would qualify as secondary sources; that is, sources compiled from original records and pre-digested, if you will, for our consumption. When you rely on this type of free genealogy search, you take several risks.
First, you may not know for sure that the line you are following is yours. Unless you make a positive connection with someone else’s compilation, you may take off at the wrong starting gate. Then there are problems with another person’s translation of handwriting (“Is that David or Daniel?”), with their conclusions and with their typographical errors. Even if you are looking at a site that has transcribed tombstone inscriptions from a cemetery, the stone may have been so badly worn that what it says is only a guess.
Rife with problems are indexes, and there are a lot of them out there, even on web sites that provide search material for your genealogy that is not free. Someone in “Chumbalumba”, as the commercial says, may not be familiar with the spelling of your particular surname. I have even seen English-speaking Americans index names incorrectly. For example, I searched for a long time for several families with the surname Knox. I couldn’t find any of them until I accidently found them indexed as Rnox! That is not even a possible combination of letters in the United States!
Please don’t mistake me – I’m not saying not to use these free genealogy searches – but please do use them wisely. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, try to imagine what the original handwriting might have looked like. Could someone have translated “Ma.” for Mary when you are looking for Margaret? Please do not get hung up on the spelling of a surname. Mackenzie and McKenzie and MacKenzy are all the same name. Watch out for “Jos.” which could be Joseph, Joshua or Josephine.
Use the results of your free genealogy search as a sort of map to let you know where you might look for documents to verify those results. You will very rarely find original documents when you do a free genealogy search unless you sign up for a free trial on a web site of interest. The only guaranteed places to find original documents for free are at the Family History Library (and its associated family history centers – but even then you can run into problems with the quality of microfilming), and depositories of documents such as courthouses, churches, government offices and sometimes historical or genealogical societies.
Genealogy Site
Jan 29th
There are a ton of genealogy sites on the internet these days, since researching genealogy has been one of the top two hobbies, along with gardening, for decades. Genealogy sites usually come in two varieties – free, which are usually compiled sources, and subscription, which tend to offer copies of original sources. I’m not saying that you may not have to pay for compiled information or that you cannot get an original document unless you pay for it, but generally that is the case.
One genealogy site which offers compiled information for a fee is OneGreatFamily. Members download their family history onto the site so that others can share their research. Every effort is being made to make sure dates and places are correct and complete. OneGreatFamily offers other services too but their main emphasis is on sharing family lines with other subscribers. Finding the work that other people have done avoids repetition of a great deal of work.
A cross-over in the genres of genealogy sites is www.familysearch.org. This is a free site and offers not only research that other people have done and access to indexes to such things as the Social Security Death Index and some select censuses, but also their library holdings of original documents. The “original document” aspect of this genealogy site comes with the millions of records they have microfilmed and make available free of charge (except shipping and handling) to the public. They have microfilmed all sorts of records pertaining to genealogical research from countries across the globe.
Fold3.com is a subscription site that specializes in original documents but also offers a free side to the genealogy site. Ancestry.com and its affiliates is another such web site. For a fee you can view images of original documents but you can also share your story or stories for free. Sharing is a great way to get past that sticking point where you just have not been able to find the records necessary to further your research. By posting a question or writing an article to put on their sites, you may get responses from those who have overcome the problem you now face or who have more information than you do.
Public libraries and some university libraries have free web sites that let you know what their genealogical holdings are. The L. Tom Perry Special Collections section of the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University lets you see exactly what they have, and which ones have been digitized and are available online. You can also see what records, usually on microfilm, the BYU Family History Center currently has. Since they are adding microfilm almost every month, it pays to look for a particular item later if you did not find it the first time. Both these genealogy sites can be accessed by going to www.byu.edu.
I could list hundreds of genealogy sites that you could use but you can see the list yourself by typing “genealogy” into any search engine. As you browse through them, you will find that some are better than others and some might not meet your research needs at all.
Free Genealogy
Jan 17th
Whether you are beginning to trace your genealogy or are an expert at it, you may be daunted by the occasional expense involved in getting information about family members. There is, however, some help in the guise of free genealogy web sites and other sources which cost little if anything.
If you type “free genealogy” into a search engine such as Google or Ask, you will find a lot of internet sites that advertise free genealogy. Some of these are www.publicdomaingenealogy.com, www.accessgenealogy.com, www.familysearch.org, www.olivetreegenealogy.com, www.kindredtrails.com and www.ancestralfindings.com. These are just a few that came to the top of the list when I searched for “free genealogy”. I went through the process of registering for www.publicdomaingenealogy.com as an example and they didn’t want my credit card number or anything personal other than my name, address and email address. Their Terms and Agreements also looked non-intrusive. However, when I accessed the email they said they would send to verify my email address, it came up with “MyPoints, smartest shopping program.” So I am not going to continue because I do not want my security to be compromised. This may be the case with some of the other sites that offer free genealogy – I just don’t have time to try them all. I did try Olive Tree Genealogy and Kindred Trails in the past with no problems.
One very secure site which gives you free genealogy and does not ask all sorts of compromising personal questions is www.familysearch.org. This site is sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints through the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. They offer information gathered and submitted by many other people from around the world whether they are members of the Church or not, free genealogy searches on the Social Security Death Index and some census indexes, and access to their library catalog of holdings of genealogical records on microfilm, including books about surnames, events and places. This collection of books includes historical books held by the Harold B Lee Library at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. They also offer articles about genealogy and research guidance to assist you with your genealogy. You can print most of their material and can order their microfilm through you local family history center. One of the links under Library will give you the address, phone number and hours of your nearest family history center.
Other free sources for your genealogy include public libraries, cemeteries, web sites set up by genealogical societies and historical societies, and don’t forget the free trials that many subscription sites offer. To get the free trial however, you will usually need to give them you credit card number, which puts a lot of people off. If you subscribe for a free trial from such sites as www.ancestry.com or www.fold3.com, make sure you note when you signed up for the free trial and when you will need to call to cancel if you decide not to subscribe. Make sure you have their customer service number on hand and be prepared to listen to their sales pitch. If the site does not have the records you are looking for, do not subscribe hoping that someday they might!
