Family Heritage and Your Geneology

Have you ever been interested in learning more about your family genealogy, but have no idea where to begin? After all, your own parents and grandparents may not even be certain that what they know of your family’s history is 100% accurate, so how could you? Finding the answers may seem difficult, but with these tips, you can discover a past that you thought would be untraceable.

The correct spelling of genealogy is often misspelled. Geneology is the art of tracing your heritage. Finding sources, helps a genealogist conclude they have the evidence to support the data and facts in their tree. For those that are experienced with genealogy, you know It requires many hours of searching for historical documents to establish your lineage. Documenting your findings, whether successful or not, helps you and your family to know what has been researched. The logging of this information is helpful for yourself and as well as other relatives, because without fail, you are going to want to try and figure out a family fact, and unless you document what you have done, and what sources you used, you will end up doing the same research over, losing valuable time redoing unnecessary repetitive searches.

Genealogy is a WorldWide Hobby
Geneology has become a worldwide hobby that is gaining new members every day. With the Mormon Latter Day Saints (LDS) Church in the forefront of taking government records from around the world, digitizing them, and sharing them through their Family History Centers which can be found throughout the world, making geneology research available to everyone. The Mormons used these records to create geneology trees and baptize living people on behalf of an individual who is dead. They believe that baptism is a requirement to enter the Kingdom of God. Baptism for the dead has been practiced since 1840.

With the growth of the internet and the genealogy hobby, companies, historical societies, libraries and others have taken these records and digitized them. Now you don’t have to go to a facility for all your research. You can do much of it from the comfort and privacy of your own home at any time, day or night. The LDS Church is in the process of doing the same thing. They have an indexing project that is done by volunteers from around the world. They are making great strides and catching up with some of other companies.

Newspapers, funeral homes, and cemeteries are also realizing the vastness of geneology as a hobby enjoyed by most people. Obituaries and gravestones are a great source for validating death and burial details. Census and military records help in building families with their spouse and children, as well as other relative's. All these records and more are being made more and more readily available to everyone.

Record your Families History
The internet is a great way to start searching for geneology data but don’t think everything you find is true. You should verify all gathered facts with a variety of sources, just like a journalist does. Otherwise your geneology story is just hearsay, and who wants to pass on their history based on unconfirmed data that might not be true? Do you remember playing the telephone game when you were a child? The conversation started out as one thing and ended up being something different at the end. Well, the same is true for genealogy, if you don’t back up your stories with facts. With the internet, your story can become something you don’t recognize at all. This happens when documents are copied and people take liberties and only use information found on the internet from sources that are indexed, where errors can and do occur.

Family Members May Have the Best Sources
The best data comes from sources that were recorded by the family member. Most likely this information is going to be true, except in the case of someone trying to falsify their identity for whatever reason. An example could be someone may have wanted to get married or join the military, but was not old enough, so they falsified their birth date. Contradicting information might come out on a Will, a death certificate, headstone or obituary. Finding a variety of sources to document your genealogy is important to preserve your past, for future generations.

Find out the family stories and record them. Learn about the little things that made your heritage what it is. Don’t be a name collector. A name collector is someone who collects and adds as many names as they can to their geneology tree without doing the research to verify if the data is correct or not. There is no prize for collecting the most names. Geneology is not a contest. Satisfaction does not come from completing a test the fastest (unless you have all the right answers). It comes from learning, understanding, doing your best, being able to retain and share the knowledge, and by having the right answers.

Find your family history. Plan what you want to discover. Do research to find out if a source is available and where you can find it. If you are new to genealogy or you are not sure if the information is available, plan a trip to the nearest Family History Center. They are located in almost every county in the United States and around the world. Once you get started, organize and record your genealogy with events, facts, sources, stories, videos, pictures, awards, etc. and share it with your relatives.

We are all, more or less, related. Scientists say our DNA is 99.9% identical. Doing a DNA test will not help identify who your relatives are and your genetic background for the last couple of generations. But it will help identify your ancestors from many generations ago. The accuracy and information from one testing company may vary from another company. This is due to how each company conducts the testing. If you are interested in your ancient ancestry, view our DNA article and several links that can help with your DNA questions.