Discover your Family Tree
Posts tagged Family Tree
Family History
Feb 21st
Researching your family history can be one of the most fulfilling and exciting things you will ever do in your life. If you have any curiosity at all, finding your roots through finding your family in history is a rewarding experience.
For many, family history and genealogy are two separate fields of study. Genealogy is the study of ancestors usually limited to finding their names and dates and places of birth, marriage and death. For those studying family history however, that is just the beginning – the clothes line, so to speak, upon which we can hang all sorts of interesting things about their lives and their place in history.
Of course, you need to know your ancestors’ names and some basic facts about their life, and for many the quest stops there. In fact, if you are a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and are providing the names of your ancestors for proxy temple ordinances, that is all the information you need. But take a closer look at their lives. Your ancestors were flesh and blood human beings with hopes and dreams and trials just like you. Some of them did heroic things in their lives. Some of them might be scoundrels, but those are the things that make them interesting. For me, one of my Scottish great grandmothers is a person of great interest. She died at the age of 31, after the birth of her 9th child, in the mid 1700s! Had I just written down her name and dates and not stopped to calculate her age and see how many children she had, I would never have felt the gratitude I have for her. I can’t begin to imagine how difficult her life must have been, or what her husband did with nine children under the age of about 15, the youngest a newborn, and yes, they had all survived.
So how do you go about creating a history around your family? First, you get as much information on your family as you can – that includes names, dates and places of birth (or baptism), marriage and death (or burial) from written documents or, if they lived in a society with no written records or those records were either forbidden or lost, oral history. Then you begin to do like I did by calculating ages, looking at naming patterns and searching for gaps in ages that might make you think a child had been lost. Then you collect information on the area where they lived by referring to gazetteers, local histories and maps. Sometimes these records will let you know about events that happened during your ancestors’ lifetime. Perhaps a battle was fought nearby. Could your family have been involved either as a participant who could have been wounded or as a bystander who could smell the smoke and perhaps rendered aid? Research the records that tell about the Industrial Revolution or the French Revolution or the American Civil War. Military records sometimes give physical descriptions of soldiers. Was your ancestor tall and dark or short with grey eyes?
Take a close look at maps when working on your family history, especially topographical maps. Where was the nearest market town for your ancestors? How far did they have to walk to church? What was the terrain like? If you are finding them in one town in particular but can’t find where they lived before then, could they have traveled down a nearby river and what towns are above their current residence?
Is there a difference in ages of the husband and wife? If he is considerably older, she might be a second or even third wife. Is there a gap in the ages of ‘their’ children? Perhaps that is when he lost his first wife and married the second. What was his occupation? While women did work, especially after the Industrial Revolution, the variety of options for them was limited. Men’s occupations, however, can give a clue to what their lives were like.
Yes, you have probably guessed that I am very much into family history. I am a product of the lives of those who came before me.
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
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!
Family Tree
Jan 3rd
In recent years, people have become more interested in their family tree. To begin your family tree, you need to know some basic facts. Start with yourself. You likely know your name, birth date and birth place. If you are adopted, you may need to find this information. If you are a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and have been sealed to your adoptive family, you may choose either your birth parents or your adoptive parents to follow. As a reminder, always use your full name given to you at birth (most family tree programs allow you to record name changes), your day, month and year of birth, and the city, county and state/country of birth. In the United States we put the month first but world-wide, and in most computer programs, the day comes first. It resolves the confusion concerning whether 2/3/56 means 2 March 1956 or February 3, 1856. Always write the year in full too. If you are married, you should know your wedding date and place. Women should always use their maiden name.
Let’s talk for a few minutes about how to arrange your family tree information. Most of us use computer programs, and there are lots of them out there. Personal Ancestral File (PAF) is a free one you can download from www.familysearch.org. Please feel free to talk to someone with some experience in different programs before going out and purchasing one. If you plan to submit names for temple work, make sure the program you purchase is compatible with Family Ordinance Request, which replaced TempleReady.
New FamilySearch is a relatively new program designed to help put people in their family tree into context. Relationships and missing temple ordinances are brought to light. Paul Nauta, public affairs manager for FamilySearch, said, “New FamilySearch is where you can build your personal family tree and prepare names for temple ordinances.” (http://www.mormontimes.com/mormon_living/family_history/?id=12891).
If you want to use paper and pencil to record the information on your family tree, there are pedigree charts (which show only direct-line ancestors) and family group sheets (which record siblings and their spouses). You can print these from www.familysearch.org or purchase them at bookstores or family history centers. Whichever way you choose to record family tree information, organization is of the utmost importance. Even when you’re well organized, intermarriages or many ancestors with the same name can be very confusing. Don’t start out that way!
Once you have recorded your information, do the same for your parents. If they have died, add death dates and places (or burial dates and places). Talk to your parents or other living relatives and ask them for information. Use what they tell you as a guide but try to verify it. You can do that by visiting cemeteries, ordering birth, marriage and death certificates, or looking for photos, newspaper clippings, or letters in the trunk in the attic.
Do the same for your grandparents and head on back. Make sure you verify all information. Complete dates and places for your siblings, your parents’ siblings (your aunts and uncles), your great grandparents’ siblings (your great aunts and uncles) and so on. If ancestors married more than once, make sure you have the right children with the right set of parents. When you get back far enough, you may not find birth dates and places but you might be able to find christening dates and places in church records. The same thing goes for deaths. Churches recorded burials instead. You may be able to find your ancestors in census records as well, which will give you information leading you to places where your family lived, and the paperwork that recorded their life events.
As you write down information on your family tree, be sure to look at their ages when they married and died. Record causes of death, if known, and see if they could have served in the military. Look where they lived to see what historical events they may have witnessed. Knowing your family tree is more than just recording dates and places – they were living people with joys and sorrows of their own. They lived their lives too!
