How to Find My Family's Ancestry
By researching your ancestry, you can unveil intriguing stories and suprising details about your family's origin and history. Discover new relations, learn of family members' roles in historical events, and better understand family dynamics. Finding your family's ancestry involves time, effort and dedication, but throughout the process you will gain valuable insight and learn more about your own connection to others.
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Instructions
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Personal Connections
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Trace family ancestry from your own birth to generations of relatives that came before you. Start with your own history. Write down details of your birth -- full name, location of birth, parents' full name. Add full names of grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, along with any other information you know about each person. Websites such as Ancestry.com provide free downloadable charts to start your family tree and organize your research.
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Take the time to listen to older relatives, who have memories and stories to share about your family. Interview family members. This straightforward approach is an important step in learning more about your family ancestry. Take a digital recorder and a notebook to record stories shared by relatives. You will learn more about your family and may uncover facts about distant relations that will help in your search. Pay close attention to details such as a relative's military service history, including wars fought and rank obtained, or how relatives might have immigrated to the country.
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Study old family photos, diaries, letters or family bibles that usually contain important family facts, such as birth dates and places people lived. If you cannot borrow the items, jot down the details. Take video or photos of everything, should you want to put together a family keepsake album or publish a family genealogy.
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Birth and marriage certificates provide full names, locations and other details to help in your ancestral search. Gather your notes and search out local resources. Libraries provide secondary resources, including published genealogies, local histories and biographies. Government offices keep records on birth, marriage, death, land ownership and naturalization. Newspapers often keep birth, death and marriage announcements. Churches keep records of marriage and baptisms.
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Search online databases that provide information beyond the local level. Several sites offer free limited searches, including the National Archives and Ancestry.com. Military and immigration records are especially rich resources as you often learn details of your ancestors that other family members do not know -- such as distant relatives you did not know of or medals earned while a family member was in service.
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Pass down what you learn to the younger generations. Share your findings with relatives who may also be interested in the family's history. You might pick up a few more details and inspire relatives to dig deeper into their family ancestry.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit family on old generation tree image by Pavel Losevsky from Fotolia.com Baby image by Yvonne Bogdanski from Fotolia.com family image by Anna Chelnokova from Fotolia.com birth marriage and death image by Warren Millar from Fotolia.com little family image by Marzanna Syncerz from Fotolia.com
