How do I rediscover my roots? What are ways of rediscovering my roots?

Question

My mom's Native-American, and my dad's Italian-American.

Answer 1

Ask your parents to provide names and birthplaces of all known relatives. Store all info in a database or spreadsheet. Get a genealogy program and strart building a family tree. Contact all the people on the list who are still living, to confirm the information and provide more details about more distant relatives.

At some point, you'll run out of family info, and have to look outside for more details. Contact the municipal offices of cities where your relatives lived to obtain birth or death certificates. Contact other government agencies to get military or immigration records. Contact a genealogy firm to help.

Travel to country or region of origin. Find the town elders and ask for information about your family. Visit the homes, schools, religious institutions, and other important places where your ancestors might have made an impact. Seek records every step of the way.

Answer 2

here goes

1) Talk to family members Parents and Grandparents, Aunts and Uncles, Cousins etc.

2) Gather together an family papers, Certificates of Birth, Death, Marriage and Baptisms, Family Bible and any Military Papers.

3) Draw out a rough tree, so you know who's who.

4) Then work back generations at a time.

The web sites below will help

Good luck and good hunting

Answer 3

Get as much information from living family members as possible, particularly senior members. Tape them if they will let you. Now, they might be confused on some things but what might seem to be insignificant ramblings and story telling might turn out to be very significant.

Check out the genealogy section of your local library and find out what all they have.
They might have a subscription to Ancestry.Com you can utilize. Ancestry.Com has lots of records and is getting more all the time. They have all the U. S. censuses through 1930. The 1940 and later are not available to the public yet.

Now, please don't take as fact everything you see in family trees on any website, free or paid. There are plenty of errors. The trees are user submitted and poorly documented if documented at all. Even when you see the same information repeatedly by many different people that is no guarantee it is correct. A lot of people copy without verifying. Use the information as clues as to where to get the documentation.

A Family History Center at a Latter Day Saints(Mormon) Church has lots of records on people all over the world, not just Mormons. In Salt Lake City, they have the world's largest genealogical collection. Their Family History Centers can order microfilm for you to view at a nominal fee.

I am Catholic. They have never tried to convert me or send their missionaries by to ring my doorbell because I availed myself of their resources. I haven't heard that they have done so to anyone else.

Catholic Church records can be a vital source of information. Registers are kept on Baptisms, First Communion, Confirmation, Marriages and Death and they show the names of both parents including mother's maiden name. Periodically in our diocese the registers are sent to the Chancery office to be microfilmed.

I have a friend whose mother was from Calabria and her father from Sicily. She has found tons of information at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. She said when you first go there you have to go through a lot of rigamarole to get a name tag but once you do any time you go back with your name tag, you have no problems at all. A cousin of hers told her that she(my friend) found more on their family than she(her cousin) found going to Italy.

Good Luck!

Answer 4

I will suggest a book to you that will take you step by step and is about $20. Unpuzzling your past by Emily Croom. It's worth its weight in gold. Just follow her instructions and you can't go wrong.

Answer 5

I am not sure if there is a strong latter-day saints population in your area, but where i live in AZ there is. they have a genealogy center where anyone can go in and use all these resources to trace their genealogy. It is pretty amazing.

Answer 6

Begin with speaking to all your oldest living relatives then write down ALL their info into a notebook. Then you can start looking for death records etc.....

Answer 7

Do an Geneaology research.

Answer 8

This question is asked, and answered, in one form or another about 10 times a day. Please search previously asked questions for this so people do not have to re-post the same response over and over and over and over and over again.

Answer 9

try to find old letters and documents
jane