Zazzle binder from OldeWorldGifts: Isola Bella III, Lake Maggiore, Pie...

The perfect place for keeping your treasured family tree and important records and documentation. Family tree binders featuring vintage photochrom prints from around the world - choose one where your ancestors come from. Easy to customize to show your own family name.

This binder features a picturesque image of Isola Bella in Lake Maggiore in Piedmont, Italy.

CREATE  |  APPAREL  |  MUGS  |  POSTAGE  |  CARDS  |  POSTERS  |  GIFTS  |  ALL
Zazzle binder from OldeWorldGifts: Isola Bella III, Lake Maggiore, Pie... Gallo Family Tree Binder - Isola Bella, Lake Maggiore, Piedmont, Italy Visit OldeWorldGifts's store Join OldeWorldGifts's fan club	View "Isola Bella III, Lake Maggiore, Piedmont, Italy" by OldeWorldGifts Create your own products @ Zazzle.com

Family Research - Tips and Hints #1

One of the most important resources you can use for researching your family tree is your family and they should be where our family research starts.

A good place to start is with your parents - ask them for information about their own births, places where they lived growing up, marriage information and see if they have easy access to their own birth and marriage certificates. Ask them about their parents and try to get as much information from them as possible. If possible, talk to your grandparents - they may have much more information to share and give you keys to searching further back in your family tree.

Write down all the information they give you - this is the key to good genealogy research. Check this against any official records they may have.


The key to building your family tree is having a good base - solid and reliable. From this base, it is much eaiser to continue to research and trace your family tree back through the generations.

Family Reunion Invitations

One of the great things about researching your family tree is that it often puts you in contact with family members you may not have seen for a long time and gives you the opportunity to share information with everyone.

A few of my extended family are also researching the family tree, and the sharing of information has been a definite bonus. It wasn't until a family reunion that we all realised the common interest in our ancestry.

Here's a sample of the great family reunion invitations available on Zazzle - which is easy to customise to suit your own occasion.

Family Tree Reunion Invitation-+ 

by NightSweatsDiva

Free Geneology Resources - Hugh Wallis

One of the resources that I have used consistently throughout my family research is the International Genealogy Index (IGI) available at www.familysearch.org - I generally use it as one of the first places to find information and then move to other sources if I think I am on the right track.

One of the limitations of the IGI is the inability to search by surname only unless it is a single batch or an entire country. This can be frustrating if you are looking for siblings and do not know their names and results for an entire country can be very time consuming to scroll through.

Hugh Wallis has developed a way of using IGI which allows you to locate the batch numbers based on country, country, town and date ranges for births/christenings and marriages. This has become an invaluable resource in my genealogical research and has allowed me to find family members of my tree I may otherwise have never found.

His site can be found here - I am sure that you will find it as useful as I have if you are researching ancestors in the British Isles, America and Canada.

Common Mistakes in Genealogy Research #2

We all have those wonderful family stories passed down through the generations, such as links with nobility or a famous historical figure. While these stories hold some fascination, it is important not to accept the story as fact - we must search for evidence that may either prove or disprove the theory.

Growing up, I was always told that our family had links with the Scottish nobility. As a child, I accepted this story as fact and would tell anybody that would listen that I was a descendant of royalty.

My father's paternal ancestors were in Scotland, but were in Ireland prior to this. The story was that the Duke of Hamilton's daughter ran away with the Irish coachman (my ancestor). A fairly dubious link, but a link to nobility nonetheless! 

I was always intrigued by this story and previous attempts by my parents and extended family members to trace our family tree had uncovered a Margaret Hamilton who married my Irish great-great-great grandfather. But it always seemed to stop there.

I have tried many avenues to see if there is any link between our Margaret Hamilton and the Duke of Hamilton, but have yet to uncover anything that would prove the family story. Conflicting places of births given in the Scottish Census for Margaret has made it even more difficult. So for now, it remains a story - an intriguing story, and one I haven't given up just yet. One day I hope to either be able to accept the story as fact or completely dismiss it, until then I will keep looking.

So, no matter how tempting it is to assume the family story must be true, it is always important to look for the facts.

Genealogy is T-R-E-E-rific!

Researching your family tree is addictive and once you are bitten by the bug, it is difficult to let it go. There are a number of stores at Zazzle which have designs on a wide range of products dedicated to people who love genealogy. Visit gedcom, one of the great stores on Zazzle, to see the wonderful designs they have for the keen genealogist.
gedcom

Genealogy is T-R-E-E-rific! by gedcom

Common Mistakes in Genealogy Research #1

One of the most common mistakes people make when researching their family histories, is assuming that their family name is only spelt one way and discard records and information which include variations to the spelling of the surname.

