Tracing Family HistoriesWritten by Trevor Dumbleton
One of most fascinating, and most rewarding pastimes you can engage in is tracing family histories. By delving into past of your family and families that have joined together to form that family, you can learn about yourself, your parents, your ancestors, and many people who have been born, wedded, had children, and eventually ended up creating that unique entity known as you. As well, you can learn much about what those people did and places from which they came.Tracing family histories can often be a difficult task. However, best place to start is by tracing genealogy. Without names to go on, any family history is almost impossible to create. Thus, a full family tree should be formed and formatted in order to figure out just who these people were, when they lived, and where they lived. Once you have figured out names, real digging begins. You need to find as much information about these people as possible. Anything in public record is usually best place to start. Legal papers can be a wealth of information about people from whom you are descended. Such items as deeds, real estate papers, and loan papers can tell you a great deal about names on your family tree. If they bought land, they must have worked it. If they applied for loans, they usually gave a purpose for loan. These are meat of any family history. With a few little details, you can start filling in a whole lot of blanks. As well, old letters are very useful for tracing family histories. Though letter writing is something of a lost art today, people would often keep letters they received, especially love letters. These can provide fascinating glimpses into people who have gone on before you, as they will often not only speak of their love, but they can also provide interesting asides about where they were and what they were doing. The addresses will tell you where those letters went. Return addresses will tell you where they came from. They often told each other where they were and what they were doing at time. These are not just pieces of paper, they are windows into souls of your ancestors.
| | American Family HistoryWritten by Trevor Dumbleton
When delving into an American Family History, there are certain advantages and certain disadvantages to learning about people who immigrated to a new country in New World. There are usually a great many records of people once they are in America, but collecting an American family history can often be difficult for certain regions and can be more difficult for learning about families before they left their native lands.When assembling an American family history, first place to start is, of course, with still-living relatives. They can provide a wealth of information about one's ancestors. As they have memories of parents, grandparents, and sometimes even great-grandparents, they can offer names, a few descriptions, and perhaps some memoirs and memorabilia. Your surviving ancestors are an excellent place to start your investigations into history and people of your family. And these living links to people and places of bygone years can often provide you with important research materials and memoirs that will get your search off to a roaring start. Next, it is time to check government records. These can be a wealth of knowledge about names, dates, places, and times of death and birth for your American family history. With birth records listing names of people and names of their parents, your search can expand both upwards and outwards. With names of parents, you will be able to learn names of their other children. And with records of death, one can learn where these people wound down remainders of their lives. However, birth and death records are not only records that can add information to your American family history. There are also deeds, land grants, court papers, patent records, copyrights, and, of course, immigration papers. These are very important for delving into your family history, as they will allow you to understand who these people were and where they lived. With each little piece of information, you can start to develop a picture of your family, its history, where it went and how it got there.
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