Creating Family Tree?
What’s the best way to even start making a family tree? My situation, includes an adopted mother, I have her original last name and the name of her birth parents, I don’t talk to any of her biological family for reasons I’d prefer not to go into.
I’ve just recently got a feeling that I’d like to know more about my mothers side. Maybe see if I have any famous relatives or something. I know of ancestory.com but I would like to get a review of that site before I shell out money.
Anyway, any tips for a beginner without any real access to half of her biological side?
Thanks guys. Just a little more info to clear things up. I’m like to trace back my mother’s biological side. Purely for my own interest, I do not consider them my family at all I’m just interested as to my own bloodline.
You have to trace your family starting with yourself and working back one generaton at a time.
Talk to living family and get as much info as possible. Find out if any has any old family bibles. Ask to see and make copies of birth, marriage and death certificates and depending on the religious faith, baptismal, first communion, confirmation and marriage certificates can be helpful.
Documentation/records are the meat of genealogy. Death Certificates usually will provide the names of both parents including mother’s maiden names and their places of birth.
Ancestry.Com is probably the best site for original source records. If you find it too pricey, your public library might have a subscription to it you can use. They have all the U.S. censuses through 1930. The 1940 and later are not available to the public yet. They have military,land,immigration and other records. Now, not all records are online, but the ones that are will save you time and money traveling all over the country to libraries, courthouses,etc.
Just be very very cautious of information in their family trees or family trees in any website, free or not free. They are subscriber submitted and mostly not documented or poorly documented.
You frequently will see different info on the same people from different subscribers. Then you will see the absolute same info on the same people from different subscribers, but that is no proof the info is correct. A lot of people copy without verifying.
I have been giving this warning for 2 years on this board. l recently found proof. I found out in a
family tree that me, my sister and my brother-in-law are all dead. We died in Newton, Sussex County, New Jersey. No date of death was given, but the only time my sister and I were in New Jersey was in 1956 when our family drove through it goine to and coming from New York. We have been dead for 52 years.
I found family on both sides who married and died in New Jersey. Since my ancestry is mostly southern American colonial that was quite a surprise.
Now if that tree had been submitted to any other website, Genealogy.Com, Rootsweb, FamilySearch.org it would have been accepted.
You can submit an entirely fictitious family tree and it will be accepted by any of the genealogy websites. Actually if you disagree with information another subscriber has on your family, the owners of the websites will tell you that is between you and the other subscribers.
A good free source is a Family History Center at a Latter Day Saints(Mormon) Church. They have records on people all over the world, not just Mormons. In Salt Lake City, they have the world’s largest genealogical collection. Their FHCs can order microfilm for you to view at a nominal fee.
I have never had them to try and convert me or send their missionaries by to ring my doorbell. I haven’t heard of them doing that to anyones else that has used their resources.
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