It’s a lot of fun, and you may even learn that you’re related to a celebrity, find DNA information vital to your health or discover you have an even larger extended family.
Here are nine simple tips to get started:
Clean out those closets, drawers and basement.
Precious long-lost family photos, birth records, letters, even books with historic inscriptions are often found under other junk.
Document all research.
Start compiling a detailed list of all family members, including birth and death dates, occupations, marriages, military service and hobbies. Scrapbooks are good for organizing photos and documents. Then use a family tree diagram to create a visual representation of your family relations.
Respect your elders.
Sit with your older family members and obtain priceless oral histories using an audio and/or video recorder and a camera. Jog their memories first with specific questions, then ask about their memories of special occasions, family milestones, past world events, etc.
Hunt down birth and death certificates for vital information.
These can help lead you to doctors, hospitals, funeral homes, houses of worship, etc. Marriage certificates often give the names of parents and witnesses that go back generations.
Visit the mega-site of all sites.
Cyndislist.com provides direct access to over 181,300 links to genealogy-related material. Browse through the major categories, and then get more specific for your needs. Another great source is Ancestry.ca, where you can connect with family trees that other people have put together.
Consider your ancestors’ context.
Think of their “village,” meaning ethnic enclaves within larger suburban areas. For instance, depending on where in Canada your ancestors “landed,” you’ll discover historians and other descendants have already done a ton of research; it’s same for ethnic groups such as Irish or Jewish people. Look through encyclopedias, history books and old newspapers as well as the Internet (enter the village name into a search engine such as Google and also in its “Images” tab).
Check out the largest surname collection in the world.
Familysearch.com has an International Genealogical Index database and addendums that contain more than 725 million individual names.
Connect to others.
Sharing your heritage with others is how information gets passed along and expanded. Visit your local Family History Centre for contacts, or search your surname, then upload your family tree onto the Roots Web WorldConnect Project to connect to other researchers with common ancestors.
Don’t be a good speller.
The immigrant officials weren’t, and the transliteration of foreign names often became mangled in the rush of processing. Stay open to numerous possibilities.
