Anyone ever do any geneology on their family?

[Nlighten1]

What resources have you used? I have found some very interesting material on the Internet but I am sure there is more locked away in books some where.

[Kali]

1. oh yeah

don't know any websites but contact any Mormon temple and they can direct you to huge database

[happynewyear]

2. yes I have done an extensive job on it

I started in 1997. Wow, what a long journey (still doing it). I started out with the basics - my grandmother and grandfather (got their death certificates). Much depends upon where you are located with respect to record availability.

You can likely subscribe to a rootsweb.com list for the area of your interest to get on a list of the region you are researching.

http://www.rootsweb.com/

Like I said, been at it for 7 years now almost and I just found my great grandmother's sister coming into Ellis Island in 1894. It seems they were from Pomerania (c. 1890). I never had a clue about this.

You never know who you'll find - a fascinating hobby to say the least. You work your way back wards ... look for living people that are old if you know of any and pick their brains!

Good luck.

baldearg

[Shadder]

3. Been working on mine for 15 years now

Seems to be a never ending process, but it sure can be a lot of fun.

[happynewyear]

4. boy you got that right

I thought it would be quick being my mother was adopted. hahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

You take this one on as a hobby, watch out!

[bobbieinok]

5. yes, quite a bit on my family and my ex-husband's (for my son)

Get names, approximate dates, states and counties, and countries for your parents and grandparents and further back if you can - also siblings.

Check names and families in various censuses.

Many LDS churches have genealogical libraries with people who can help you figure out how to use the resources they have locally and how to get info from the main library in Salt Lake City.

Take library or adult ed workshops or courses on doing genealogies.

I had found a lot of info in books in the IA historical library in Des Moines. Thus I know which internet sites are helpful and which are wrong branch.

I had some info on one of my ancestral families and found a major source on the internet; the man who had posted the web site for the family explained why his info was more likely relevant to me than stuff I had gotten from some one else. He also gave me the email of a man whose great grandfather was the older brother of my great grandfather. That family had a diary of the move from VA to IA when my ggrandfather was 7. I WOULD HAVE NEVER FOUND THIS DIARY WITHOUT THE INTERNET and my earlier research.

[Nlighten1]

6. The odd thing is I have data from WAY back...

and very little from right now. I have tracked when my ancestors entered America back in the 1700's, through the Revolutionary War, and shortly after it. I guess what I need to do now is find the link from here to that time.

[bobbieinok]

8. how do you know your family really links to that 'way back' family??

It actually may; I took a few major 'leaps of faith' and then found the links.

I think now the 1930 census is open. We can maybe find grandparents and greatgrandparents in 1930 or 1920 census. I haven't done any work with these, but I think many entries have where and when individuals were born and names and info about their parents.

[Nlighten1]

13. Because all the people in my family come from 1 source.

We are lucky enough to have a rather unique last name. There are plenty of books written about my family. I suppose the first part is to learn how to do geneology first. Contact my closest Kin and start working my way backwards.

Here is a link about my family. As you can see from this link there are probably lots of records I just need to go and find them.

http://docsouth.unc.edu/smedes/smedes.html

[happynewyear]

7. 1880 census is on-line

My whole family is on this one from LDS. Great resource!

http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/frameset_search.asp?PAGE=census/search_census.asp

Another good link for immigrants coming to America (where I found my great grandmother's sister and many others):

http://www.ellisisland.org

[BlackVelvetElvis]

9. Be careful what you find online

People make mistakes and that stuff gets posted. Always get something to back it up if you can.
I've been doing this since the late '70's. A fun hobby.
Don't be afraid to make a trip to the library or state archives. I found some incredble stuff on my family in a library. Many libraries have a section devoted to state and family research-stuff out of print. I would also advise getting a computer program to backup your info. Take very good records.
See if there are any online census records: http://www.rootsweb.com/~census/
Try to contact others: http://genforum.genealogy.com/
Check out the state pages as well.

[starroute]

10. Do you know all the Internet resources?

The free resources I use most are:

http://www.familysearch.org/default.asp
The LDS (Mormon) site. It draws from submitted family trees, vital records, the 1880 census, the Social Security Death Index, and more. Just enter a name and search.

http://worldconnect.genealogy.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?surname=soveril&given=anna&start=0&skipdb=&bplace=&stype=Exact&bskip=&dskip=&dplace=
RootsWeb WorldConnect Project. Limited to submitted genealogies, but many of these are extremely detailed. Better for 20th century materials than the LDS site.

http://www.gencircles.com/globaltree/
Similar to WorldConnect but smaller.

http://ssdi.genealogy.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/ssdi.cgi
The RootsWeb interface to the Social Security Death Index. Allows for more customized searches than the LDS site.

http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec?htx=main&r=rw
The RootsWeb message board. Forums for family names, US counties, and other categories.

http://genforum.genealogy.com/
The GenForum message board. You now have to be a paid member to post, but there is no charge to read messages, and you can learn a lot from them.

http://www.usgenweb.org/statelinks-table.html
Links to state-by-state and county-by-county genealogy sites. Some are huge, others skimpy. Many have postings of vital records, cemetery listings, early histories, and the like.

http://www.census-online.com/
Links to online census transcriptions.

And of course, there's always Google.

To get beyond online resources, you generally need a good genealogy library. These tend to be attached to either local historical societies or major libraries. They'e most useful if you're living in the same part of the country as your ancestors did -- if not, their coverage is likely to be much thinner.

If you do live in or can arrange to visit your area of interest, it's possible to research everything from wills to land records to marriage announcements in old newspapers.

You can also look up a variety of microfilms at the LDS site and order them for viewing through your nearest LDS Family History Center.

Beyond that, there are numberous paid membership sites, such as Ancestry.com, which has all the censuses and many other sources of information on line for a fee.

