As you gather around the fireplace with your family this holiday season, you might be sharing stories of celebrations past, relating tales of relatives who are no longer living. Your stories, however, are probably limited to grandparents and great-grandparents. If you’ve ever wondered about the stories of relatives further back,
or been curious about who your ancestors were, the holidays are a great time to get started on tracing your family tree. Ask people who have researched their family trees and they’ll tell you to start with what you know and speak with all living family members to find out what they know. Get out the tape recorder, the video camera or a pen and some paper, and get your parents’ memories of family history, your siblings’ memories, even your aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents.
The second tip you are likely to receive is to take meticulous notes, and record all the information you come across, whether it seems important at the time or not. Club member Walt Davis, who has traced his family back to the 17th century, says, “Some things you write down and don’t think it’s interesting at all, (then) two years later they become very interesting. There wasn’t enough to tie it together then all of the sudden they tie together.” Once you have received verbal family histories from living relatives, it’s time to start growing your tree. Take the information you have—names, birth dates, marriage dates, date of their deaths, and head into public records. Old United States census records are the best way to begin. The census is
Walt Davis has traced both his family and his wife, Bobbie’s, family back to Europe. Above is a photo of his maternal grandmother (pictured by a window) and below is an old family wedding photograph.
taken every
10 years and is a great place to get more information about family members. Although each census contains slightly different information, you can usually find details like ages, whether they are married, children’s names and ages, occupations, whether people owned or rented their homes and more. Because census records are sealed for 72 years, the most recent census available is from 1930. One note: There is very little left of the 1890 census. Less than 1 percent survived a 1921 fire.
Walt’s interest was piqued when his brother gave him a census form that included their grandfather. Walt says what started as something to do in retirement “turned out to be a career.” After that initial census, one of his next steps was to join a gene-alogy group in the area. Seattle genealogists are lucky, says Walt, because of the amount of genealogical information available. Not only do the Seattle Public Library and the King County Library System have large sections devoted to genealogy, but also the national archives are in Seattle. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also has volumes of
genealogical information, and one of their satellite libraries is in Bellevue. Because of all that information, there are a number of gene-alogical groups in the area, including the Eastside Genealogical Society, which has members available for assistance at the Bellevue Public Library twice a week—a great place to stop by if you have questions or get stuck. Once you do start following your family’s trail back through the years, Club member Carolyn Wood warns to always double- and triple-check things. Carolyn has been interested in her family history for years, but it wasn’t until 10 years ago that she had the time and a catalyst to start doing research. A few relatives died, leaving behind family artifacts that no one else wanted. So, Carolyn says, “I have become the genealogical, ancestral museum.” For her, researching her family is about more than following a gene pool back into time. Because she has artifacts like letters, scrapbooks, photos, etchings and books written about her family, her genealogy has become a lesson in history. Carolyn even has a hand-made lace wedding veil that has been passed down in her family for years. “What was life like back then? That’s sort of fascinating,” says Carolyn. “I love history anyway but it has to be personal.”
With the advent of mapping the human genome and DNA information, it is now possible to trace how your family moved through the world via your DNA. For a fee, DNA-mapping companies will send a kit to you. Swabbing your cheek gives them enough DNA to identify specific markers that will be different for people not related to you. You can then take your results and compare them to other people who have taken the test. If you find someone that is a match, you can exchange e-mail information and see if you can find the common link in your families. The most popular test uses Y chromosome information, which is passed down from father to son, like a surname. Women who wish to have the Y chromosome test to trace their paternal line need to have a father, brother or male cousin take the test for them. There is also a DNA
test for the maternal line of the family, which can be taken
by men and women.
For more information, visit www.dna.ancestry.com.
Carolyn Wood
has traced her family back to the 14th century. In addition to written records,
Carolyn has a large number of family photographs, some of which are displayed in her home, as well as a hand-made lace veil, which is
pictured on Carolyn, and in an ancestor’s bridal portrait.
Carolyn stresses the importance of primary documents when researching. Birth certificates, marriage certificates and letters are all primary documents, and are the best way to make sure the people you are adding to your family tree really belong there. Information found on the Internet might not be 100 percent accurate. When using the large genealogical sites like ancestry.com, if one person adds an incorrect branch to his or her tree, that can be replicated over and over again, resulting in something that might look legitimate because hundreds of people have the same information. “You’ll look at the outline information ... and you’ll see it’s all the same, and it’s all wrong,” says Carolyn. “People are so interested in finding these connections that they will latch onto anything.” Just to put another knot in the tree, researching the past becomes even more difficult when family members had the same name. Often, cousins would have the same name and live next door or on the next street over, making old registries at churches—another worthy resource for information—and census records even harder to decipher. When looking for your great-great grandfather, for instance, a church record might show two John Smiths that are the same age. One is your great-great grandfather, the other is his cousin, who lives two doors down. That is where more sources might come in handy, and help you determine which John Smith is the one you want.
Double-checking facts and recording everything is probably the best way to make sure your family tree is as accurate as possible. Carolyn recommends getting a good computer program to help organize data. She uses Legacy, which has a free version on the Web site, www.legacy.com. Once you start researching, you never know what you might find out about your family. For Walt, one of the more interesting facts was learning that his grandfather not only worked in coal mines, but also died in a mining accident. For him, though, “the most interesting thing you find out about is when you find it—find out who they are and (if) you have the right guy and the right girl. You don’t know—nobody is alive.”
When researching your family tree you never know what might turn up, but getting a start on growing your family tree this holiday season might turn out some fantastic stories and actual photographs to show when your family is once again huddled around the fireplace next December.
There are a variety of historical documents to check when you’re looking for
family members, including:
