Have you done your family tree?

No but I’d like to. If only out of curiousity. My parents were only children so I have no aunts or uncles and they were very reserved about discussing their family.
But I’m also a bit scared and apprehensive about doing so.
 
I wouldn't spend any money until I hit a brick wall.

Start by jotting down the information that you remember about parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc... Interview any of their descendants that you can locate.

You can also find some good information online without spending any money. Start by googling names and looking for obituaries, census information, burial information, etc...
 

I have my paternal side going back to 1634 when my first ancestor came to America from Somersetshire UK. Mine was not that hard because my family never moved much, and the one major move they made after the founding of our nation was en masse from the Boston Area to upstate NY where most of us remain today. We also are a family of record keepers. My fathers Uncle started the research, my father continued, and a cousin and I carry on.


I use Ancestry.com , mostly because that was the main one when I started digitizing our research. A subscription will give you access to the Social Security Master Death Rolls, Census Records, Some military,etc.
You can gather all this information on your own, but the subscription serves as a great amalgamator. Chances are unless you are of really obscure lineage, you will find a cousin that has already done much of the work that you can piggy-back onto and flesh out your branch.
 
A lot of information *used* to be free, but it seems like Ancestry took it over, or bought it all up, or whatever. Find a Grave (findagrave.com) is still a good site for information. I've started mine several times but reach a dead end around 1800 on one side of the family. Same with the relatives who tried it. Maybe some nefarious activity went on back then. lol
 
I go back to 1770 and hit a brick wall plus a lot of bad information entered by who knows who! I used many free sites and census records. Most of my ancestors are buried in Blodgett Mills NY and Illinois. Illinois go back to 1800.
 
My cousin did ours, on our fathers' sides. They were brothers. She did it before all the Ancestry sites. Basically a lot of record searches, Ellis island records, and many emails and snail mails between here and Italy. She did have to pay someone to help with translations, as her Italian was not good enough. She came up with a very comprehensive geneology of the family tree.
 
Marie5656 said:
My cousin did ours, on our fathers' sides. They were brothers. She did it before all the Ancestry sites. Basically a lot of record searches, Ellis island records, and many emails and snail mails between here and Italy. She did have to pay someone to help with translations, as her Italian was not good enough. She came up with a very comprehensive geneology of the family tree.
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How interesting re your cousin! I do my genealogy in fits and starts. I am soooo sorry I didn't do this while my parents were alive, it would have been so much easier to get info. But, back then I didn't care and now regret it. Most of my family are from Italy. I managed to find the address for the courthouse in my home town in Italy and sent them money for postage with a letter in broken Italian asking for info. They were great and sent photocopies of marriage and death certificates, now I will try to do it again for my paternal side. Ancestry.com is a great site, but they and Ellis Island now give very limited free info, you have to pay to get in deeper. I lost touch with my relatives in Italy.
 
A distant relative did it on my Mother's side. My Mom contributed so much information that when the relative was all done she gave my mom a copy. Much information was lost on both sides because the records were destroyed during the war in Germany and Czechoslovakia.
 
Keesha said:
No but I’d like to. If only out of curiousity. My parents were only children so I have no aunts or uncles and they were very reserved about discussing their family.
But I’m also a bit scared and apprehensive about doing so.
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If you're going to do it, do it now while your parents are still alive. Perhaps you can get your brother to do it for you. I have read your thread and know your unfortunate situation with your parents. I was not interested in genealogy when my parents were alive and now regret not getting facts and dates ''from the horse's mouth''. It's so much harder and time consuming having to do it from scratch.
 
privacy and security issues

There are many issues to genealogy research and websites. They include privacy concerns, ownership of information along with accuracy issues.

https://www.medicaldaily.com/dna-an...gless-your-historical-genealogy-search-244586

https://gizmodo.com/how-dna-testing-botched-my-familys-heritage-and-probab-1820932637

https://thinkprogress.org/ancestry-...m-customers-and-their-relatives-dbafeed02b9e/

https://www.ksl.com/?sid=42856117&nid=148

Personally I don't care, don't want mine or my families privacy put as risk(this is what many don't get because when they input and/or verify third party family information they just put their privacy and security in jeopardy). Yes information is out there but there is no need to put it on a silver platter in one location. Make people work and pay for it.
 
fuzzybuddy,

Like some of your ancestors once did, take that first step and open up the pages to the fascinating story of your family history. Every family has a unique story to tell: serfdom, wars, diseases, famine, persecution, military conscription, heroism, tragedy, and immigration.

