Discover your Family Tree
Posts tagged FamilySearch
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.
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!
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.
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!
