Please tell me how to discover our heritage/ancestry if we don't know much about our family.

Question

My mom was a foster child; her mother died when she was 3. She has other brothers and sisters, but no one seems to know where we come from. I mean, are we german, italian, jewish, or what. How would I go about researching our heritage/ancestry? I kind of want to do this for her.

Answer 1

I think what the previous answerer meant was to go to the LDS website and look.  You may find your family there.

Also try cyndislist.com

Start with your mother and her mother and go back.

You can also ask questions here, (but only for the dead).

If you search for previous questions like yours, you will find a  lot of answers that may help.

http://www.familysearch.org

http://www.cyndislist.com

Good luck on your search.

Answer 2

The answer is using research.  Mom died when daughter was 3, meaning that you can do some simple math to determine when that was, determine the location and get her death certificate. From that point, you have some explicit information. Because there ARE older siblings, you have access to the correct name (even if the children went into foster care), and can find who HER PARENTS were.

From there, you figure where records are. There are thousands of research sites.  The key record you want in the US is census records (there are others). Ancestry.com has ALL census records.. if you don't want to pay, you often can use Ancestry or other sites at your local library.  Ted covered many points, that I won't repeat.

The point that you may be missing.. there are records concerning BEFORE mom was age 3. Research is ABOUT finding records/ info that people don't know.  After all.. it is YOUR ancestry as well.  

Answer 3

In the USA, you would use birth and death certificates, marriage license applications, and SSN applications to get back to people alive in 1930. You'd have to write for them and they would cost you money. You would also have to tell the county clerks your relation for some of them. You might find something for free - obituaries or wedding stories - in old newspapers on microfilm in the county library. Once you got back to 1930 you'd continue with the certificates and old newsapers, but, if someone at a Family History Center had census access and let you look over her shoulder, or your county library subscribed, you would use it as well.

Here is my stock answer to questions like yours. It repeats a bit. I type poorly.

There are over 400,000 free genealogy sites. I have links to some huge ones, below, but you'll have to wade through some advice and warnings first.

If you didn't mention a country, we can't tell if you are in the USA, UK, Canada or Australia. I'm in the USA and my links are for it.

If you are in the USA,

AND most of your ancestors were in the USA,

AND you can get to a library or FHC with census access,

AND you are white

Then you can get most of your ancestors who were alive in 1850 with 100 - 300 hours of research. You can only get to 1870 if you are black, sadly. Many young people stop reading here and pick another hobby.

No web site is going to tell you how your great grandparents decorated the Christmas tree with ornaments cut from tin foil during the depression, how Great Uncle Elmer wooed his wife with a banjo, or how Uncle John paid his way through college in the 1960's by smuggling herbs. Talk to your living relatives before it is too late.

You won't find living people on genealogy sites. You'll have to get back to people living in 1930 or so by talking to relatives, looking up obituaries and so forth.

Finally, not everything you read on the internet is true. You have to be cautious and look at people's sources. Cross-check and verify.

So much for the warnings. Here is the main link.

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

It has links, plus tips and hints on how to use them, for a dozen huge free sites. Yahoo! now limits the links in an answer to 10. These are the top four, if you'd like to try them without a guide:



http://www.cyndislist.com

http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/f...

http://worldconnect.genealogy.rootsweb.c...

This one is free, even though it is in Ancestry.com:

http://www.ancestry.com/learn/facts/defa...

If you strike out, go back to my guide page.

Answer 4

One way is to Join Yahoo or MSN Genealogy groups i'm a moderator of a few Yahoo Genealogy Groups and a Assitant Manager of some MSN ones