How To Throughly Research Your Family's History

There are certain steps you need to take when researching your family history. It will help you if you make lists of different things you need to do, so that you can keep everything straight. You will need to interview family members, review family, church and courthouse records, network with other people and keep detailed notes of the information you find.

The first step is interviewing family members. You don’t want to limit this just to the older people in your family, but to everyone you can think of. The reason for this is that you might have someone that is your age or younger who have talked to their parents or grandparents and received stories that other people in the family didn’t have access or knowledge of. Make a list of the people you can interview, remember that it works best to go visit the people in your family to interview them. If you are sitting in front of them talking you are more likely to find out more information that if you do it over the phone or through email, because they are interacting with you and it will help them remember more information. Make a list of the questions you want to ask before you go visit them and it might help if you take a tape recorder so that you can play back the information and make sure you didn’t miss anything. You will want to talk to the person before you go visit them, to make sure they want to talk to you and that they have time. It will also help you to find out if they have pictures of people that you can make a copy of because then you have a pictorial history of your family, even if the relative is still alive and there are quite a few pictures of this individual, that might not always be the case.

After you have interviewed all of the family members you can think of, the next step is to take the information you have gathered and organize it. This is when it is helpful to have a genealogy software program but if you don’t, you can use family group sheets to keep everything straight. Next make a list of the people you need more information on and go to the courthouse and review the information they have on births, deaths and marriages. Some of the information might be found in the church records and some might be found in old family bibles. The family bibles can be found out about when you interview your family members. They will either have the bible themselves or know you is the keeper of the family bible. Researching the courthouse and church records is not a quick task. It could take you years to research all of the information you have received, but perseverance is crucial when you are researching your family history. Some courthouses won’t have any records because of different reasons, whether there was a fire or flood or information was just lost. The same is true with churches, not all of the churches that existed 100 years ago are still in existence today and their records have been lost. Thankfully, much information has become accessible online and it will make your research easier, but you will still hit roadblocks.

The next step for researching your family history is through networking. Many people do not know what this means. This is when you access different newsgroups, forums and websites for information on your family. You can post information on all of these venues to find out if someone else has information you are looking for, but it is important to remember that the information you receive from them is not always accurate. That is why it is important to take the information you receive from other people and verify it through other avenues, i.e. courthouse records, church records, marriage certificates and birth and death certificates. If you follow these steps it will help you make sure your information is as accurate as you can make it.

The most important part of family history research is to keep detailed notes of what you have done, where you have found the information and who you have received information from. This will help you keep the information as accurate as possible without worrying about looking for the wrong individual in your family history. A word of warning, you will receive quite a bit of information and if you don’t keep it organized you could very easily become lost and discouraged. You will also hit bumps in the road where you feel like you aren’t making any progress, but work through these times or set it aside for a little while and eventually you will find the information you are looking for. Researching your family history is a rewarding and fun endeavor that you can pass on to future generations. You will meet family you never knew you had and find interesting twist and turns along the way. So have fun and enjoy the journey into your own personal history.

The Tapestry

When most people think about history they think about old, dusty libraries with the old man in the corner with his tweed jacket on and a pipe clamped between his teeth. This is so far from the truth. History is a rich detailed tapestry that can come to life under the hand of the right person. If it is a person who doesn't have an interest or care about the lives and beliefs of the person they researching then the colors of the tapestry will be dull and faded. But if it is a person that enjoys researching and taking care with the history of those same people the tapestry will brighten the more someone researches. The colors will become vibrant and rich, showing the details of the past.

The reason I am prosing is because it is important to have an interest in history before you start your research. If you are someone who doesn't care about history then maybe doing family history research isn't for you. If you are encouraging someone to look into their history it is important not to alienate them from the history, show them something interesting and they just might catch the bug, but don't force it.