Start with google, findagrave.org, familysearch.org, and other free sources. If you are still interested then give Ancestry or another site a brief trial. Ask for a DNA kit for your birthday or for Christmas. Little by little you will add to your tree and get a better understanding of who you are and where you came from.

I was told that I was Hungarian...that was wrong. I found an embarrassing story and a sketch in a few New York City newspapers in the late 1800's about one side of my family. I learned that some of my ancestors were serfs who were not allowed to leave their town, and the males were forced to serve in the military for ten years. I discovered new cousins from my DNA testing. My wife's ancestors came over on the Mayflower, fought in the Battle of Hastings, and built an English castle. Good Luck!
 
We set out on a mission to find out something about the first settler ancestors in Australia. We were stimulated by a diary written by on a voyage to Australia in 1863 by my mother's great grand father and by the bicentenary of European settlement in 1988.

We listened to tales told by older relatives but these can be misleading and should always be checked against official records. At that time we did not have the benefit of the internet and we relied on death, marriage and birth certificates obtained for a fee from the appropriate registrars. We also visited large city libraries and pored through old newspapers recorded in the form of microfische film. Ditto for the passenger lists of ships from those times. We even went to Canberra for a few days and searched their photographic collection looking for photos of the ships that they arrived on. Black and white studies of ships at anchor were not uncommon even as far back as the 1860s. This could be done at no financial cost but it did require a lot of time to be spent. Photocopies of anything we were interested in could be purchased for a small fee.

These days, with the arrival of the internet, smart phones etc it is much easier. I was discussing with my daughter the story about an uncle of my father who was charged with murder around about the time of WW II. We knew that the charges were dropped and that he had been awarded a military medal in WW I, apparently for being a sharp shooter (sniper). I wondered why he wasn't tried and my daughter whipped out her smart phone and in no time at all she had an image of a paper from his local area with a full account of the incident and the reason why the police dropped the charges. They were satisfied that it was self defence after investigating the scene.

We have struck a couple of brick walls, notably with ancestors of Irish descent. For example, my maternal grandmother appears to have no record of her birth. Neither do her two brothers. Her marriage and death certificates are not helpful either. Unfortunately, her mother died soon after giving birth and my grand mother was raised by her mother's family and by the nuns of a religious order who ran a boarding school and a hospital in Sydney. We know that she attended the school and trained as a nurse in the hospital but when she later married my grandfather, religious differences caused her to be estranged from her family and my mother and her siblings knew nothing about her mother's birth. We think her mother was Australian born and her father was Irish but we cannot confirm this without something like a birth certificate. We have been unable to track down her baptism record.

We are no longer actively pursuing further inquiries but my advice to anyone starting out would be to be patient and see what you can piece together yourself before utilising any online services. The fun is in being able to play detective and to follow the clues until you discover the facts and some very interesting anecdotes.
 
Gary O' said:
Yeah

A cousin did it for the rest of us

interesting stuff


name was changed from Donl when they came over (fled) from Ireland
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LOL, Gary. A long time ago I had a boyfriend of Polish ancestry. Polish surnames can be very long and hard to spell/pronounce. So his grandfather, when he came to this country, just shortened to the first three letters of the surname. That would cause a headache for anyone in his family trying to do a family tree.
 
PVC said:
LOL, Gary. A long time ago I had a boyfriend of Polish ancestry. Polish surnames can be very long and hard to spell/pronounce. So his grandfather, when he came to this country, just shortened to the first three letters of the surname. That would cause a headache for anyone in his family trying to do a family tree.
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A friend of mine married a Polish fellow, whose last name only had four letters. I asked him what it was short for and he said it wasn't short for anything. Apparently only the town dwellers and well-to-do country folk had long names. The peasants or serfs who pretty much "belonged" to the local lord had short little names. If they needed any more identification, they added the equivalent of "of the" to their names and added the lord's family name. So if your name was Ug, you could also be Ugofthekasminskys, whatever that would work out to in Polish.
 
I've been doing my husband's family tree for a few years through Ancestry's website and also findagrave. I hit a brick wall a year ago with his great grandfather and can't seem to get anywhere. He came here from Ireland in the 1800's and I have most of the information AFTER he got here, but I just can't find anything about him before he left Ireland. It's so frustrating! It's fascinating work but oh boy is it time consuming, before I realize it i've been searching for hours, lol.
 
My uncle was obsessed with genealogy. He did extensive research for his family and for all the wives and husbands of his siblings. I did not pay specific attention; but my cousins have the info if I ever want it.
 
My husband did his on Ancestry, I built mine off his. I went as far as I could then it got into some melungeon stuff and he was makin' fun of me...Whatever...I'm just a Tennessee Hillbilly.... I'll take it and own it.
 

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