Family Tree Research - Uncover The Gems In Your Family

[Kirk Monroe]

Tracing your family ancestry has been around for many generations.
Originally, it was done by the matriarch of the family, as she
recorded the births, marriages and deaths of all of her relatives and
close friends. Frequently, these records were kept in the family Bible
or a scrapbook. Fortunately, many of these books have been passed down
from generation to generation. If you're lucky, you may be in
possession of one of those rare books today. When we first start out
researching our genealogy, we frequently start with these rare books
as our initial source.
These books provide an excellent source of information about our
families. In many cases, we find not only important facts about our
family we also find newspaper clippings, old photographs, wedding
invitations, and family reunion invitations to name a few. These items
provide us with important clues and valuable stories that bring our
family history to life. Take the time to review each of these items to
understand and properly document them.
Once we have recorded all of the information that is contained in
these books, we start interviewing close family members for other
information that they might have. It is a good idea to take your
family tree charts and notes with you to these interviews. The notes
you've made will help your family visualize the branch of the family
tree that you are tracing. Be sure and display all of the source
information that you have found to date, during the interview. This
information may help trigger new stories and additional details that
will further enhance your understanding of your family's past. Be sure
to ask for any additional scrapbooks, articles, old photographs that
you might borrow to study in more detail. Make sure you put this
information in a separate file, carefully marked so that you can
return it to the original owner, exactly as it was provided.
As soon as possible, after the interview, review the stories,
documents, and photographs to try and incorporate this information
into your family tree research files. Take copies of all of the
documents and photographs, and clearly mark on the back of each copy
the source of the document, the date it was obtained, and the
condition of the original document. These details will be invaluable
when you revisit this information, months and even years from now.
As much as we would like to believe that genealogy is the discovery of
important and influential ancestors, it is in reality, a complex
process of uncovering and documenting historical facts and stories.
However, as dry as that sounds, it can also be a very rewarding and
challenging hobby. Knowing that we are discovering our family's
history and heritage and putting it into context for future
generations makes this a very worthwhile project that our family will
be able to cherish forever.

Search Millions of Public Records: http://groups.google.de/group/pubrecs/