When I was finishing up my master’s degree I decided my next project would be to trace my family history. I’ve always been curious about where my family is from and what patterns and parallels I can see between my ancestors lives and mine.
The show Who Do You Think You Are? also inspired me to start my research. If you haven’t seen the show, it traces celebrities on their journeys to find out more about their ancestry. It’s a fascinating show and it has given me some insight on the types of questions i should ask my elder family members in order to get the most accurate information to base my research on.
I’m starting my research with my mom’s side of the family because my grandpa (pictured with me above) already has a wealth of knowledge about his family history. Some of it has been researched before and some of it is hear-say. I met with my grandpa today to get some more details and to find out what unanswered questions he has about his family.
The meeting was extremely helpful; my grandpa loves history so I knew he would know the years things took place and if our family was involved in major historical events, like the Civil War (we were). What we don’t know is what European country we came from; we theorize we came from France. We also don’t know much about his mom’s family. I left my visit with grandpa with a great starting point for one piece of my puzzle and I’m looking forward ton seeing what I find out.
Has anyone else researched their ancestry? What tools did you use and what tips do you have for me?
» April 9th, 2011 | Side Notes • Sociology
anna@aharperhess.com
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Hey Anna,
I’ve been researching ny family history for years. Have you tried Ancestry.com? There is a cost to access the records, but if you’re serious about searching for information and don’t mind the cost, its a great website. They have census records, which list names of everyone in the household, ages, occupation, nationality, etc. I would have also suggested talking to your grandparents or their siblings or even cousins to get information.
I’d you can, get copies of birth certificates and death certificates because they list parents names. Death certificates also list spouse names. Most libraries have microfilm of old newspapers that you can search through to get old obituaries. Even if you don’t know the exact day, its pretty easy to find as long as you know the date of death as the obituary should he in the paper either the day of or within a couple of days of death. You can get lots of info from those, which might include occupation, spouse names, siblings names (including married), parents names, etc. Also, most areas years ago had only one newspaper.
A lot of times, its like working a puzzle and you may have to work backwards or sideways to get information for those in your direct lineage. For example, maybe your grandpa doesn’t remember his grandmothers names, but he remembers her sister or brother’s name, which with a little research could lead you to his grandmother.
Was your grandfather in the military? Does he have his discharge or enlistment paperwork?
Good luck.
Dena
Check your local library! Ours has a “heritage room” where you can access ancestry.com for FREE! And I think this is the right site–the Mormons have a free genealogical website: https://www.familysearch.org/
And also be prepared to spell names every way you can think of. So many changed when they came to the U.S. You probably saw that with Gwyneth Paltrow’s episode of WDYTYA especially. Vs become Ws and sometimes the last part of the name is just cut off entirely.
Also, become rich and famous so you can go on the show and fly to different locales and have an expert historian do all of the work for you.
Good luck! My mom was working on ours for a bit but ran into roadblocks. She hasn’t researched much in the last year or so but I’ve been thinking maybe I should do some digging, especially into my dad’s side. “We came from Poland” is about all I know.
Check out the library.
http://www.columbuslibrary.org/
select reference tab, then select resources by topic, then genealogy
ancestry.com you will have to do at the library, but some stuff you can do online at home.
http://ebranch-prod.columbuslibrary.org/genealogy
happy hunting!