It’s unique and you don’t need any special training to learn
it.
Everyone has an important history that makes them who they
are. Your history and the history of your family are unique. You will treasure
it and share it with others. But first you must begin to find it and you can.
Anyone can research family history. If you can write a letter, talk on the
telephone, send a text message then you can do it. No special skill or degree
is needed.
There is a difference between genealogy and family history.
When you are doing genealogy, you are developing a record of the names of
people from whom you are descended. Family history, on the other hand, is
finding out the stories of the lives of those people. It is discovering the
lore that has been passed down from generation to generation, the photos and
quilts, the diaries, the letters that tell your family’s story.
Families are unique. Families come in many shapes and sizes.
Families could be your blood relatives or the people who raised you. In this
world of adoption, foster care or extramarital affairs, you are part of the
family that raised you, they influenced your behaviors and made the person who you
became. Thus, if you are adopted, you are still connected to your non-blood relatives;
you share stories, life experiences, heartbreak and triumphs. Therefore, as an
adopted individual, or someone who just found out that their dad is not their
bio-dad, (or some other similar situation); you have so much more family than
most of us. Don’t be afraid to embrace all the branches of your tree, both
blood and non-blood.
Once you begin your search, talking to relatives, looking up
birth records, searching attics and family bibles, it is essential to keep
track of the information you discover in a well-organized way. Keeping good
records from the start will save you time and frustration later. Please don’t
let the word organize scare you off. The most common tools for organizing
information are the pedigree or ancestor chart and the family group record or sheets.
Successful family historians and genealogist use these as guides for what they
know and what they want to learn. From the start, establish a system for using
these records, whether it’s in a loose-leaf notebook, a filing cabinet, on a
computer or on the internet.
Please don’t try to create hand-made forms for recording
your family, you might understand them, however, no one else might. Plus, why
re-invent the wheel? There are so many variations found on-line for you to
download and print out for free. My advice, stick to the same form for all your
pedigree or ancestor charts and one form for all your family group sheets. It
will be easier for you to quickly find information, since you will always look
in the same place.
Only want to use do it on the computer, that is fine too.
First decide if you want to use a computer based software package or a
web-based application. They each have their own pros and cons. Some computer
based software packages offer free trial versions and remember that all
web-based applications are not created equal. Some are “group” or a
“collaborate” tree which means you enter the living people, whom only you can
see, or change and then once you enter your deceased relatives, you will
connect with people who already have done some research. This is where you all
can change or delete these people. Computer based software packages reside on
your desktop or laptop (there are even a few available for tablets) and only
you can see, change or delete people.
The thing to remember is whatever option
you choose, make sure you can save a copy of your tree in Gedcom format. Gedcom
is a way that one genealogy package can talk to another genealogy package. Thus
you could enter all our information on a computer based software package and
then upload a Gedcom of your tree to a web-based application. Or download your
web-based application and upload to a different web-based application. The rule
here is, pick only one place where you key in all your information and then
upload to the other sites. Anyway, software alone could be an entire subject in
its own right. This is all I am going to say about it.
A Pedigree or ancestor chart will list all your direct
ancestors, starting with yourself, then your parents, your grandparents and
great grandparents, etc. This is the road map to your family. While a Family
group record or sheet is where you record each family unit. For example, your
parents and all their children, note if either or both of your parents have had
children with a different spouse, partner, etc.… you would use a different
family group sheet to record that information.
Don’t only rely only on other people’s trees or research.
Use their research as clues that you verify and make sure you come to the same
conclusions. It is not uncommon to find people who accidently start using
records for someone with the same name, and before you know it, they are
researching the other’s person’s family. I find that miss information seems to
spread like wildfire while correct information is well hidden and needs to be
dug up.
Not everything is found online. I still visit many
courthouses, cemeteries and local libraries to view newspapers via microfilm or their book collections that might not be digitized yet.
Don’t expect someone to just give you all their research.
People are willing to share, however you need to share what you know. You might
think you don’t know anything, however, how about you, your siblings and their
families, your parents and their siblings and families. Many of the closer
generations to you might be unknown to the person who has research backed to
your 5th great grandparents.
If there is anything you want to learn more about genealogy,
you most likely will find help on various subjects via the internet. You might
find a blog, a webinar, a YouTube video and more. Start with yourself, and work
back one generation at a time. Being careful to record everything you find or
could know about that generation before going back to the next generation.
Plus, don’t forget to have fun and my final warning… Genealogy is addictive and
there is no known cure.
