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Discover your Family Tree
Search Ancestry
May 7th
Searching for Your Ancestry
The word “ancestry” refers not only to one’s parents, grandparents and so forth, but also to one of the largest internet web sites that has been set up to help people search for that ancestry. In this article we will discuss both aspects of the term.
When you search for your ancestry, you will want to start with what you already know. That may be with your parents, grandparents or maybe yourself. I had a student one semester whose goal for the course was to locate his father. He knew next-to-nothing about his father but started with his parents’ marriage certificate and a couple of phone calls to distant relatives and, by the end of the semester, he had located him. Unfortunately, he had died a decade before but the student was able to go to the cemetery which was located in Arizona, if I remember correctly.
If you just jump into your search for your ancestry without verifying the data you already have, you run a great risk of following someone else’s line, not yours. Even worse, some people have heard that they are related to some famous person and want to prove that but, instead of working back from the known to the unknown, they start with the famous person and follow that line down, hoping that they end up with themselves. Usually they are disappointed and have wasted time, money, effort and hope.
There are a number of steps and lots of documents you can search for information on your ancestry. Start with home sources, those items that can be found in your home or the home of a relative, and don’t forget to interview the relative while you’re at it! Once you have gathered information, sit down and prepare to take some amount of time to sort it all out and write it down. Get organized and don’t rush things. I try to compartmentalize my ancestry by family and concentrate on one family at a time.
Once you have organized your home sources, start filling in the blanks. Decide what you want to find out, what documents are most likely to give you that information, and where they are located. If you are looking for a marriage date, government or church records will give you that. Where you look will depend on the time period. Before governments began keeping records, marriage, baptism and burial records were the domain of churches. If the record is kept by a governmental body, it should be relatively easy to locate. Church records are another matter. They could have been kept by a minister when he retired, lost in a move, sent to a central church depository, or microfilmed and available for free at your local family history center. The web site, www.familysearch.org offers Research Guidance pages to help you decide what records to search for your ancestry, including those they have already microfilmed.
If what you are looking for is not easily available on microfilm, you may want to subscribe to one or more web sites that specialize in helping you with your ancestry search. One of the largest of these is www.ancestry.com. They collect data sources from around the world, including but not limited to the United States, Canada and Britain, index them and digitize the original (when possible) so researchers can find what they are looking for quickly. Some people get upset when internet sites charge them to search for their ancestry, especially for government records which they can get for free by going to the relevant office. However, the sites not only supply the original document but spend a great deal of money to index millions of records for your benefit. You save drive time, gas and hotel expenses, and research time by subscribing to a site you can search at your leisure in your pajamas. You do need to be aware of the drawbacks – misreading handwriting and typographical errors.
So, when you search for your ancestry, be aware of both meanings of the term “ancestry”. When you have done the leg work, you may want to subscribe to a web site called Ancestry.
Free Family Tree
May 2nd
When you find a family tree for free, please recognize that someone else has gone to a great deal of time, effort and perhaps expense to make that information available to you. You are the beneficiary of their hard work.
There are several ways to find out whether someone has prepared a free family tree for you or one of your ancestors. One is simply to ask your relatives if anyone in the family has done any work on the family tree and would be willing to share it with you. Most people who research family history are not doing it for profit but for the love of it. They are usually very willing to share their findings with others. If they have incurred expenses along the way, they may ask for a donation to help defray the costs. Family reunions are great places to go to get more information for free on your family tree. Not only can you get the genealogy (names, dates and places) but you are more likely to get stories about your ancestors’ lives and personalities.
Another way to find out if there is a free family tree is to type the name of one of your ancestors into a search engine such as Google or Ask. If someone has prepared a family history or gone to the effort of putting it on the internet, then you immediately benefit. Please make sure you actually do tie into the free family tree you are looking at! There is a greater variety of names today than there used to be, and a plethora of John Smiths out there! While the information on the internet is free, the family tree may be printed and that will cost you the paper and ink it takes.
