Family History and Genealogy – Getting Started
Genealogy and family history research have really become popular pastimes recently due to the Internet and peoples ability to access a vast amount of information with relative ease.
The aim of my article is to give a little guidance to people starting out in their search for long lost ancestors. There is so much information online today that it is extremely easy to suffer from information overload.
My own interest in genealogy began in 1998 after my father suddenly passed away. His mother had also passed away only 8 months earlier at the age of 108. If only I had started this earlier! I guess I felt that a lot of our history had already been lost forever. It was time for me to take action to ensure that the rest of our family history could get recorded while elderly members were still around to help me.
Before you start doing any online research, I would suggest that you note down exactly what information you already have access to. Old photos, letters and documents are a wonderful way to get started.
Do Interviews with Elderly Family Members
Take your old photos around to your elderly relatives and friends to get the people in them identified, and to find out a little bit of information on them. You will find that old people love to reminisce about the past and these old photos are just the thing to get them started. Perhaps even use an audio or video recorder to keep a permanent record of these discussions. While you are talking to them find out if they have any old photos and documents that you may not have seen before, ask if you can take copies.
Family Group Sheet
A “Family Group Sheet” is a great resource to have when interviewing your family. Basically it is a document to record the details of a particular family group (Husband, Wife and children). If you do a Google search for it you will easily find one that you can download or print. This will record birth dates, death dates, marriage dates and allow you to have your information properly documented. You can even get your relatives to fill it out themselves. You can email it or post it and just ask if they can please fill it out and send it back to you.
Genealogy Software
At this stage I would suggest that you get some genealogy software, because you really need this to make life a lot easier for you! If you want free software Personal Ancestral File known as PAF is a good basic one to get started with. If you want some good software that does a bit more, you may be best to try something like Family Tree Maker for around $40.00. Now you need to install your software, and start entering all the information you have collected from the Family Group Sheets. If any of the information you have is in doubt, you should try to get it properly verified before entering it as fact.
Online Search For Your Ancestors
Next you should start your online search for your family. Just do a Google search on your surname or an ancestors name and see what comes up. You may find that there is already a lot of information out there. Thousands of people have already posted family trees to the Internet, and if you want to find out what is available for free just do a search on “free genealogy information” and see what comes up. There are many genealogy membership sites that offer 7 or 14 Day Free Trials and you can access millions of names. If you are happy with a membership site and do not mind paying a fee, this is certainly a good option.
I am finding that more and more cemeteries are making burial registers available online, which again is a very good resource which you can use in your ancestry search.
National archives often offer free searches of public records like births, deaths and marriages and you should take full advantage of it. Some may ask for a small fee, which is very reasonable in most cases. Many newspapers have now been archived online, and you can often find out some wonderful information from them. Certainly births, deaths, and marriages are often announced in newspapers, and local newspapers often include a detailed obituary on a well known local identity. Naturally if you would like to get a copy of a birth, death or marriage certificate the payment of a fee will be a requirement.
Certainly there is a huge amount of information out there just waiting for you to discover it, and this will continue to grow over the coming years.
I hope that my small article has helped you in some way, and that you will enjoy your genealogical adventure of researching your family and your ancestors. If you want more detailed information on anything, please go to my link at the bottom of this article.
Tags: history and genealogy