Is Your Family Tree Missing Some Limbs?
When my uncle died his daughter gave me the family tree that he had spent years doing. He had drawn the squares and connected the names all by hand and connected sheet after sheet of paper and rolled it up. He had been a teacher and was one of those people who did things fully. He had, for years, gone to towns where relatives were buried, scoured the cemeteries and dug through many a book in libraries here and there. I had been moving that huge roll of paper around for years and finally about 10 years ago I decided to transcribe that tree data onto a family tree computer program. I bought Family Tree Maker and began to copy the information into the computer. The more I did, the more interested I became in all those people. When I finished that I got in touch with a cousin who had done a tree, in text form, on another "limb" of my family tree. I took all her information and added that. By now I was becoming addicted to finding people. I joined several sites that had search capabilities and the more I did the more I found. Genealogy is HUGE on the internet. There are so many sites that have information you would be amazed. During the time I was doing searching I got in touch with a cousin who I have never met but that was from another part of my family. He told me to contact this lady who gave me information on people who are related to me that I didn't even know existed. It seems my grandfather and his brother had a falling out many, many years ago and neither side of the family spoke of the other. I know he had never mentioned hardly anything about his father and absolutely nothing of his brother. I knew very little of my great grandfather until I started researching him and his family. He was a true cowboy and businessman. He started the first packing plant west of the Mississippi and would herd his cattle from Mexico and Texas up to St Louis where they were butchered. I found he had many children, most of whom died young even though he was a really wealthy man and had lots of advantages for the day but they also had to contend with many diseases that killed a lot of people back in the early 1800s. My grandfather had had lots of money when he was a young man but was not good at keeping it or passing it down like his brother did. I went as far as I could finding ancestors and finally hit a brick wall in England (but catch this, I found some people with the same last name in the town where my great grandfather came from and they are trying to see if they are related!). I gathered as many photos as I could find and was surprised at how much information I came up with after doing research, mostly on line. I put the tree together by family and passed out copies to family members who helped me gather information. I am really proud of what I came up with to pass down to my kids. They will know far more than I did. If you ever get started on a family tree plan to keep going because you are sure to get hooked and the more you find the more you want to find. It is a wonderful hobby. Following are some of my favorite sites if you are interested in looking for your ancestors.
http://www.cyndislist.com/
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/
http://helpdesk.rootsweb.com/get_started/charts_forms.html
http://www.genealogy.com/index_r.html
http://geneasearch.com/research.htm
http://www.daddezio.com/records/room/
http://www.ancestry.com/
http://www.geni.com/
http://www.cyndislist.com/
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/
http://helpdesk.rootsweb.com/get_started/charts_forms.html
http://www.genealogy.com/index_r.html
http://geneasearch.com/research.htm
http://www.daddezio.com/records/room/
http://www.ancestry.com/
http://www.geni.com/
posted by Grannyann at
10:08 AM
1 Comments:
Hi Ann, I have a niece that is into this and has been for years. She has done our entire family on both sides. A lot of people died of pneumonia back in the 1800s. I am sure this is a very interesting hobby and sounds like you enjoyed it very much. Patsy, one of my blogging friends and her sisters are into geneology big time. Her site is "My Life and Times". You can click on it from my sidebar on my site. She would love a comment from you about it.
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