how do i get the truth from my family?

Question

i tried asking people about our origins, or family stories. but everyone has their own version of things.

for instance, my mom and my aunty say that my great-great-grandfather came from syria. my other aunty says it was my great-grandfather (not 2greats) who was from syria. and my grandfather says that it wasn't syria at all, but lebanon!

and then some relatives say we are part french, and others say no, we are not. how did everything get so mixed-up? shouldn't people know about their own family? why can't people just tell the truth?

so how do i find out for certain our origins? this has been bothering me for quite some time now.

Answer 1

You are getting the truth - the truth as they each believe it.

You have to put the pieces together, and with research, find out to the best of your ability, what REALITY is.

Just that seeming conflict between one saying Syria and one saying Lebanon. Well, until 1916, Lebanon was part of the Ottoman Empire and the region was called "GREATER SYRIA". So in actuality, BOTH could be telling the truth. That one is actually saying Lebanon is a great clue that the family came from the region NOW known as Lebanon.

Get all the information you can. And know that they aren't trying to mislead you. It is truth to their belief - probably what they were told by someone else. Then put the pieces together and see what YOU can find. That's one aspect of genealogical work that I find the most fun.

Answer 2

Well, for starters, they're probably telling you what they think is true. But obviously, they can't all be right.

Personally, I think your grandfather is the most reliable. Here's why. Until the very end of the 19th century, there was almost no emigration from the Ottoman Empire to North America. They were considered undesirables and weren't allowed in the country as Permanent Aliens until the 1890s. Most didn't come over until 1905-1920. That doesn't give you room for too many "greats" in the line, even if you're a kid. Ask your grandpa for the name of the grandfather who came over, then look it up for yourself at http://www.ellisisland.org. The odds are extremely high that he's there. Then you can find out which town he was from and work on finding out who his parents were. The ship's manifest on the Ellis Island site should also tell you who his next of kin was back in the Middle East, who he was coming to see, when he arrived, etc.

Once you have that, you can also request a copy of all of his Immigration and Naturalization documents from the National Archives. You can request a copy of his Petition for Resident Alien Status, Declaration of Intent to be Naturalized, and Naturalization Petition. Your questions will get answered pretty quickly from these documents.

If you need any help, drop me a note.

Answer 3

Look for papers filed by your ancestors. There death, marriage, and nationalization papers. Those papers would be the closest to your ancestor you can get now - unless there are diaries or religious records.

Start with your grandfather then his father - if they were born in the country you live now there might be birth certificates (sometimes these have the place of parents' birth).

Also look for records of your family's travels. My gr-grandfather tried to visit the town in Austria his father was born in (unfortunately it was during the Russian occupation so he didn't get in).

If no family records or photos from that far back are still in the family, the official records will have the best source for you.

Answer 4

Stop asking, start looking. Send to the state/country that you were born in for your birth certificate. Your birth certificate will tell you who your parent's are and where they were born. When you have those names/places, then write to where they were born and ask for a copy of your parent's birth certificates and see where their parent's were born. When you get back to were no birth certificates were issued, then send for death certificates (they say basically the same thing). When you get back to a time when there were no death certificates, then send for census records (which can be found online at ancestry.com). That way, you will know exactly what you are, and you don't have to bother your relatives about it.
If you get stuck, go to rootsweb.com (on line) and find the group that has your last name and lots of people will help you.

Answer 5

as many people have said Syria & Lebanon were once the same country.

trust me lots of people have had that problem - my family is from Eastern Europe & those countries couldn't keep their borders straight either - gets a bit confusing.

& as far as being part French, well France controlled Lebanon & Syria from 1916 up to 1946, so it's very possible.

when did your family come over?

if it was before 1930 then you've lucked out - you can find census & immigration records as others have suggested, if they came later, you're going to run into problems.

first thing you NEED to do, is narrow down names. set up a family tree. ancestry.com will let you do it for free - so do it!

start with the oldest person in your family, then move to the next oldest - get as much information you can, even if if they contradict each other & put down whatever they say.

ancestry lets you add alternate names, dates/locations of birth, dates/locations of death, etc. put down every scrap of infor you can & DOCUMENT it - in the description put who told you or where you found the info.

i have people in my tree with 12 different names, because they kept changing them or had different names on documents, multiple years of birth, different countries, etc.

your family memeber's pictures - i like to use post-it's on the back - get the names of everyone in the pic, location & general date of the picture - don't write on the picture - use a post-it on piece of paper, then scan into your computer & copy the information.

i've "found" people in pictures that no one even remembered by just asking who they were. if the person who gave the picture doesn't know, take it to someone else, maybe they'll remember.

ask questions & take notes, use a tape-recorder if you have to. if it doesn't make sense, write it anyone, then ask someone else.

