Introduction To Genealogy
Genealogy is the study of one’s own family or their roots. It is not enough for some people to only know about themselves from the limited world they see. The possibility that your ancestor might be a knight from the Middle Ages or someone who was a hero fighting the revolution is an exciting adventure and can sometimes make up who a person is. But beyond what you can get from you older relatives and what they can dig up in the attic, most people do not know how to research their family history.
The most obvious place to find information today is the internet. Luckily there is no shortage of information here. You can find anything on the internet you just have to know how to do it. The most obvious sources on the internet to research genealogy are sites that are specifically set up for this kind of research like Ansestoy.com, Rootsweb, or My Herigate.com. All are great websites that offer several different sources of information. On these sites you can look up marriage licenses, birth or death certificates, military records, census records, wills, or even old tax information. The only tricky thing with tying to research your family history through these types of sites is filtering out which ones really are your relatives. It’s hard to imagine how many different people may have the same names or very similar names of your past relatives. But by knowing bits and pieces of your past history, you are able to fill in the gaps. The more information you put into a search engine on these sites, the easier it will be to find you relatives. What’s great about the internet is that these sites have uploaded a lot of recoded from places that the average person who not have easy access to like Elise Island. You can sometimes find records of your ancestor’s trip into America. The important thing to remember about these records is that they were handwritten at the time. It is possible for the names to be spelled incorrectly.
You can also research your family history by getting records from the local court house. Like the genealogy websites, you can find marriage licenses, birth or death certificates, or divorce records. You may also find these records through your state department. Often times these types of documents contains links to other information or will fill in the holes that you might need to complete a more accurate search on the internet. Another less obvious place to search would be places like funeral homes in the towns that your ancestors lived in and cemeteries. In addition to death records, funeral homes may provide clues like the names of spouses, children, or parents.
Unlike some other hobby genealogy is a hobby that is rewarding for not only the person who is doing the work but to other family members and generations to come. If someone is to keep up with or complete the information you have started, it is important that you are providing them with the most accurate information as possible.
For more information on Family Trees please visit www.allaboutmefamilytree.com.
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