Genealogy can be an entertaining
hobby and a great way to learn more about your ancestors’ lifestyles. You do not have to be a professional to
research your family’s history, but it does help to get some tips on resources for
conducting the search.
The first steps you will
want to take are to go through family papers, photos, school yearbooks, family
bibles, etc., and write down all the pertinent information. Talk to older relatives and ask what they know
about your family’s history. You might
want to record the interviews for future reference. Go over old photos to see if they can
identify them and if they know which branch of the family they belong to. Take detailed notes and record any dates.
Your next step is outside
research. One of the most helpful tools in
genealogy is the Internet and it has tremendously changed our access to
archived material. It is a wonderful way
to discover our ancestors without having to dig through a bunch of dusty old files
in a county records building. You can do
a lot of it sitting in front of your computer without having to travel to the different
locations where your relatives may have lived.
The us.gov
website has links to many sites that can be of help in obtaining records to start
filling in your family tree. Here are a
few examples:
·
Immigration
Records provide information about when people enter the country
and where, by what means did they traveled here, and with whom.
·
Military
Records have the dates someone served and where they were
stationed.
·
Birth,
Marriage, and Death Records give you the dates and location where
these events took place.
·
Ellis
Island allows you to do a passenger search, has a list of
famous arrivals, and a place where people tell their stories. They have a genealogy learning center that provides
a guide on how to start recording your own family’s history.
·
Sites
such as Archives and Historical Societies as well as Genealogy resources
provide a link to all of the groups of that type available on a state by state
basis.
·
Census
Records allows you to search the data that gets collected
every ten years. They are not published
online but us.gov shows you how to access the information. (online services such
as ancestry.com or heritagequest.com do have the records online but you pay a
fee)
There are many
different companies that run genealogy websites that you pay to join and are then
provided with the access and tools you need to research your family’s
history. They give you links to sites that
you will use on your search. You can find
many of these sites on your own; they just package it together to make it
easier. They guide you through the
process as well as offering templates to use for building your tree.
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