Family Tree - Trace your roots!
Have you ever been curious about where you come from? What origin your name is? What nationalities make up who you are? Then it might be an interesting, exciting journey to make up your own family tree! It is called a family tree for the very reason that when you start searching and figuring out your history, it begins to resemble a tree and the branches it makes along the way.
The best place to begin your search of your family tree is with relatives. Are your grandparents still alive? Great grandparents? These people will be able to give you a wealth of information. Start by writing your name at the bottom of your piece of paper. Then branch upwards to your siblings and then your parents, and from your parents, your will have two distinct branches of your grandparents. You may even be able to get up as far as great grandparents before the search becomes trickier. Once members that are still alive exhaust your search of your ancestors, your real family tree research begins.
A great source for information will be your family’s church. They will have birth records dating back as far as the history of that church has been keeping records. Also check out cemeteries for birth and death records. A lot of people that enjoy searching their family tree will take rubbings of the headstones for future reference.
There is a wealth of information on the Internet. You can do a lot of legwork from the privacy of your own home on your family tree. There is page after page of sites that will help guide you toward what you are looking for. A lot of this information is free, but there are many sites that for a fee will help you locate the information you desire. These sites that charge a fee, will give you a history and records on your family tree. But be very careful, a lot of the time, these are very generalized charts, so make sure you check out the site first, and then give them very detailed information for them to conduct their search of your particular branch of your family tree.
If you are really excited about this adventure, once you have located a particular country of origin, you may want to consider taking a trip to that country to conduct more in-depth searches of your family tree. Finding this information is fascinating, but can also be time consuming. If finding out where you come from is your passion, jump in with both feet!