Learning about your ancestors can be extremely interesting and extremely frustrating at the same time, but I can tell you from my 25 plus years of research experience that it is worth every bit of the joy and the anguish along the way. If you have an interest in learning about your family history, welcome to my blog here on Mahoning Valley Roots where you will learn the basics of genealogical research and tips to help you find your more elusive ancestors and records. Just getting started can seem daunting, over the past few years new online sources have made finding your roots much easier. You just need to know how to start and where to look. There are three basic facts that you will need to know to research your roots. First, you need to know your ancestors’ original name. If you have immigrant ancestors, they may have changed their names over the course of the century for various reasons. Knowing an original name is the key to finding records. The second basic fact is where your ancestors lived such as the name of your ancestral village or town. Sometimes all we know is that our beloved nonna was from Italy! The third basic fact you need is an approximate date of birth for the ancestors that you are searching. Do not get discouraged if you do not know these basic facts, future blog posts will be devoted to tips on how to discover this information.
My advice is to start your research with what you already know about your ancestors. First, you are going to want to work to preserve information and documents that are fragile or could be lost! This means locating old records and making copies or having a conversation with your oldest living relative about what they know and remember. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to talk with the oldest members of your family because he or she may have some important family history information which could be lost when that person is no longer with us. Trust me; there are many times I wished I had asked my grandmother more questions while she was alive. Another big tip if you are new at this, write down what you discover and document your sources! You never know when you will need to go back to a source for more information. It is incredibly frustrating when you have a “fact” but do not remember where you got it and you find a discrepancy; or you did not know at the time that the source could reveal more information that would be useful in the future.
To help with this last tip, there are different ways to document your sources. Some people like to do everything electronically and there are websites to build your family tree online or software to create a tree and store records to your computer. Others like everything on paper, and for that, there are forms to download and fill in. Then there are people like me, who like to use multiple means for redundancy and backup. I use an online service, software and paper records. I have put a lot of work in my research and I do not want a computer crash, a software change or some other disaster to destroy it.
One last caveat about becoming a genealogist or family historian, for every question you answer about your ancestors, you will find that there are even more questions to be answered than you realized from when you started! Your search will never be complete; it will always be a work in process. Why? Because you have thousands of ancestors out there just waiting for you to discover them.