How can I research or know more about my family's history?

Question

I want to know if there is someone famous or something that happened to our family in the past. Is it possible for someone to help?

Thanks in advanced!

Answer 1

The best site for that is ancestry.com.  You can build your family tree and it automatically searches for records that are a close match. As you continue to add people, mostly through their census records, you click on Find Famous Relatives and it searches to see if your tree links to anyone famous.  There is a fee to join but it is the biggest and most popular.  In my experience, eventually it will match you to other peoples trees and there are often interesting stories connected to them.

You can search to see if there is an existing tree with any of your ancestors at a free site called rootsweb.com.  It is best to enter someone from your family who was born prior to 1900 or earlier.  So you need to gather information from family members (such as birth locations, maiden names and birth dates of your grandparents).  Look them up the census index to find their parents, put them in your tree.....and continue back in time.  The latest US census record that is available to the public is 1930.  You can find some records at another free site called familysearch.org - you can download family tree software as well.

Here is a link to a site good infomation  for people who are getting started:

http://www.tedpack.org/yagenlinks.html

Happy Hunting!

Answer 2

The best start is to write down all of your relatives, and talk to them and found out their relatives.  Oldest first, they tend to die.

Answer 3

Gather your family names and birthdates and start on ancestry.com or familysearch.com.  Once you start researching the names you have, famous names will start to pop up  ~ I have Roger Maris, Pocahantus, and Thomas Edison ~ you will find them, too!

Answer 4

> Is it possible for someone to help?

If you are serious and in the USA, the volunteers at your local Family History Center will help you get started. FHC's are small rooms in Mormon Churches, but they are open to people of all faiths.

Your next best bet, assuming you don't want to do it yourself, would be to ask the county genealogical society if there was a sharp old widow who needed yard work, and trade your hours for hers.