Getting to Know Your Ancestors

It's great to find out that your great, great Grandpa was born in Scotland in 1769. And you have a Grandmother that grew up in Ireland. But what makes your family trees fascinating is the people, not the facts. Learning about your great grandmother who had the courage to travel from Germany to America alone with three children, to join her husband who had come ahead to make a new home for his family. Little details like these are what makes family history so exciting, and can bring a vivid picture of your genealogy research to life.

There are a lot of different resources available that can help you learn more about the time periods, religious practices, and ethnic customs. These resources will help you place your family's lives in a meaningful historical context.

Starting with your living relatives: The most valuable resource you have right at your fingertips - your living family members. Be sure to utilize this while you still can. They won't always be around!

They may not talk about what their life was like growing up because they think people will find it boring, but once you get them started, you'll be surprised how their memories come to life. Below are some questions that you can use to get started. Remember you don't want just dates and places. You want stories of their lives.

1. Describe the house that you grew up in. Did you have electricity? Indoor plumbing?
2. What is the earliest thing you can remember from your childhood?
3. What kind of games did you play as a kid growing up?
4. Did you have a favorite toy; did you take it everywhere?
5. What was your favorite thing to do for fun?
6. Did you have any chores?
7. Did you receive an allowance and how much did you get?
8. What was school like as a child? Were you in any activities or sports?
9. Do you remember any fads from your youth? Popular hairstyles? Clothes?
10.Who were your childhood heroes?
11. What were your favorite songs, music?
12. Did you have any pets? What were their names?

The next resource is your library. Libraries have great sources for background information on the time periods and locations in which your ancestors lived. This includes history books, cookbooks (for period recipes), maps, and fashion (for clothing styles from different time periods). Your library card can be your key to unlocking your family tree. Libraries across the U.S. and around the world subscribe to multiple databases for the use of their members.

Your locale library's databases may include obituaries, census, and biographies, immigration records, marriage and birth records, and historical newspapers. Certain libraries may subscribe to as few as one to two databases, while other libraries may offer a wide range of free databases.

History in the news: This is one of the most useful databases for genealogical research.
Period newspapers provide more than birth announcements and obituaries. Period newspapers are also a window into the lives of your ancestors through gossip, columns, editorial comments reflecting the community, and product advertisements.

Period newspapers also serve as daily or weekly diaries of local communications and their inhabitants. Newspapers are excellent source that provides a wonderful undiscovered, resource for genealogist, providing events not recorded anywhere else. A genealogical researcher can not only expect to find birth announcements and obituaries, but also announcements of anniversaries, letters to editor, legal notices, and social columns filled with local news of a more personal nature. Whether it's an urban or rural newspaper, it can open a new window into the lives of your ancestors.

Mapping out your family tree: Being familiar with the area where your ancestors lived is essential in researching your family history. Maps come into play here. Maps can not only help you pinpoint the name, location, and history of the city or town where your ancestors lived, but can also help you find and picture where your relatives were born, resided, courted, married, raised a family, and was laid to rest. Many family history research problems can be solved with the use of maps, atlases, and gazetteers. Maps can help you locate you ancestors' neighbors and family members, pinpoint county courthouses or town halls where records may be located, and can even be uses to compare other genealogical records to distinguish between two individuals of the same last name. By using maps, you can learn more about the name, location, and history of the city or town in which your ancestors lived.