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Genealogy

post #1 of 18
4/29/08 at 11:33pm
Thread Starter 
Have you researched your own genealogy? If so, did you use one of the on line services such as genealogy or ancestry . com? Did you find such services useful?

I am more curious about my recent ancestors (within 200 years) than finding a link to Charlemagne.

TIA.
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post #2 of 18
4/30/08 at 12:10am
Prior to my addiction to internet fashion message boards I went through a number of different obsessions. One was genealogy. I actually wrote a book on my mother's family.

Be very careful with internet data, there's as much incorrect information on the internet as there is good information. Make sure that anything you get off the web is verified by valid sources.
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post #3 of 18
4/30/08 at 5:40pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark from Plano View Post
Prior to my addiction to internet fashion message boards I went through a number of different obsessions. One was genealogy. I actually wrote a book on my mother's family.

Be very careful with internet data, there's as much incorrect information on the internet as there is good information. Make sure that anything you get off the web is verified by valid sources.

So I should take it with a grain of salt that one site tells me I'm related to Howard Hughes and should get a lawyer to work on claiming my inheritance immediately?

So, seriously, I have done some research but it started and stopped with family interviews. One side has a written log of the trip from Germany in 1877 and subsequent settlement in Texas. The other side is perhaps a bit more colorful, and I probably should start interviewing the older generations rather soon if I expect to learn anything meaningful. After that I'm not ready to trust the web sites.
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post #4 of 18
4/30/08 at 5:54pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Thomas View Post
So I should take it with a grain of salt that one site tells me I'm related to Howard Hughes and should get a lawyer to work on claiming my inheritance immediately?

So, seriously, I have done some research but it started and stopped with family interviews. One side has a written log of the trip from Germany in 1877 and subsequent settlement in Texas. The other side is perhaps a bit more colorful, and I probably should start interviewing the older generations rather soon if I expect to learn anything meaningful. After that I'm not ready to trust the web sites.


One of the great misfortunes of life is that often people don't get interested in genealogy until later in life and by then their older relatives are dead and gone. They are indeed your best source of information, but I've found by experience that often they either mis-remember things or get the story wrong, so you have to document everything they tell you as well...but...they will also give you lots of good stuff that just won't be available in a census record or birth certificate.

My wife grew up believing that she was decended from Lighthorse Harry Lee, Revolutionary War hero and father of Robert E. Lee through one of REL's brothers. That was the family story and had been passed down for generations. When Franklin D. Roosevelt came to Dallas in the 1930's to dedicate Lee Park, my wife's great-grandmother was invited to sit on the dais as a member of the Lee family. Once we were married and started having kids, I started documenting her family history for my children. Turns out...not true. Her ancestors were named Lee, but weren't related to that family of Lees at all.
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post #5 of 18
1/22/10 at 8:40pm
Reviving an old thread....I have reams and reams of documents from my family and am in the process of writing a book. I found ancestry.com helpful, but expensive...NARA has it for free in their Archives. I descend from Italian Highway bandits and priest killers...can't imagine it getting much more colorful...

I have found that tracing documentation across the Atlantic difficult, as I don't speak Italian, and don't have the funds to get over there (and won't for some time. My mothers family hailed from a tiny Basilicata village in the northern mountains named San Fele, my father's from Corfinio, an equally desolate mountain village in Abruzzo, that recently experienced a pretty bad quake.

Anyone else care to share?
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post #6 of 18
1/22/10 at 10:55pm
What is NARA? I've had quite a bit of luck using the LDS records, and having a stake house here in my town, I can get microfilms, etc sent here from Salt Lake City. I've found part of my family back to 1050 or so. I guess I am qualified to join the Sons of American Revolution, but never saw the point. Genealogy is quite interesting, but tedious, and filled with dead ends and false leads.
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post #7 of 18
1/22/10 at 11:02pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dakota rube View Post
What is NARA?

.

National Archives and Records Administration...1050, thats cool...I'm only back to late 1700s, I really need to check out the LDS's records...although, I'll need a translator.

My great grandfather left Italy in 1893 and arrived at Ellos Island....became a citizen in 1900 after changing his name legally for business. He eventually did change it back before 1920 (I have the actual court papers that enabled him to change it back...real interesting)
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post #8 of 18
1/22/10 at 11:25pm
^Thanks. All of my ancestors came here before Ellis Island. I did find my ex-wife's grandparents there, though.
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post #9 of 18
1/23/10 at 11:27am
The Ellis Island site is a great FREE source for beginners whose ancestors may have come through there. The have a great celebrity section too! What gets me is the photos they have of the ships...incredible. I imagine the steerage section on those boats made the steerage in the film Titanic look like first class. www.ellisisland.org You have to register, but its absolutely free.
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post #10 of 18
1/23/10 at 11:49am
My father's side has been employing an older gentleman to keep a record of our family tree for several generations now. I have a little black book that traces my family tree directly back to the 14th century, with spotty connections to the 9th. The last update was over 10 years ago. I think we're due for a new one soon (well, maybe, I'm not sure whether our record keeper is still alive).
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post #11 of 18
1/23/10 at 12:44pm
father side of the family goes straight down to the 12th century. Funny thing is, we never left the grounds that it all started from. (or at least my father didnt, me being the black sheep required me to leave )

Mothers side, never been researched so the trace gets lost around 1800..
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post #12 of 18
5/20/11 at 4:37pm
Reviving thread...

Any suggestions other than what's been mentioned? What about Ancestry.com or Recordsbase.com?

Do these sites help with the records or are they just a way to record what one finds?
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post #13 of 18
5/20/11 at 4:41pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tck13 View Post
Reviving thread...

Any suggestions other than what's been mentioned? What about Ancestry.com or Recordsbase.com?

Do these sites help with the records or are they just a way to record what one finds?

Ancestry.com is VERY worth it, especially for a beginner. It has all of the census records and lots of other records scanned in. You can actually read many of the documents online. Don't know of any other sites that are nearly half as good. I'm not familiar with Recordsbase.com though.

The records on Ancestry can be a bit hit and miss. It just depends on what they have access to and have scanned in. Lots there though and you can really go a long way. As with anything though you have to employ good research skills and be wary of making false assumptions about things that can take you in a very wrong direction.

Ancestry is a subscription site, though. So you'll have to pay a small annual fee and keep paying it to maintain access to your work unless you replicate everything offline. I don't remember the fee, but it isn't huge (<$50 a year I think). It is very USA-centric. It is much less useful if you are researching outside the US although they do have a smattering of international (mainly Canada & Europe) records.
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post #14 of 18
5/20/11 at 4:49pm
^Ancestry.com often has free weeks. They just had one a week or two ago. An affiliate site, WorldConnect, has a great deal of user-supplied family trees; I've found many links to my own work there. WorldConnect at RootsWeb
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post #15 of 18
5/20/11 at 9:35pm
ancestry.com is useful because it creates that little tree for you and lets you organise your info, but for my own purposes I've used the UK government resources (GENUKI and FREEWEB, I think they're called - don't have the link handy). I've managed to get copies of birth and marriage certificates (and census data) for my father's family (the only part I had no info on) going back to the 1840s.

Before 1837 you have to go to parish records, which are a bit harder to track down - especially if the church in question got bombed during the war...but I've been able to piece together the Gander family tree back to the 1720s - all Londoners living north of the Thames. There's a branch that lived on the south side, but we're not related to them.
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