Tag Archives: family tree

Hand Painted Family Trees – From Root to Branch With Love!

Are you one of those people who have spent hours on end looking for your ancestors? Or are you just close to your family?

Swedish artist and illustrator Anna Murgia
Swedish artist and illustrator Anna Murgia

Swedish artist and illustrator Anna Murgia at Genea Murgia can help you put together your family information into a beautiful family tree to hang on your wall. Imagine a gorgeous, hand-painted tree, printed on high quality canvas or artist paper, with illustrations and photographs from your family’s history. Preserve your history and turn your family saga into a beautiful tree! The painting will become a lovely complement to your family saga, and is made uniquely for your family. It’s a magnificent gift, a family heirloom for yourself and/or someone you hold dear – you can order more than one copy of your family tree. It will also be a living tree, as it is easily updated when your family grows, or you find new ancestors.

Hand Painted Family Tree
Hand Painted Family Tree

There are also smaller, standarized trees that you can fill out yourself. Please take a closer look at examples of trees already made under the following links: Unique large Family Tree, Medium-sized Tree, Small Tree, or take a peak in the Gallery to see more.

Anna Murgias Hand Painted Family Tree
Anna Murgias Hand Painted Family Tree

If you want to know more, please don’t hesitate to contact Anna on anna@geneamurgia.com. You are also welcome to follow her on Facebook, Twitter or Youtube.

New York Death Records

Death Record New York
John Murray's Death record from 1910. The document includes his location of death, in this case, the Webbs Academy for Ship Builders, and the names of both parents , which is information not to be found anywhere else as of yet.

New York Death Certificate

It is important for anybody building their family tree to understand the importance of the information contained on the typical New York Death Certificate, as pictured above. In so many cases it is necessary to order the Death certificate to take that generational leap back further into history. We have already talked about ordering Marriage Certificates, but in cases like the one above we have a man who died in 1910, and Married some 55 years earlier, making his marriage certificate inifately more difficult to locate. Not to mention that the older a document is, the more likely it is to be unreadable, and it is less likely to include specific details like a mothers maiden, or the city of birth in a foreign country. Not shown in the image above is the flip side of the document, which lists the Cemetery of burial, which can be the greatest source for a breakthrough of all.

Cemetery Records

Online searches can only get you so far in some cases. Once you have a grave site, you have the potential to solve a whole lot of family mysteries in a few minutes. Using our John Murray example above, if he had daughters that you could locate, there may well be someone with an unfamiliar last name in the grave, with a matching first name and the correct age of that daughter. When you find a lady about his age you may have found his wife, and maybe you will find his parents. It is not too uncommon to have up to 3 generations and 10 different people buried in a plot over the course of 100 years.

Ordering NY Vital Records

As I have mentioned in other blog posts, we at BrooklynAncestry.com can provide you with the death certificate number (located top right corner of document) and place the order for you, risk free. Provide us with the information you have, and we will ensure we can locate the record and place an order with the New York Department of Vital Records before asking you for payment.

We can order Marriage certificates up until the year 1929, Birth certificates prior to 1910, and Death certificates prior to 1949. Contact us now with your families details to get started.

How to Start Your Family Genealogy Research

How to Start Your Family Genealogy Quest

The most important quest you will ever take is the one in which you delve into the origins of your family history. Seeking to know more about your relatives and ancestors is a great way to learn more about who you are in this big world. The family tree also provides some fascinating hidden stories that may intrigue and surprise you. To begin your journey into the past you need a good starting point. There are several ways to gather information.

What Do You Know?

You already have some knowledge to use as a starter guide. Begin by recording details about your own life. Add your name to the family tree first. Include the names of your mother, father, spouse, children, cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents. There may be some gaps due to lack of information. That’s okay. You are off to a great start.

Ask Family Members

Inform your relatives that you are working on the family genealogy and ask them for details about relatives they knew growing up. Many times an older relative will have vivid memories of their childhood days spent listening to elders tell stories.

This can give you lots of good material. Take detailed notes or bring a digital recorder with you to record the conversations.

Look for Vital Records

Put your detective hat on and search for important records such as birth certificates, marriage licenses, school reports, diaries, old letters, old photos, family bibles and treasure boxes. Some of these items may be stored away in the attic or basement. Get permission from relatives to look through their stored items. These searches can uncover some golden nuggets.

Check the U.S. Census Records

The Federal U.S. Census has decades of information about people from across the country. Every person that ever appeared on a census can be found in this massive database. Use the information you already know about your family and look for familiar names. Match the names to known residential areas and dates.

Download Family Tree Software

There are forms online available for easy download that let you fill in the names as you discover family connections. Forms allow you to keep track of all the different generations. You can also stay better organized and see where there are gaps to fill in.

Double Check Names

Names are tricky when doing genealogy research. Some names may sound similar but be spelled completely different. One incorrectly spelled name can lead you down the wrong path. You could end up including a person not related just by getting one letter wrong. So, be sure to double check the spelling of each name as you look through old records.

Include Your Sources

It is important that you record the source of all information included in your genealogy research. That means that you create a citation by writing down exactly where you got a relative’s specific information. For instance, if you found out from reading an old newspaper that your great grandfather held an important position, you would record the name and date of the paper.

Citations are a valuable resource that you may need to see again to double check facts.

Researching and recording your family history is time consuming, but ultimately a richly rewarding experience.

Derek is currently blogging for GTL DNA, a DNA diagnostics center that provides home DNA testing kits. He enjoys helping people with their genealogy and genetic testing questions.

Thank you,

Derek W.

 

Thanks to Derk W for this guest post.