Geneology help?

Question

I always go on sites like ansestry.com and try to figure out who I am related to. It never really helps, because I want to firgure out if I am closely related to some important historical figure. Is there a place where I can do that?

Answer 1

The best place to begin researching your family tree is with your very own family. Get a note book and write down everything that you know about yourself and your siblings. Include dates and places of birth, marriage and if applicable death dates and places of interment. As soon as you have all that, move back a generation to your parents. Once you have all of that, move back to your grandparents and keep going until you run stuck. Once you have written down everything you know, talk to your family members. Sometimes even your siblings know more than you do, but usually if you talk to your parents or grandparents they can go a generation or two further than you can simply because they are a generation or two older than you.

One thing I should mention to you since you are a new genealogist is to document EVERYTHING! This will save you so much work later. If you get a date from Grandma's bible, simply document that information. If you can get in the practice of doing this from the beginning, you will avoid making the big mistake that most of us genealogists made while we were starting out. Think about it... if you have 50 people in your family tree, you might be able to keep this information "in your head", but what happens when this number rises to 500 or 50,000? After a while genealogy gets in your blood and 50,000 people is not and unfeasible number.

What happens next is up to you. What are you interested in? Would you like to know who all of your great great grandparents are? Are you interested in a particular surname? Are you trying to prove that you are related to someone famous? Only you know the answer to these questions? Once you've decided which avenue you want to explore you can continue. There are many records out there that genealogists use. Many of them are free, but there are others that are by subscription.

One thing I need to mention is that to trace your genealogy right, it is going to cost you, whether it be for a subscription to a genealogy site, paying for vital records, making copies of documentation, buying gas to visit libraries or cemeteries, but these are such worthwhile expenditures. The nice thing is that it is not money you spend all at one time. Many of my roots came from Michigan so everytime I go up there for a visit, I carve out time to got to the library or to the cemetery etc.

There are many people on this forum who are avid genealogists who have never paid for a membership to ancestry; however, I have found it invaluable. I live next to a branch of the National Archives and they have every census record in existence. If you start out looking up people in the census using the microfilms, there is a process you must follow that requires you to look at two microfilms before you find the census page of the family that you need. This is very time consuming and if you are looking up a family member with a name that is usually spelled wrong, there is no guarantee that you will find it. The beauty of having a membership to ancestry is that they have the censuses fully indexed meaning you can type in a name and pull it right up without looking on two microfilm rolls. Further, you can manipulate spellings of the name and the places you are searching in a single search. This alone has made Ancestry worth the money I have spent for a subscription. Many times Ancestry runs specials and I pay under $100.00 per year so if you divide that by 12, the expense is less than a subscription to Netflix or just about anything else. Ancestry also offers Military records, obituaries, marriage records, birth and death indexes and much much more.

With that said, there are also a lot of free resources. I have over 500 links to free genealogy records that I myself have found online. Here are some that can help just about everyone.

http://www.familysearch.org/eng/search/f... This is the webpage to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

http://searches.rootsweb.com/
This is a list of popular searchable databases on Rootsweb. There is a link to the Social Security Death index, as well as death records for California, Kentucky, Maine, and Texas. There are some international databases included too.

http://www.ellisisland.org/
If you are from the United States and know that you have ancestors that immigrated from other countries, there is a chance that Ellis Islands website could help you. You can actually look at the ships manifests on this site. It is so cool! You could even get information like how much money was in your great grandfathers pocket when he came over.

Then there are the message boards at both Ancestry and Rootsweb. They have boards for surnames, counties, States, and countries. This would be a great place to post information you already know about family members and attempt to build on it. It is always wise not to post information on living family members.

http://boards.ancestry.com/default.aspx...
http://genforum.genealogy.com/

You can also look at many of the existing trees out there to see if anybody has created one including members or your families. Sometimes you get lucky, but if you find one out there, I would recommend researching the information yourself before including it in your tree.

http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/...
http://www.gencircles.com/

After you get so far, you may want to try to input your information into a family tree program. There are several commercially available; however, there are a few that you can download for free off of the internet. PAF (Personal Ancestry File) is a very respectable program that you can download at

http://www.ldscatalog.com/webapp/wcs/sto...

There are several different language versions available. Most programs have places for you to document your sources and have a file format called GEDCOM making it easy to share your tree with people using a different genealogy program or easy for you to change programs without reentering all of your information.

So, as you can see from my answer... there is a whole lot to learn about genealogy and finding resources. I learned just by jumping in and doing it. Once you get out in the genealogy community you will see that there are a lot of people eager to help you in any way they can. Have I made mistakes along the way? You bet... who hasn't? You will find though that the rewards are numerous and that it can get quite addicting.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me through my profile. Good luck!

Answer 2

This is because you have to build a tree first without an eye on hooking into someone historical. You will need this to hook into any of the famous genealogies. And if you were that close you would find this out by doing the groundwork first.

And you could be related to someone who is super famous in other ways or used to be. Say the first person in Antartica. Or what about if you found that a relative was an actual pioneer with a sod hut and all of that? It is part of your history, not just a famous person.

Again, talk to any old person in your family that you can while you have a chance. They will send you information and pictures if they have them. Even if you give up on this now later you will treasure it.

Answer 3

Hey May,

Get Genealogy Software. That way you can get a handle you the branches in your family before you go looking for someone famous. Then, if you buy the right package you can download trees that exist already for FREE for a short period of time (like 30 days). You can hook those trees to your tree if you have a match. The best way to do this of course is to have 'word of mouth' from some family member already. Then you know what you are looking for.

Without question one of the hundreds of branches of your Family Tree will contain someone famous and someone infamous.

Another shortcut is to get all the Maiden surname branches and out as many generations as you can get. Each time you get a new surname you did not know was in your tree, check the GENFORUM for a Forum by that name. That forum is a great place to look for this type of fact.

Answer 4

The best place to go is not on the web, unfortunately, although some of their resources have been downloaded. The Church of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) have a huge geneological record. If you're really interested in tracing your family history, you may consider it worth a trip to Salt Lake City to do some research. My great-aunt goes out there almost every year. Thanks to her (and the fact that my maiden name is very unusual), we know that my ancestors went to England with the Romans, we know the very house where they lived on Dartmoor, we know that 3 brothers were mapmakers who came to Jamestown, and a more recent ancestor was at Valley Forge (George Washington said of his group that they'd do more harm to the British if they were on the British side).

Answer 5

ask your family members. i found out im related to a president, a singer/actor, and several other famous folk that way. i also researched it in books and using family coat of arms.. ancestry.com is good but you have to make a tree - try that first! and then it should help you with the other stuff.

Answer 6

If you know who your ancestors are several generations back, you can go to http://genealogy.com/famousfolks/index.html and put in your ancestor's name. The site will search for famous people who share that ancestor. I have found a few famous relatives that way.

Answer 7

your going to the right sight. if you have birth dates and death dates you should be able to find it. on my moms mothers side i found out her people came from Yorkshire, England in 1620. the king gave him land and sent him, he settled in Virginia, now the branhams are all over. you;ll have to pay to really do some digging. i was Lucky and saw a 3 free day pass to find all my moms mothers people. her dad, it stopped in 1930. try looking in census, i found my grandfather and his first wife there. good luck and happy hunting.

Answer 8

you really need to compile a chart of as many ancestors as you can first.

assuming you've done this, try familysearch.com or the Ellis island immigrant site.

Answer 9

Mary is from the line of David not Joseph