Posts Tagged ‘trace family history’

Family History Research

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

No matter what sort of project you are undertaking, you need a good plan in order to be successful and researching your family history is no different. Not everyone considers planning to be an enjoyable part of family history. The best part of a project like this is finding out more about your family. However, carefully crafting a research plan can be an invaluable step. Every family history research plan should define who and what you’re looking for and each task should be prioritized. If you take the time to plan your family history research, you will be able to save a lot of time because you will be well organized and focused.

You’ve heard, no doubt, that the Internet puts the world at your fingertips. And true enough, you can find literally millions of names, listed on thousands of family history websites, all waiting for you to discover them. However the multitude of online resources can leave you feeling a bit dizzy as you navigate from one site to another for hours at a time. Recording everything that seems even remotely relevant to your family tree is also incredibly tempting, regardless of whether it actually relates to one of your family lines.

Because of the immense wealth of information available to you, putting together a research plan before going online is very important. This can save you plenty of frustration and hours of your time by keeping you focused. Tens of thousands of genealogical sites are available on the Internet. Without a good plan you can get lost in no time at all when researching online. You might be surprised at how easy it is to get lost on the Internet, especially when you start tracking a person just to find out hours later the person wasn’t even part of your family.

To prevent this from happening, you should go about online research exactly as you would if you visited an archive.  Having a research plan an making notes of the websites you visit and what you find there saves you repeating research later down the line. Websites often change their appearance and you may not recognize them on a return visit.

If you are the type of person that likes to keep everything organized, you will probably want to keep your notes on your computer or in a special notebook. If you are able to keep track of what you need to do and can remember where you left of when you resume your research after a pause, you might be able to keep your research plan in your mind. This simply means you can have an informal plan or a formal one as long as it helps you keep track of what you’re doing.

If you’re looking for a great website to create your family tree online for free then I recommend using Mundia.com. In addition to allowing you to create your family tree, you can also collaborate with your relatives and upload documents, photos and stories related to your family members. It’s very easy to get started building your family tree on Mundia and registration is free and easy. One of the nice features about the site is the ability to search other family trees in the database to look for possible matches for your own tree. If you really want to learn more about your family history, this is the place to start.

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Trace your family history by interviewing family

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

 

When tracing your family history, a wealth of information could come from a close relative. You may never have thought of asking members of your family about their lives or what they remember of the generations that came before them. Very few people have these discussions, at least not of any real depth.Sometimes, the opportunity has been there to ask questions, but by the time we’re interested in the answers it may be too late to ask. There is no time like the present to ask other family members what they know about your family history. Interviewing your relatives is one of the most important steps when doing genealogical research.

Your great-grandmother may no longer be alive, but you may have parents, brothers, sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, all of whom can be good sources of information about recent generations of your family. They can provide names, dates, locations, photographs, diaries and gossip. They may also be able to suggest other people to whom you could talk, who may have known your departed relatives. And, of course, they may have copies of primary source material to contribute to your genealogical file. Wouldn’t it be great to extract this kind of information from your relatives?

Whenever possible, you should interview these family members in person. Receiving a questionnaire in the post or by email is impersonal in off-putting for some people. Some information they have to share might be closely guarded because its very personal or even evocative. You’re probably going to learn a lot more by conducting these interviews face to face and showing a real interest in what they are saying and reassuring them that your intentions are honorable.

Always remain discreet, and never misuse any information you gather. The material you gather from these interviews relates to living people or people within living memory. To encourage your relatives to disclose what they know, reassure them that you won’t broadcast the information to the rest of the family, disclose sensitive etc. Be sure they understand that you consider any data to be important to your family’s history. The information your relatives have is part of a lifetime of special memories and you need to treat it with total respect.

Once your relatives feel comfortable with your motives, you may be surprised by all the details they can give you. Your interest may spark more memories or lead to further revelations.  Always leave lots of time for these interviews. After all who knows how long Aunty Doris will talk for when you get her going?

Mundia.com is another excellent source for gathering information about your family history.  This resource is absolutely free to use and allows you to collaborate with other family members to create your family tree.  Anybody that wants to learn more about their family history should check out this website.

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Play detective to trace your family history

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

 

If you want some really good and juicy information when you trace your family history, you have to interview your relatives.Here are a few tips to prepare for a family interview:

1. Why it’s important to bring questions. Knowing what you want to achieve during the discussion keeps your interview focused. Make sure you write down all the questions you want to ask before you go. However, don’t use these as the only part to your interview, because letting them lead the conversation will be more beneficial. Some of the best information comes from memories that your interviewee dredges up mid-conversation rather than in response to a question.

