anyone here doing their family tree, this is a great site, and if someone else like a distant cousin has a branch it will automatically ask if you want to connect the info to your tree, I tell ya it saves me alot of extra work. My father in law was here and his father pretty much ran out on him when he was a boy, so he doesnt' know much and we found some great links today, went back about 5 generations!
I've been a member of Ancestry.com for MANY years! GenForum is another handy place to look for family.
I've made a lot of progress during the past 10+ years of searching, and even found a distant male cousin (total stranger) who agreed to participate in a family DNA project to help break through one of my long-time brick walls!
I posted a brief message on GenForum five or six years ago about a branch of my husband's family. I wasn't really interested in researching this line just then, but I needed a distraction from my own lines for a few minutes. Within an hour, someone sent me SEVENTEEN PAGES of information on this line!!! They also informed me that there were literally BOXES of information on this same family in the Historical Society in Indianapolis. Well. Thanks!!! I guess I'm pretty much done with that surname now...
I also found information on my biological grandfather. This is someone I never knew since everyone thought that he'd died back in the 1920s!!! It turns out that he lived to quite a ripe old age, remarried, and adopted a son. I found this information when a website I visit often updated some obituary information. I connected with the adopted son (who was rather surprised to hear from ME), and he SENT ME an ancient photograph that he had of my grandfather (whose face I had NEVER seen before) standing in front of a new house with my very youthful grandmother, and my mother as a toddler. Cried for days...
It's addictive, folks...
__________________
"It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities"
(Dumbledore to Harry Potter)
I got in touch with my father's side, the biological father that never raised me and then he had passed away, and actually he never knew his own dad because he had died in WWII and his mom died young too
So anyway, went into one of those websites and sent a message on the board about the family and heard from a 5th cousin who lives in England now, He had pages and pages too, Then I got in touch with an Uncle and met him when we took a trip to Florida. They were surprised to hear from me/always wondered what happend to my biological dad, etc. It was great!
My grandfather was from Woburn, MA, and one family member is still there. I would love to visit one day. My grandmother was Swedish and her parents died shortly after she was born, but I did get in contact with a Lutheran Church in Minnesota and they were helpful. Other people have not been helpful, but you do what you can
when I was younger my mom did all the research for her side of the family. She did most of it to put together a project for my grandparents 50th. But I dont think she got too far on my dads side (they split a long time ago). I signed up for it, but dont even know where to start, and dont really want to pay for it. I will learn more
You don't have to pay, you can just start adding your tree and it lets you know if there are any connections, if someone is working on a branch. I think I did pay once so I could get access to additional records, but it's not required to get your tree started, and at least get it in the pc....
Do you guys know if it is just for US based research? My family is all from Ireland. My parents immigrated in 1966.
A few months ago, I found out that my father's family had immigrated to Argentina, during the potato famine, and later returned to Ireland. I would love to be able to trace the family on both sides.
OH you guys have me itching to look into this more. I am dying to know more about my family roots and I would love to be able to tell the children more about their ancestry.
I hate to tell you, but if you get into this you'll need an entire second life! It's not only addictive, but one discovery leads to another, and that one leads to another new family branch, and that branch leads to a new dead end, and that dead end makes you crazy, so you look at another family line as a distraction, and that new distraction gives you clues that peak your interest, and then you find new information on that family line, and that gives you a new surname that you've never heard of before, and that surname links you to another, but then you decide that you want to tackle you old "dead end", and so you abandon all of your other research because you think that you've found a new lead, and maybe you have, and maybe you haven't, but then you find...
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
(breathes...)
__________________
"It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities"
(Dumbledore to Harry Potter)
Another thing you'll want to do is write to the court house in the county your ancestors lived to get death, birth, and marriage certs. This will help you to get their parents names, and you can write to churches too. Keep in mind most records will cost about $11 each.
Oh no moore that sounds dangerous lol. My step-mom found out she had an ncestor in Auschwitz before then she had no clue there was any Jewish ancestry in her family