[carpetbagger]

11. ancestry.com has free trial subscriptions

you have to pick around a bit, but they're out there, including some with census access.

[SW FL Dem]

12. Interesting stuff

My mother's family (both sides) came over before the revolutionary war. We have bound volumes assigning everyone a number. I always thought it was neat that the last five digits of my number were 11111, meaning I was the first born, of the first born, for 5 generations. My father's parents were both born in Scandinavia. We have had little luck finding records past their emmigration in the early 1900s.

[Nlighten1]

15. Very cool...

I wish my family had something like that. Maybe we do but I just haven't asked the right people yet.

[Sandpiper]

14. My Mom traced one line of her family back to 1066

Her great x 30 grandfather was a 20 year old knight who came over with William the Conqueror during the Norman invasion of England. Because he was a noble, his family kept very extensive records. Just luck that my mom found it.

Try the mormon resource http://familysearch.org

or http://ancestry.com

[radwriter0555]

25. My BF's family goes back to service of william the conquerer as well, and

has service under Louis XVI, through Napoleon.

There are two sides to his family, the english and the french.. his being the french of course.

And he's a genuine french Count as well, which is loads of fun to brag about, as that will make me a real Countess when he makes me his wife!

Countess Radwriter!

No, he hasn't asked me to marry him, but he will!

[Spider Jerusalem]

16. Yeah....

http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com is a good resource. I've managed to trace most branches of my family back to the first immigrants to the colonies(earliest immigrant to America arrived in 1608, and was given as hostage to Pocahontas' father Powhatan), and at least one line goes back to the seventh century.

The odds are quite good that IF you manage to find what's known as a "gateway ancestor" (one who allows you to trace your ancestry back in Europe) you'll find that you're descended from royalty or at least nobility (but then there's nothing really special or unsual in that). One thing that tracing your genealogy back that far gives you a sense of is how closely related, really, most people are...I'd estimate that just about everyone of European ancestry is related to the degree of at most sixteenth cousin or so.

[SarahB]

17. I haven't, but older relatives have

On my Dad's side (English), we can be traced to The Mayflower and even farther back to one of the signers of the Magna Carta and even farther back to Charlemagne.
My mom's side is mostly Swedish and more of the peasant type folks. I'm not sure as to the level of records, but I know we have some stuff that goes back about 6 generations.

[Rowdyboy]

18. Great thread to bookmark; Mom's cousin took our family back to

the Mayflower and we've actually been able to go back even further. Using church baptismal records, we can trace NAMES only in one branch of the family back to northeastern France in the mid-1300's.

Its lots of fun but totally irrelevent in the long run.

My great great great great grandpa can beat up your great great great great grandpa? Nah....

[monkeymind]

19. the library is great

I found out that I had 2 great great grandfathers who fought for the North and South in the civil war.

[saracat]

20. DO NOT GO TO THE MORMON SOURCES!

Thet use what information you give them to convert your dead ancestors.Seriously. I have had this done to my family who are not Mormon.They also marry people who were single at the time of their deaths to each other. I am NOT making this up. You could find your whole history altered as a result of one request for information.

[Spider Jerusalem]

21. Yep...

some of the other databases include, in their genealogical information, whether or not the person has been baptised by the Mormons. Discovered that a sizeable number of my ancestors have been posthumously Mormonised. There are many bizarre things about the Mormons, but the baptism of the dead is one of the most fucked-up. I'm starting to think that Joseph Smith was a previous incarnation of L. Ron Hubbard.

[LWolf]

22. A few.

1. The local LDS group has a database you can check. I did this for a paper required in a cultural geography class 10 or 15 years ago. I am not making any claims for their accuracy, but what they had fit with info from other sources. They happened to have a center across the street from the campus.

2. My great-aunt paid a professional. I have a 10-page report for the maternal side of the family. She'd done this many years back, and gave me a copy when I was doing my research.

3. I called/contacted little-known relatives I'd never met, who kept referring me on to others I'd never heard of. I got several geneologies that way, including an old book documenting births and deaths on one branch from the 1800s - the early 1900s.

All for this one research paper. In reality, I have a total of 3 family members; my mother and my 2 sons.

[noonwitch]

23. If your ancestors came over via Ellis Island

try ellisisland.org

They have all the ship manifests on line. I looked up my grandpa and he and his family were all listed. They also provide information about some of the boats used to bring immigrants over and it's a very good history website overall.

I wonder if something similar is in place for those who came via Angel Island in San Francisco? A lot of asian-americans came through that port.

If your ancestors came over on the Mayflower, you should have some family records. In order to access the Mayflower society's records, you have to join and to join, you have to prove eligibility. Most families know the name of the ancestor (like my dad's family-Richard Warren is the descendant).

[PAMod]

24. I've been at it since 2000.

It's a great hobby - I've gotten closer to many of my relatives because of it, and I've met others that I wouldn't have known about otherwise.

The internet is a great resource, but you'll have to verify anything you find there. Mostly, the net is a great resource to meet relatives/fellow researchers, and of course it can give you ideas of where to look & what to look for.

Take the time to visit the local courthouses & try out your local LDS Family History Center. Find out if the localities in question have an historical society or a genealogical society. Those are helpful, too - often a county has a printed history with biographies & newspaper indeces. I've had more fun with those than anything, really.

The down side to genealogy is it is very addictive and can be time consuming if you let it. My wife gets a little edgy if I become obsessed with it - I have been limiting my desk time to Sunday evenings only, and have been spreading out my research junkets.

[arwalden]

26. Yes... And They Still Refuse To Admit That I'm Related

:hi:

[dryan]

27. Just read any American History Book

Direct descendant of George Rogers Clark and Merriweather Clark.