Tips On Finding Your Ancestors

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In the early 1980’s, my husband’s Grandfather became ill and was unable to take care of himself. He was so upset because he thought we would put him in a home for the elderly. We never even considered that move. Instead, we built him a room onto our trailer and moved him in with us. This decision proved to be both difficult and very rewarding. We had two daughters who were preteen at the time. We all learned much from this wonderful compassionate man. Like most elderly people, he loved to tell stories about when he was young. He told of the problems of growing up in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. He told of the hardships that his family had been forced to live though. He told of the old logging work camps. . The logging camps and the days of the late 1800’s may be gone but his stories and memories will live on. These memories will be forever in our family because we took the time to tape him while he was telling the stories. Now his voice and his memories will play an important part in later generations. The stories of his parents and his brothers and sisters are not lost. They are alive and still being shared in our family. We have black and white pictures of the logging camps of days gone by. We are very fortunate to have all this wonderful information at our fingertips. You may not have stories like this to share with your grandchildren but you can share their heritage with them. There are many wonderful sties online that will help you to find your ancestors. You can find out where they served in the wars. There is just so much wonderful information that is available to you about your family. Do you have a desire to know what country they came from? With the wonderful world wide web, you can find this out and so much more in just a few minutes. You can find those stories that are about your Great, Great Grandmother or Grandfather. Are you ready to find out more about your ancestors and their stories? Come take a tour with me to the site called ancestry.com. Right Click here to go there now, that way you will still have this article to guide you along the way: http://www.ancestry.com/ Once you are on the home page, you will see a lot of information. Don’t be overwhelmed at all this. It is really easy to find you way around the site. Notice at the top of the page, you should see tabs saying Home, My ancestry, search, ancestry community, learning center and store. The tab that is colored green is where you are now. Notice also on the homepage is a section on the left that says “Start your family tree”. That is where you will probably want to start. Just type in a name that you know already and then search backward. After you have put in a name, click the green ‘get started’ button. That will take you to another page where you can put in all the information that you know. You could start with yourself and go backwards. Also on the home page is a section call “US Census collection” You can search by the year. Scroll on down a little bit more and you will see “more collections”. This section has birth, marriage and death records, The Social Security Death Index (SSDI), obituary collection and many other vital records Oneworldtree This section has A worldwide collection of millions of names in family trees submitted by members UK Census Collection The full UK Census from 1841 to 1901, including original images of the census documents US Immigration Collection Ship passenger lists, naturalization records, ship photos and much more US Military records Rich military records including original images of WWI draft cards and much more Members Collections An easy way to connect with other members researching the same ancestors Now, scroll on down to the last section on the left. This site has just added a new free audio storytelling feature to the family tree tool. Just click the “ Audio tab in the family tree and use any phone to record your story and have it saved to your family tree. I just love this new addition. Now our family stories will not get lost. Can you imagine if your ancestors had this feature available to them. What wonderful stories will you preserve for your future generations.? Now lets click on the “My Ancestry” tab at the top of the page. On this part of the site, you can start your family tree. You will be able to: Automatically search billions of records to grow your tree Gather your photos and historical records Easily share with friends and family You can even upload an existing family tree file from your computer. Now click on the “search” tab at the top of the page. This is the part that you will enjoy. Notice that on the left hand side it has four tabs labeled, Historical Records, Family Tree, Stories & Publications, Photos & maps. You will want to explore each of those tabs. Scroll on down a bit and you will see that you can search for records by location such as Region or by State On the right you will see a number of records listed. Have fun and explore the site before you start your personal search. Find out what wonderful things it has to offer. Now click on the Ancestry Community tap at the top. This is the area where you can share research or ideas with other Ancestry members. When you are ready to begin chatting with others just click on the Orange create profile now button. Now lets go check out the Learning Center. Click on the “learning center” tab at the top of the page. In this section you can learn helpful information and interesting facts about your surname. You can find out the following: What country did most people with your surname come from? What does your name mean? Learn answers to these questions and many more. Learn tips to help with your research. The site boasts that The Ancestry Library is the best collection of family history ho to and genealogy learning material on the internet. You can browse so many things at this section. Click on the store tab at the top. This section is where you will purchase any material that you are interested in about Family History. They offer everything from books to software and maps. If you need it, they probably have it. Now this site does charge for you to have a membership. Membership ranges in price from $34.95 for one month or you can upgrade to $155.40 for a year. There is a lot of things that are available to use for free but if you want the best information, you will need to pay for that. Now are you ready to find out where your ancestors came from? Have fun and get to know who you are by looking into your genealogy. I originally posted this discussion on Gather and received so many wonderful comments that I thought I would share it with my mylot friends.