I can imagine sitting in that dusty old library and it touches me. It is a place where I would love to visit and spend long hours. I enjoy recreating the tapestry of my family's life, watching the colors come to life, renewing the vibrant colors for my family. Most of my family don't have an interest in researching but they do enjoy hearing the information that I am able to provide for them. This will help you in that it might stimulate their memory and help them to bring more information to life. So when you work on your tapestry, think about how you would like to create it. Do you want to recreate a tapestry that is dull and faded or do you want it to be vibrant and rich in detail? Whatever you decide will help you in your history, do you want the detailed information or just the bare bones to get you further back. The answer is up to you.

Research and Discouragement

There are times when you are going to feel discouraged. The only thing you can do in this instance is not let it get to you. If you let yourself get discouraged you won't keep going with your history and you will give up.

During times like this, I either step away for a little bit or I take all my information and lay it out, look over the last in my line again and decide which person I am going to work on. Once I decide what I am going to work on, then I look at the people I could research. This could be either the farthest person back or one of their spouses or even one of their children. This is a time when you could work on filling in the children's details, i.e. their birth dates, where they were born or the places they lived, their children's names, etc. By doing this you are filling in the gaps in your history and if you post it on the Internet, someone else may only have the information you are missing, but have the line farther back. This is a way to improve your information and at the same time keep from being discouraged.

A good way to find this information is through census records, the later records list the children and their age. You can also find this information from other people's records, but be careful that you double check the information because you don't know their source of information and it might be flawed.

I hope this information helps you and as always happy hunting.
Patti

Genealogy and the Web

You now have all of your information updated from interviewing your family members and writing down everything you could remember. You also might want to revisit some of the family members that you talked to first as you might have received different information from other family members and it might help them to remember something else.

So you ask yourself, what do I do next? I have all of this information but what do I do with it? How do I continue it on to find out more information? There are a few different websites that you could go to and start your research. Some of the websites I like are www.familysearch.org, www.ancestry.com, www.genforum.com, and www.rootsweb.com. I would recommend you start with one family, take your family group sheets with your information that family. You can start with the oldest family member in your list, but you also want to look at the children. This is because you might find someone who has different information that you do on the Internet, sometimes they will have listed another marriage and different children or they might have found the information you are already looking for.

If someone does have your line back farther than you do, remember it is always smart to verify any information that someone has. If someone has put information into the computer, it doesn't mean it is accurate. So take there information and visit the courthouses and cemeteries to verify it is correct.

This is an in depth process and the part that can take you years to compile. I would recommend that you take lots of notes and keep everything organized. The next topic I am going to focus on is the different websites that I use and what I use them for. I hope this information has been beneficial for you and happy hunting.

Thanks
Patti

The Web and Genealogy

Hi, I have been researching my family history for 20 years. I have hit roadblocks and I have make great breakthroughs. One of my favorite accomplishments was when I was able to locate a family history back to the 1500's and it wasn't even a line I was actively researching. I was working on the ladies husband and trying to find some information on his and decided to try and find her information and see if it gave anything new for him, instead I was able to take her family back to Germany and our family didn't even know we were German. I think my most difficult one to research is my father's, the last name is Mynarcik and it is very difficult to find information on them. My grandparents came to the US in the early 1900's and because of the World Wars and communism I haven't been able to find much information. I will keep trying through because that is what makes a person a genealogist. The wanting to persevere even in the light that you might never succeed.
I remember talking to my Uncle about doing research on the Internet. He had started the family history and I am continuing it. He thought that I wouldn't find anything of value by using the Internet, that you needed to go to the courthouses and cemeteries and interview family members. All of this is true, you need to do that, but the resources the Internet offers you now are tremendous. When I started the only thing available to use was RootsWeb and newsgroups, (mind you this was before there was a World Wide Web). But I stuck with it and found some great leads and have been able to link with some fantastic information. Now remember you won't always succeed, you will always have that one line that will drive you crazy. But with perseverance you should be able to find some information and will help pad your history if nothing else.
I plan on using this blog to create a how to on how to use the different websites, which ones work and which ones just want you to spend money. I plan on keeping you up to date on my family information as I hopefully find out more. Until my next post, enjoy hunting!
Patti