Genealogy

I started my work in genealogy decades ago with the Church of Latter Day Saints. The Mormons are big into Genealogy and have a tremendous amount of information on your ancestors.

For people without those family connections, Genealogy is about filling in the gaps. I started with very little information on my mother's family. She died young and had no relationship with her mother or father who were both deceased long before I started my genealogy journey.

I honestly didn't even know my grandfather's name before I started my search and when I uncovered that tidbit of information, it proved to be a dark hole of research for about 15 years. I couldn't find any vitals on him because I was working with my grandmother's adopted name. Which she seem to have changed after she left her parent's home.

What is cool to me about online genealogy tools is that while they not a replacement for stories/oral history passed on from elders, it does allow you to fill in some gaps and create stories where they didn't exist before. In my case, I started with my mother's name and her mother's name (one of them). The tree I built from that today has literally thousands of individuals to who I'm related back over a thousand years. I don't actively work on it as much as I did at one point. I check my tree about once a month to see if there are any updates.

One thing to understand is the Mormons pretty much have a monopoly on Genealogy tools. They own the vast majority of websites dedicated to the practice. Some are better than others and most of them cost money. Some don't and those are really helpful to casual researchers like me.

A couple of thoughts

Not to be indelicate, genealogy research is about dead people. Don't be squeamish about it. Honestly that was one of my initial motivations for research was to see the cause of death for my ancestors so I could understand any chronic health issues to address. Death Certificates are honestly more important than Birth Certificates in my opinion.

Cemeteries are a vital source of information for filling in gaps. You might find yourself hiking through them to find long lost relatives. You don't necessarily need to visit them though, findagrave.com hosts a searchable database of thousands of cemeteries pictures of graves/tombstones and their locations. Their website is free to use and content is uploaded by volunteers. So if you like taking picture of tombstones, you may be able to help them out. I used Findagrave.com to find my maternal great grandparents who are buried in the neighborhood of Seattle where I lived multiple times in my 20s and 30s. I didn't know they existed. When I found them they had different last names. Later, I found out I was only related to them via adoption. A journey indeed.

Tools that were extremely helpful to me

Ancestry.com - This is a pay to play website with different level of access based on what you're willing to pay. They have databases world wide that you can access. Beware once you sign up and they start billing you, in my experience it took a long time to cancel the service when I had what I needed out of it. For most it is worth the price because they have tons of tools, online communities to really make your research as easy as possible.

FamilySearch.org - This is a free site that provides access to the primary tool outside of birth and death certificates that runs genealogy research that is the US Census, Indian Roll, Slave records etc. It essentially uses the same information as Ancestry.com and is owned by the LDS but without the bells and whistles and cost of Ancestry. It allows you to upload and maintain your genealogical tree with input from their researchers. The biggest break in my search was a Family Search researcher reaching out to me to let me know I was using an adopted name for my maternal grandmother. That key piece of information allowed me to complete my research and connect me to some Pennsylvania Coal Miner roots. I still use their app regularly and share my tree with other members of my family who might be interested.

Relatives - I cannot emphasize this enough. Oral history and memories of your elders is gold. Stories about childhoods, parents friends and experiences so sit down with your parents and your grandparents and capture that. I promise you it will improve your life.

Old photos - save them talk to your relatives about them and write it down on the back of the pictures. Then scan them, there are many services that convert physical photos to digital. Once they are digitally scanned share them in the cloud service of your choice with your family so you can may the connections with your relatives.

School district records - for the most part they never throw anything away. I got pictures of my grandmother and mother in high school they I didn't know existed. yearbooks are key but also transcripts and other records are good gap fillers. I found out information on both my relatives that filled in some gaps.

Vital statistics Birth Death Marriage Adoption. All of these can be found in the above tools.

DNA websites/apps - Not a huge fan of sharing my genetic code to commercial businesses to use. I don't know how it will be used or who will be using it and that is extremely problematic to me. The funny thing is other relatives in my family took that plunge and got the same results with a lot less information than I did with my research.

I thoroughly enjoy genealogy and using data to create stories to help understand who my ancestors were and what their lives were like. It doesn't replace family connections oral history and pictures, those are gold but it helped me understand my heritage and where I came from so I can pass it along to my progeny.