Ancestry Search

For the past decade I have been researching my family's ancestry. In that time I have found a lot of information, dates, names, pictures, articles, etc. I have always been interested in history, languages and traveling so doing this allowed me to use all those areas. I have been able to collect information and pictures on every member of my immediate family as well as tracing the main lines back to the 1400s. Many sources are in different languages: French, Polish, German, Spanish,  Russian, Catalan, Latin, etc. so it's nice to be able to use the Internet to help translate them.  Even some of the documents in English need to be "translated" from the old-style English that we don't use nowadays.

 

While doing my research I have found some very interesting links, facts, secrets, etc about my family. There are links to royalty and the nobility. Some were rich, some were poor. Some worked the land, some owned the land. Some were soldiers and some were victims of repression. Some had large families and some were orphans. Some had one last name and a dozen children while others had one child and a dozen last names.

 

Doing the research is not enough. You can find many people with the same last name you are looking for, but you have to be careful to connect them and make sure they really are linked to your family. I've had my work officially checked and verified and so far everything checks out (knock on wood.)

 

I have put most of the information I have collected on an online family tree.  It doesn't have everything on it yet - there's a lot to do and it takes a good amount of time to complete. While I have done this mostly for myself and my own knowledge I don't mind sharing it with other family members that help me with all of this. Some family members do not want to help even when asked yet want me to simply share everything I find with them - I am not going to do that. I worked hard with no real help from anyone (except for some clarifications here and there.) I'm not getting paid for any of this, but it would still be nice to get "paid" with other family members giving me their stories, pictures and whatever else they have so I could include that to the tree.

 

Having a person's name, date of birth, date of death, picture, etc is good, but I am more interested in the stories behind the person. I have found a large collection of newspaper clippings, diaries, documents, etc that give more background. I still have a ways to go through all my findings, but so far I am pleased with everything I have seen. Not only does it help me (and other family members) to learn more about that particular ancestor but it also lets me know what people in the past was newsworthy.