Libraries are also a good place to look for family trees. My husband once found, in the Library of Congress, a chart showing his ancestors from the original immigrant, Jacobus Breckenridge, on down to his grandfather with various siblings and branches. Other than the cost of photocopying, he was able to obtain this family tree for free. Most public libraries have historical records of the area where they are located and published books about families who lived there. Occasionally they will place used books, or books that are less frequently used or for which they have multiple copies, on sale and you can pick up family tree information for next-to-free.
Whether or not you are a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, you can access their online databases of family tree information for free. Simply go to www.familysearch.org and then you can choose to search for an ancestor by name or see whether they have a book with your family surname. If you search for an ancestor by name, you will also need some basic information about that person such as approximate birth, marriage or death year and the place where these events occurred. When you find your ancestor, and you are sure it is the correct person, you may be able to get their pedigree or immediate family (spouse and children). This depends entirely on whether the information was submitted as a pedigree or as an individual. The books they have at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, are usually on microfilm and you can order them for only the cost of shipping the film to your local family history center. Their collection of books is indexed so that it includes all surnames in the books, not just the dominant family surname.
In all of these cases, someone else went to the effort of researching and compiling family tree information for those who follow. If you find an error, please let the author know (and submit documentation showing why you think you are correct). Most groups or individuals who publish books will also publish updates and addendums. If you wish to submit updated information to FamilySearch, they are in the process of combining all possible duplicates in New FamilySearch, which is currently available only to members of the Church.
Whichever way you chose, family tree information can be found for free.
Family Tree Database
Apr 13th
A family tree database is any collection of information for use in compiling one’s family tree. The word data implies some sort of empirical evidence. In the case of family trees, this evidence usually involves documentation of life events such as births or christenings, marriages, and deaths or burials. These events usually have been recorded by churches or governments at various levels, such as city, county, state or national. Other sources that serve as databases for family trees are personal recordings such as in Family Bibles, journals, diaries or letters. Military records could also be considered a family tree database, as could hospital records, land records, probates, and tax records.
Another family tree database is one we often start with – censuses. Censuses were originally taken for military purposes. In the Old Testament, we read of the numbers of males belonging to each tribe, so that they had a count of how many men they could put into battle if need be. It is interesting to note that they counted only the males, a detail which the early census takers in the United States followed. Between 1790 and 1850, censuses asked only the name of the head of household, numbers of males and females between certain ages, and whether they were bond or free. The further along we got, the more information they asked for until people felt that the government was getting quite intrusive. As this is 2010, we completed a census this year and, while the scare tactics were certainly plentiful about the privacy issues of the census forms, the form I received required only very basic information about who lived at our address. While, as an individual I appreciate my privacy, as a family historian I understand the value of certain questions on census forms. I think that family history researchers a hundred years from now are going to be quite disappointed in the 2010 census!
Censuses are appealing as a family tree database because they do include the whole family, or at least as much of it as was present at a particular address on a certain night. National online indexes make it easy to locate families and to find out a lot about people at a glance. Many web sites (usually subscription) offer censuses for various countries. Often subscription sites are available for free at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, and a few affiliated Family History Centers throughout the world. They are also available on microfilm at most locations.
Most government agencies make their family tree databases available to the public, usually for a fee. Indexes may be free but the actual certificates usually come with a price tag, whether it be in the form of buying the certificate from the relevant agency or subscribing to a family history web site such as Ancestry and its affiliates. Ancestry, Footnote and others have paid to use the censuses and birth, marriage and death certificates. They also pay staff to index the material so it is easier for you to locate what you are looking for. You can still order certificates from governments but it takes time and you might not get the right one. It is certainly worth-while, if you are a serious researcher, to pay the subscription cost but make sure the site you subscribe to carries the material you are likely to need. Try their free trial first.
If churches put cemetery or baptismal, marriage and burial records online, they do not usually charge. They might, however, request a donation if you write to them for particular information. Remember that they have a staff to employ, photocopy expenses and mailing expenses.
Other family tree databases can be found in homes. We mentioned Family Bibles, letters, journals etc but they could also include military records, wills, photos, newspaper clippings of weddings and funerals, and family histories compiled by someone else. And some web sites, like OneGreatFamily, encourage others to submit family trees, hopefully with documentation. Wherever you look, you will find databases that are useful in researching your family tree.
Family Tree Jokes
Apr 1st
There are a lot of jokes out there about genealogy and family history in general. In fact, when I typed “family tree jokes” into a search engine, I came up with several great sites.
One of them is Genealogy Jokes at http://www.mudfacemarge.com/Jokes1g.html. You could spend a long time laughing at all the family tree jokes on this site. You will enjoy this site and will likely be able to relate to many of the family tree jokes, especially those that refer to the illusive nature of those on our family tree whom we just can’t find or the problem with living in an isolated area (you know what I mean!). Or maybe some of these jokes reflect the state of mind you find yourself in after working intensively on your family tree!
Some of the jokes on this site bear repeating, so thanks to Marge who set up this web site and here are the top fifty family tree jokes.
- My family coat of arms ties at the back….is that normal?
- My family tree is a few branches short! All help appreciated.
- My ancestors must be in a witness protection program!
- Shake your family tree and watch the nuts fall!
- My hobby is genealogy; I raise dust bunnies as pets.
- How can one ancestor cause so much TROUBLE??
- I looked into my family tree and found out I was a sap.
- I’m not stuck, I’m ancestrally challenged.
- I’m searching for myself; have you seen me?
- If only people came with pull-down menus and on-line help…
- Isn’t genealogy fun? The answer to one problem leads to two more!
- It’s 2000… Do you know where your-Gr-Gr-Grandparents are?
- A family reunion is an effective form of birth control.
- A family tree can wither if nobody tends its roots.
- A new cousin a day keeps the boredom away.
- After 30 days, unclaimed ancestors will be adopted.
- Am I the only person up my tree… sure seems like it.
- Any family tree produces some lemons, some nuts and a few bad apples.
- Can a first cousin once removed … RETURN?
- FLOOR: The place for storing your priceless genealogy records.
- Gene-Allergy: It’s a contagious disease, but I love it.
- Genealogists are time unravelers.
- Genealogy is like playing hide and seek: They hide… I seek!
- Genealogy: Tracing yourself back to better people.
- “Crazy” is a relative term in my family.
- A pack rat is hard to live with, but makes a fine ancestor.
- I want to find ALL of them! So far I only have a few thousand.
- I should have asked them BEFORE they died!
- I think my ancestors had several “Bad heir” days.
- I’m always late. My ancestors arrived on the JUNEflower.
- Only a Genealogist regards a step backwards as progress.
- Share your knowledge; it is a way to achieve immortality.
- Heredity: Everyone believes in it until their children act like fools!
- It’s an unusual family that hath neither a lady of the evening or a thief.
- Many a family tree needs pruning.
- Shh! Be very, very quiet…. I’m hunting forebearers.
- Snobs talk as if they had begotten their own ancestors!
- That’s strange: half my ancestors are WOMEN!
- I’m not sick; I’ve just got fading genes.
- Genealogists live in the past lane.
- Cousins marrying cousins: Very tangled roots!
- Cousins marrying cousins: A non-branching family tree.
- All right! Everybody out of the gene pool!
- Always willing to share my ignorance…
- Documentation… The hard part.
- Genealogy: Chasing your own tale!
- Genealogy… will I ever find time to mow the lawn again?
- All the really important information is on that missing page
- I researched my family tree… and apparently I don’t exist!
- SO MANY ANCESTORS………………………SO LITTLE TIME!
Another web site with great jokes (and some touching stories) is Genealogy Jokes and Poems at http://members.home.nl/sjouwke/genealogie/jokes.htm. Another is Genealogy Jokes at http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~jimella/genejoke.htm. I hope you enjoy some of them! Have a look when you need a break from looking at the serious stuff!
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.