In an earlier post I have talked about the variations of my grandmother's surname, McCluskey - these included the variations of McClusky, McLusky and even McListy. While the first two variations are quite obvious, I ignored the McListy variation for some time... then one day I looked further into the information these records held and had enough corroborating evidence to know that it was my grandmother's family in those records. 

If I had totally ignored this variation, there is one whole branch of my grandmother's family that I would never have known about. I am still waiting patiently for the release of the 1911 Scottish Census and it will be interesting to see what variation of the name pops up there.

Variations of surnames turn up everywhere in my family tree - even my maternal grandmother's surname has two variations - Barratt and Barrett. I have yet to find any other variations, but I am also struggling to get past my great great great grandfather in that line, so perhaps I need to be widening my search to include other variations.

So, if you are stuck on a part of your tree and nothing seems to be coming up in any of your searches, perhaps you need to expand to other variations of spelling - this might just hold the key to the next branch of your family tree.

Genealogy Addict

For those genealogy addicts out there, this would have be the perfect shirt. As soon as I saw it, I could relate to it (and I'm sure my partner could too!)

Once you are on a roll, it is terribly hard to tear yourself away from the research - hours and hours in front of the computer, scribbling down notes, comparing it to other information you have, bits of paper everywhere, numerous cups of coffee... sound familiar?

Coffee Computer Genealogy by jmkgifts

Visit jmkgifts to see the huge variety of genealogy designs they have available on a wide range of products.

New Links List - Free Resources

Genealogy for All is keen to create easy to navigate lists of links to the resources found throughout these pages. The intention is to not only provide links to each of the site and available resources, but also be able to provide some information about them.

So, while the pages of this site will provide information on each of the sites, Genealogy for All is creating link lists on the left hand side, which will be available on each page. So if you want to quickly click through the links, they are easy to find.

We have created the link list for 'Free Resources' which will be added to as the 'Free Resources' page grows. Other link lists will be added as those resources grow.

 

Free Geneology Resources - Rootsweb.com

The 'Free Resources' page has been updated to include Rootsweb as a resource for your family tree research. This is primarily a community for people to connect who have common ancestry.

There are a range of resources, including Rootsweb Surnames List (RSL), the World Connect Project and user-contributed databases. As with all user-contributed databases, it is important to verify the information through official records (if possible) - just because it is on the web, it does not mean it is correct.

I have used it on a few occasions as part of my genealogical research and it has helped point me in the right direction for looking for more information. While some of the information has been correct, there have been occasions when it hasn't. If you keep this in mind, there is no reason why this cannot add to your family tree research.

Convicts in the Closet

Family histories often hold hidden secrets, skeletons and untold stories. These hold great interest and intrigue for the family researcher but also great frustration. These skeletons are frustrating as it is extremely difficult to get accurate information from those who may hold some insights. 

As a family researcher, how many times have you probed your relations for information and received responses along the lines of "nobody ever spoke about it", "we heard whispers, but never knew for sure", "my mother told me it didn't concern me"? 

For many people, it is discovering that they are descendants of convicts. For many Australians, this is not so unusual if their ancestors in Australia go back at least four or five generations. There is much interest now in tracing convict ancestry and much of the stigma has disappeared. There are numerous avenues now for tracing your convict roots and Genealogy for All is keen to develop a list of such resources.

We are always happy to include resources that you have found, so if you are aware of a great site, please let us know and we would be happy to include it. Visit the Convict Ancestry page of the blog to see this growing resource list.

Free Geneology Resources - Family Search

Family Search

www.familysearch.org

A great site for searching for information for your family tree which is free. This service is provided through the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and includes information for births/christenings, marriages and deaths for many countries. Census information is also available, with a wide range of new indexes being added due to the Indexing Project (which anyone can volunteer for - a very worthwhile project and very rewarding!)

There is a wide range of resources available on the website - free online classes, free family history software as well as a number of databases which are reasonably priced.

There are also Family History Centres around the world and their website allows you to search by country for their location.

I have used this website extensively for family research for Scotland, England and Australia and have found it very useful. There is another great source which can be used in conjunction with this family search indexes, which makes it even easier to use, which will be added very soon.

Visit the 'Free Resources' page regularly to see the soon to be growing list of free genealogical resources for all those keen family tree reseachers. If you know of resources which could be added to the page, please feel free to let me know.

Free Genealogy Resources

Genealogy for All is developing a comprehensive list of free resources for the keen family researcher. It will be continually growing list of resources, making use of our experiences in researching a number of family trees. We will also include resources that we stumble across in our genealogy research, but may not have extensive knowledge of or experience in using.

Whenever possible, we will include feedback on the ease of use or the extent of information available on the site. If we have listed something and you would like to add to the feedback on that site, please feel free to leave a comment. If you know of a great free resource that is not included in the list, please let us know and we would be happy to include it.

As this will be a continually growing list, make sure you visit often to take advantage of all the free resources available to research your family history.