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The Family Tree  (From March Newsletter)

Have you ever had an interest in finding out about your heritage? I always knew that my dad’s family came from Holland, but that was really the extent of my knowledge of the family tree. Then one day it happened. I wanted to find out about a speaker with the same (uncommon) last name as my maiden name, who was to be speaking at a writer’s conference Joe would be attending. Could he really be a “long lost cousin”? Thus began my first “foray” into genealogical research!

With a wealth of info online, what would have probably taken months or years, took just a few hours of poking around on the internet. I started with a simple search on Google.com. First, I typed in my paternal grandfather’s name and amazingly, up came the careful research of one distant relative in the family who had traced the lineage all the way back to Winterswijk, NL (Holland). From what I could tell, my paternal grandfather’s family immigrated to Rochester, N.Y. in the early 1800’s. Wow! I didn’t know it would be that easy. I then traced forward and found mention of myself and my siblings plus my first, second and third cousins – including a branch of the family who had moved to California (where the long lost cousin in question was from.) A few phone calls and emails later and I was able to pin down this was indeed my third cousin. Wouldn’t it be nice to walk up to a total stranger and surprise him with the fact that we both descended from the same family tree?!!

Genealogy is reported as the fastest growing hobby in the country and the internet is usually the first and most logical stop for beginning family historians as well as experienced researchers. If you’re interested in finding out about your roots, what is the best way to begin? Please see below for some of my notes on interesting and helpful sites that I found when researching this topic.

Now back to the meeting with my newly found cousin. He is a well known author and expert in his field. (Yes, my family lineage certainly has talent!) John speaks and tours nationally and internationally and is a much sought after instructor at various writer’s conferences. He was definitely surprised to find out about the fact we were cousins and we were able to spend some time sharing pictures and family history, etc. That was really fun!

Now that I was “on a roll” in researching the family tree, I took a stab at seeing what I could find out about my mom’s side of the family. The genealogical research was quite professional. The site I located was officially called “The Sprague Project”. With a couple hours of research, I was able to trace my maternal great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather’s family back as having owned SUBSTANTIAL land holdings in Long Island, New York in the early 1600’s – something no one in my family even had a clue about!…. If only they hadn’t sold THAT!

If you have an interest in tracing your family heritage, a good place to start are such sites such as:

www.Ancestry.com (subscription about $29 per month but you can get access to lots of cool stuff like old newspaper clippings with info about your ancestors!)

Good FREE resources are:

www.CyndisList.com

www.USGenWeb.org

If you’re interested in finding out about your roots, what is the best way to begin?

Researchers advise to start with yourself & your immediate family: names, birth dates, place of birth, parents, husband or wife if married, date of marriage, place of marriage, children's complete names and their dates of birth & death. The easiest way to do this in a format that will be easily understood is to use a Family Group Sheet. This is merely a form with places for all of the important information.

You can download a nice Family Group Sheet from Ancestry.com - http://www.ancestry.com/save/charts/familysheet.htm.

(You will need an Adobe Acrobat reader to print out this form, but the page supplies a link to the download site for the reader if you don't already have it.) You will do a Family Group Sheet for each family in your line.

There are other sites where such materials are available and you can "shop around" until you find ones you like the best. Cyndi's List provides a comprehensive listing of places to get genealogical charts - http://www.CyndisList.com/supplies.htm

Let me know if YOU make any interesting discoveries in your family tree…. I just discovered by coincidence another distant cousin who lives only 5 miles from me and her name is also Karen - Small world! Now to tackle the Donovans….