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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Genealogy for All is keen to provide links to places where people researching their family histories participate in exchanging information. This can be particularly helpful and assists in keeping the costs down in tracing your ancestors... and you may just find a long lost relative in the process.
Genealogy for All is keen to build a resource for these information exchanges, so please feel free to let us know of any resources you are aware of and we will be happy to add it to the list.
Visit the Information Exchange page to see if there are any which may help you in your research of your family tree.
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.
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.
