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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.

Family Blog Posts

Here Comes Brooklyn

1 Comment

We always welcome and Brooklyn or Genealogy related guest posts on the site.  Enjoy the following:

My grandfather, Murray Fox, fell in love with Edie Zebrak in the summer of 1947. Newly home from the war, Murray and his friends spotted Edie, a friend of a friend, at one end of Coney Island Beach with tuna fish sandwiches. My grandfather promptly went back for seconds, and the rest as they say is history.

I started recording music under the pseudonym “Here Comes Brooklyn” in 2011. According to an infamous family story, my grandma Edie’s cousin used to say at the sight of my grandfather, “Ay! Here comes Brooklyn!” in her low, scratchy, Yiddish ridden accent. My grandfather always found it vaguely irritating, but the story has since become an integral part of the Fox-Tepper family oral history, and has resonated with me ever since.

As three of my four grandparents are from Brooklyn, I find myself living an eerily parallel existence to my grandfather in his 20’s. Originally from Rockville, MD, I moved to New York for college and soon found myself attending concerts in the deep end of the dried McCarren Park Pool where my grandpa Murray and grandma Edie swam in as children.

I wrote the song “Bluebirds” using a very repetitive, circular musical phrase to represent the circular nature of generations, specifically my parents growing up, becoming adults, having children of their own, and watching their children, my sister and me, grow up.

After the song was finished, my mom found old reels of 16mm film in our basement and realized they were long lost home films dating from the late 40’s to 1963. My grandma Edie died of lung cancer when I was only five and, as those were the days before Facebook, Instagram, and iPhones, I had not seen real film footage of my grandmother at any age or of my grandfather as a young man. I had at least pictures of my mom and uncle as children, but up to that point only grainy black and white renderings of my grandparents.

Eventually I took the film and cut it up to “Bluebirds,” superimposing the song on a generation earlier so the boy and girl depicted at the beginning were my grandpa and grandma, and their kids my mom and uncle. Out of everything I’ve done as Here Comes Brooklyn, this is the most personal.

My grandfather grew up on Siegel Street where his family owned a housewares store called Fox’s Trimmings, and my grandmother on McKibbin Park where her father was the neighborhood’s kosher butcher. While my grandmother sadly is no longer with us, my grandfather at 85 has not matured a day since his goofball days in Brooklyn.

I hope you enjoy this little slice of my family.

 

Alex Tepper/Here Comes Brooklyn

@hrcomesbrooklyn

herecomesbrooklyn.bandcamp.com