2. Bring a tape or video recorder to the interview. This saves your having to frantically scribble notes and lets you relax, develop or display your interest and really get a flavor of what the interviewee is saying. Always ask the interviewee’s permission before you start recording. If you both agree that a video would be better, consider videotaping the session. This gives you the true expressions and emotions of the individual being recorded. You also have a valuable lasting record of the interview that can be seen and understood by generations to come.

3. Use visual aids to help them recall events. Photos and other pieces of information can sometimes help a person jog their memory of a particular story or event. Sometimes the conversation will hit a wall, and it’s a perfect time to bring another visual aid out. Thanks to the fact that copying photos is a lot easier than it once was, you can take copies of your old photos using a scanner, print off as many copies as your need and keep the originals safe at home.

4. Recognize and respect the feelings of the interviewee If you notice your interviewee is trying to withhold information on a particular event, don’t push the issue. It’s possible that they aren’t in the right frame of mind to talk about the past, or they have to stop and think about the particular moment. If this occurs you can always arrange another interview for another time or ask another relative the same question.You don’t want to cause any ill feeling.

5. Show some gratitude. Thank your relatives for their time and patience after the interviews. Also, invite them to keep up with your family history research by sending them new information when you get it. The best way to keep everyone informed is to create your family tree online. One of the best family history sites to utilize is Mundia.com. You will be able to collaborate with other family members about your family tree and any information someone remembers can be added later. They can also upload photos, add documents, or even give a little input to help further some of the stories.

So if you ever though history was as boring as can be, when you trace your family history you might change your mind.

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How To Find Family History On Your Own

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

 

Have you ever wondered what galaxy you came from? Maybe you can learn how to find family history of yours and then discovered that it was your great-great-great grand uncle who discovered that the world is round or something like that. It’s actually fun when you try to learn how to find family history and some people even made it as one of their favorite pastime- creating their family tree and trying to unravel the mystery behind their cultures and tradition, why they keep on doing things like this and thinking that maybe the answer lies in the past and the past might be their key to the future of their clan or family. Would you love to learn how to know your family’s historical background and maybe unravel the truth that you are the rightful heir to the throne of an unknown country or you might be supposedly king of a whole bunch of lovely wild Amazon women?

I, myself, have been fantasizing about learning the real truth about my family history. For all I know, if I can trace family history of my own, I can get t learn more things in the past that could be keys to the future, right? But of course, if you really want to know more about finding your family’s genealogy, you need to learn more than just asking from your parents, your grandparents and other relatives. You have to find a very systematic method on how to find the history of your family.

Learning a systematic way seems like it’s the job that can only be done by professionals. But you can also be an expert in clan history if you just knew what the right system is. Thank goodness, there are now some several guides or learning tools that can help you learn the art of researching family history. If you go through the Net, you might stumble upon some good reviews of the best family history research guidelines. I would definitely love to know more about these to learn more about my own family’s history. How about you? Are you willing to learn your family history on your own?

 

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Want To Know Where You Really Came From?

Sunday, May 10th, 2009

 

Genealogy, according to several encyclopedias and other reliable informative resources, is the study of your ancestry, your family’s past lives or your family’s history. Although this kind of branch of study is sometimes done in a professional manner like for instance by historians, tracing back the roots of some famous people or something, there are some ordinary souls who considered researching family history as a new major hobby. For sure, somebody here would really like to know something about their ancestors, right, if given the right chance, the right opportunity and of course, the right learning tool.

But to trace family history is not that easy. Sometimes, you have to approach some of your living ancestors, if you have one, and asked them questions about past lives and all of that. But today, if you want to know more about your own family tree, there is an available web site on the Internet that can help you out and it’s called “my family genealogy dot com”. Here an appropriate book guide is presented which can help anyone learn the basics of how to do family genealogy history step-by-step and everything is explained in full detail.

Here is one example of what you can learn from this book called “You’re Related to Whom? How To Research and Create Your Own Family Tree”. According to this book, you can start your search at looking at your parent’s birth certificate or use a marriage certificate. A certificate like this would be better as this shows not only the couples’ names, but the names of their parents as well (your grandparents). Then, you can get to know the father’s and mother’s names of your grandparent and so on and so forth. Whew….that would really be a very tedious task now, would you agree? And sometimes, after spending some time unearthing and unraveling, you could end up in a brick wall. But learning how to find family history is never easy but it can be simple if you can learn the right system of family genealogy.

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