go to your library - most libraries have ancestry.com for free - & bring a zip drive, because ancestry cuts you from emailing too many documents to yourself (found that out the hard way), see if they have heritagequest.com - most libraries have home-access to that, but the census only goes back to 1920 in most states.

ellisisland.org is free, if you have trouble with it, try using http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/EIDB/ellisgold.html
(trust me)

check the manifests - where did they come from, who were they going to stay with in America, who did they list as they're closest family memeber back home? the nuggets of information you can find there.

what family documents does your family have?

when my grandfather died, i realized that he had his marriage certificate (gave his parent;s names which i had, my grandmother parents whose names i had & my grandmother's maiden name - which was a new variation for me), his birth certificate & his parents marriage certificate, as well as his naturalization paper - all of which were a surprise for me.

was anyone in your family involved or in America during WWI or WWII, even if they were too old to go to war, they might have filled a draft or registration card - check ancestry for that. NARA (the US military has tons of records)

go to your library with a list of names & death dates - check for obits - they give all sorts of information. where are they buried, who are they buried with?

check findagrave.com - see if they're listed. i've actually found family this way & then found obits with more info.

there is so much infor out there to find online, but first get your family's info - do it now, before it's too late.

~~~ morgannia

Answer 6

Hey, they may each be right (more or less). Perhaps part of it is memories; perhaps part of it is point of view. Another consideration: due to wars and alliances, borders of countries move back and forth. Most countries that used to exist no longer exist today. Another consideration is the ethnic group; look at America --- there are Chinese, Japanese, Russians, Italians, Germans...you name it. Perhaps he was a Lebanese living in Syria! But, work on tracing your ancestry.

The "easy way" would be to hire a professional genealogist.

Due to the amount of information required to do a fairly decent family tree, if you go back more than just a few generations, you will find it to be VERY time intensive. PCs now have humongous storage on their hard drives; but, if you COULD put everything into the computer, you will soon find it is very difficult to organize all that information. I currently have more than 100 MB of info, and most of it is not even in the computer YET.

If you are sincerely interested in your ahnentafel, your genealogy, you will need to be dedicated and organized. So, try these sites and suggestions:

The biggest expense will be TIME; I have spent hundreds of hours and have so much left to compile.
Remember, no matter where you obtain the information, there are mistakes (yes, I include "official" documents, such as birth certificates, marriage licenses, death certificates, whatever). My maternal grandmother's tombstone doesn't even have her name correct!
Anyhew, as to searching, try these:
Free sites: there are several to choose from. Start with:
http://www.searchforancestors.com/...

http://www.censusrecords.net/?o_xid=2739...

http://www.usgenweb.com/

http://www.census.gov/

http://www.rootsweb.com/

http://www.ukgenweb.com/

http://www.archives.gov/

http://www.familysearch.org/

http://www.accessgenealogy.com/...

http://www.cyndislist.com/

Assuming they emigrated from Europe, start with Ellis Island and the Battery Conservancy sites:
http://www.ellisisland.org
http://www.castlegarden.org
For those with native American ancestry, try:
http://www.tribalpages.com/

For a fee, try a DNA test:
When you really want to know where your ancestors came from, try such sites as: www.familytreedna.com, dnatribes.com, dnaancestryproject.com, and, of course, the National Geographics Genotype program, https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/geno...
For Jewish ancestry, try:
www.israelgenealogy.com
Have a look at these sites these are South African ones,
http://genealogy.about.com/od/south_afri...
http://www.rupert.net/~lkool/page2.html....
http://www.jewishgen.org/safrica/website...
http://southafricanfamilyhistory.wordpre...

Meaning of names:
http://www.winslowtree.com/surname-meani...

http://www.familysearch.org/eng/search/f...

Finding live people:
Two good places I use are www.zabasearch.com and www.peoplefinder.com

Don't forget, use your local library. Ours (a small one, yet) has www.ancestry.com and www.heritagequest.com, as well as periodicals, books and guidance from an experienced genealogist.

Keep good notes on where you find what: sources are very important.

I became interested in genealogy when I was a small lad, before I started to school, as my Mom would tell me about her parents, my Dad's parents, and on back. That is also when I first got used to the idea of "the power of 2": You have 2 parents, they each have 2 parents, and so on. 5 generations ago, you would have had 16 g-g-g-grandparents; by 10 generations ago, the number would be 512 "grandparents"; by 35 generations ago, the number is 16,179,869,184 persons (compared to a total of 6,700,000,000 people alive on Planet Earth today). In other words, basically every one on earth can trace their COMMON ancestry back to within the last 34 generations! (Or, since Medieval Times.)

Good luck!

Answer 7

Well one thing you have to take into consideration, Lebanon was part of Syria at one time.