How can I retrace my ethnicity and ancestry?

Answer 1

You start with yourself, then your parents, then their parents, then their parents.

Be sure to talk to every living relative older than you for history.

Get complete names, dates of birth, location of birth, date of death, location of burial. Date of marriage, spouse or spouses and all dates.

Get the FAMILY TREE MAKER COMPUTER PROGRAM.
It is easy to learn and will help you organize this big job.

I will say it is quite addictive. Check around in your families and see if anyone else has already done a lot of the work.
It will make it much easier. This is the way to track your ethnicity and ancestry.

Good Luck and enjoy. Once you get started on the living people you can move on to the dead and use many of the sites that have Historical records.

Answer 2

Start by getting as much information from family as possible, particularly your senior family members. Even if their minds are a little feeble, they can still provide you with a wealth of information. Tape them if they will let you. People who do this say when they go back and listen to the tape again several years after doing research, they hear things they didn't hear the first time around.

After you have as much information from family as possible, go to LDS (Mormon Church) Data Center. Mormons receive baptism for their deceased ancestors and they all do their own family history and while doing so have collected large amounts of information on people from all over the world. They are extremely helpful and they won't be coming by ringing your doorbell.

Also if your library has a genealogical section, that can be helpful. If you live in the vicinity of Washington, D. C., the National Archives has a lot of information, particularly if you have immigrant ancestors.

Death certificates and applications for social security numbers give the names of both parents, including mother's maiden name , and where they were born. I think the application for social security number can be trusted better because the person who applied generally will know exactly where their parents were born while on the death certificate, you are not always sure if the person providing the information remembered where Grandma was born.

Census records are helpful. Ancestry.Com has them but it requires a subscription but a lot of genealogical libraries have them.

Websites Ancestry.Com, FamilySearch.Org, Rootsweb.Com, Genealogy.Com to name a few can be helpful. However information seen in family trees that have been submitted should be taken as clues not as fact. Most is not documented. Even if you see the same information over and over by different submitters, a lot of copying is being done.

Answer 3

Contact one of the family roots foundations, take a swab, send it in and they will tell you the ahnentafel of your maternal (mother, her mother, her mother, etc.) and paternal (father, his father, his father, etc.)
As to the ancestry part, go with what you know and search for names of ancestors at ancestry.com, familyroots., etc. Cindi's website lists hundreds of genealogy sites. Of course, there are books, public records, etc.

Answer 4

I did the same thing and it breaks it down percentage of background.