Most people want to feel some connection to their past. It may be for medical reasons or just a curiosity about who and where they came from. With today's technology and a DNA submission, it is possible to discover all the different nationalities and races you belong to. Not only is it easy to begin to trace your background, but it is affordable. You don't have to travel to multiple locations and sift through piles of old documents to get information. Valuable genealogy records are as close as your computer.
Those who are lucky to have extended family have a treasure trove of information at their fingertips. Parents, grandparents, and great grandparents are the best place to start when it comes to researching your family history. If you haven't already started, you should really begin to write down the stories they have to tell about their lives. A lot of older relatives have birth, marriage, and death certificates with valuable information.
The federal government has been collecting population statistics for more than two hundred years, and all of it is public information. Census bureau data is available online. You can find out where relatives lived, what they did for a living, and how many brothers and sisters they had. Once you get started you will find that the really old census data is much less detailed.
Obituaries are a good source of information. Most newspapers have old issues on their websites. Some go back farther than others. You might find some interesting articles about your departed relatives when you do a search of the papers.
If you know of family members that served in the military, you can find interesting data online that goes back to the Revolutionary War. There should be documents showing the enlisted person's rank and how long the service lasted. Free burial information is available on several websites and easy to find if you have basic statistics. Photos of headstones sometimes accompany the information.
A lot of state counties restrict access to personal documents online, but they do have them in their archives. For just a few dollars you can get copies of old wills, birth certificates, marriage licenses, and death certificates. These will be copies of the actual documents, not just the information contained within them.
There are things to be careful of and to remember when you begin going back in time. You will find that spelling was more fluid long ago than it is now. Different people spelled names and places differently. Not all documents have accurate information. That may be caused by clerical error or by someone who was less than truthful.
Learning more about your past and the generations that came before you can be fascinating. You might find you have relatives with interesting and unusual lives.
Those who are lucky to have extended family have a treasure trove of information at their fingertips. Parents, grandparents, and great grandparents are the best place to start when it comes to researching your family history. If you haven't already started, you should really begin to write down the stories they have to tell about their lives. A lot of older relatives have birth, marriage, and death certificates with valuable information.
The federal government has been collecting population statistics for more than two hundred years, and all of it is public information. Census bureau data is available online. You can find out where relatives lived, what they did for a living, and how many brothers and sisters they had. Once you get started you will find that the really old census data is much less detailed.
Obituaries are a good source of information. Most newspapers have old issues on their websites. Some go back farther than others. You might find some interesting articles about your departed relatives when you do a search of the papers.
If you know of family members that served in the military, you can find interesting data online that goes back to the Revolutionary War. There should be documents showing the enlisted person's rank and how long the service lasted. Free burial information is available on several websites and easy to find if you have basic statistics. Photos of headstones sometimes accompany the information.
A lot of state counties restrict access to personal documents online, but they do have them in their archives. For just a few dollars you can get copies of old wills, birth certificates, marriage licenses, and death certificates. These will be copies of the actual documents, not just the information contained within them.
There are things to be careful of and to remember when you begin going back in time. You will find that spelling was more fluid long ago than it is now. Different people spelled names and places differently. Not all documents have accurate information. That may be caused by clerical error or by someone who was less than truthful.
Learning more about your past and the generations that came before you can be fascinating. You might find you have relatives with interesting and unusual lives.
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