What I think of Bush, a lying snake in a suit. Believe not what he says and believe what he does. Some compare our war in Iraq to WWII
In WWII we declared war on those who attacked us. We had no justification for declaring war on Iraq.
I hope that what you will find inspires others to give genealogy a try. I'll talk about the process I used and any tools or software I found helpful.
I might also include links to interesting genealogy web sites I came across in the course of doing my research, such as:
National Archives and Records Administration Web Site:
www.nara.gov/genealogy
Research Tips
Here I might put some tips about researching a family tree, for example:
Be sure to evaluate the source of your information. Remember, you can't believe everything you read!
Remember, most everyone has two family names: your father's, but also your mother's. Don't feel you must restrict your research to just your paternal family tree.
Have A Desire To Learn More?
Researching Your Own Family History
Researching family history is fun and rewarding. Go to where they lived if you can and try to have an out of body experience. By this I mean if you can go see where they lived, now imagine how they lived. Did they have running water, did they have electricity, did they work the land with a team of horses. How big was the house they lived in. Some lived in a 3 or 4 room house and had 10 kids. Can you imagine sharing a bed with four brothers. Imagine three kids sleeping in the same bed as mom and dad. How would you like sharing a bed with your three kids? My son tells me one court now has decided that this may cause psychological damage.
My great-grandfather had like a dozen kids and lived in a three room house. They were all ok I guess.
One family I found lived in a one room log cabin. When Mr. X went to clink the logs he used wet clay and it was too late in the fall. Winter came and the clinking started to falling out. My grandpa said it was not much warmer in the cabin then out side. They had a small baby, its a wonder it lived given those conditions, but it did live to have children of its own.
Genealogists search for weeks looking for that birth, marriage or will link them to a new family member establishing a tie to the past. You hope to find another ancestor that is honorable or wealthy, and my my my to find a link to royalty.
In 1980 I started my search for my ancestors. The reason I started is that we knew just a bit about our Hicks ancestors. Little did I know that it was by design. What you find may not be what you hoped to find. As was the case with my great-great grandfather. His family disowned him. If a grandchild asked about him they were even given the wrong name to hide him and what he had done.
When I found him and the truth about his past my uncle had a fit. It does no good digging up all that crap he told me. Well my reply is we are what we make of our selves. What an ancestor did, well that was their life. We do have other ancestors we can be proud of I would tell him.
I must warn you genealogy is addicting and your family may disown you as you spend hours in front of your PC or in a library.
My search started with talking to all of the older members of the family. Take notes or use an tape recorded to keep what you find out from ancestors. Hopefully you will get some wonderful stories and for this reason you should use a tape recorder. After talking to the members of the family find out if their is any really old person where the family grew up. Some people in their 80s and 90s can be a tree of knowledge. I found an unknown family member by talking to an old man about the family. I stopped seeing this old man. "Hi Mister, do you know where John Foster lived" I asked? "No, not for sure but his granddaughter lives up the road a couple miles, you can ask her". I had no idea that John who was my great-great grandfather had an grand daughter who lived near the home place. We went to visit her and to my surprise I found her only about 20 years older then me this making her about 47 at the time of my visit. A couple years later I took my aunt over to see her. They are about the same age and had a wonderful visit. You will be amazed by the fact that a descendant will unknowingly name his child after an ancestor they had never heard of.
After visiting all of the older family members it is time to contact the local genealogy society if their is one and then go to the library and the court houses to look for information. The library can have much including local history books, newspapers on micro film, books of obituaries, plot maps, and cemetery records to name a few. The court houses, here you will find records on land purchases, tax records, criminal records, wills, and marriages. You need to visit the cemeteries what that you can.
When you have the time check out the information on the Internet. Some will find a lot of information and I would guess most will find some information. I will give you a list of addresses below where you can go to find information on the Internet.
As you gather information use your computer as a storage bin. When in a library somewhere you can copy a page from a book and e-mail it to yourself. I use Angelfire e-mail for this. I can set it up so I only receive e-mail from myself. You can use this for saving e-mails, to get them out of your PC. AND please make backup copies of what you want to save. I have heard much too often, well I lost it because my PC crashed. I don't trust them. A 1.44 disk will back up a FAMILY TREE PROGRAM. A backup file will have the extension .FBK
When you choose backup you will be asked destination, just click 31/2 Floppy drive. I like saving on GEDCOM files on my 31/2 disk. If you want to put your work on the net it is with the GEDCOM files.
I have a ZIP drive on my PC. I find this very useful for storage of pictures. A picture will take up a lot of space even compressed as a JPEG file. Using a 31/2 disk you will find you can only get a few pictures on them.
For you what that has a write/rewrite CD rom drive, GREAT. You got it made. You can put a stack of pictures on their you would not believe.
Remember if you copy all of your information down on paper and want to find something it is best to use an file system. Try to keep obituaries in one book and marriages in another. I have a terrible time finding something I would be looking for I have such a mess. On the PC no mess but you still need to have a working filing system or you may loose it for good.
Well good luck on your family tree and here is those helpful places you can find some more information.
Thank you for visiting my page at Angelfire. Please come back and visit again!
