January 8, 2024
Introduction: In this article, Katie Rebecca Garner gives tips for pursuing three genealogy goals in the New Year. Katie was introduced to genealogy through volunteering with FamilySearch. She has an Associates of Applied Science in Family History Research from BYU-Idaho, specializing in U.S. research. She is currently pursuing an AG specializing in U.S. Mid-Atlantic. Katie does a lot of writing and has recently ventured into creative writing, writing genealogy ghost stories.
It’s a new year, a time for a fresh start. Many people make New Year’s resolutions, many of which, unfortunately, are forgotten later. Some goals seem overwhelming, and some seem impossible to meet. This does not have to be the case for your genealogy-related goals. This article will give some tips on reaching three such goals:
- You may want to learn more about your family lines. This is a worthy goal because this is how you came to be.
- You may have aging relatives full of stories and may want to record those stories while those relatives are still alive.
- You may have children in your life who may benefit from knowing their family story, so you might want to get them more involved in family history.
Whatever your genealogy goals are, there are resources to help you achieve them.
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(1) Learn More about Family Lines
FamilySearch is a free website for family history enthusiasts like you. You can create a free account on FamilySearch to record your family tree. Once you have your account, add the family information you already know. You may want to contact relatives to find out and verify information. Once you have your deceased relatives added to your family tree, you may be able to see what information other relatives have found about them. You may also get hints generated by FamilySearch.
FamilySearch provides resources for learning how to research your ancestors, such as the research wiki, which contains articles about research in different places and lists databases to search records. Another resource is the Help and Learning Center, which includes instructional videos on researching in different areas. If you still feel stuck, you can find a local FamilySearch Center, and the volunteer staff there will be happy to help you.
GenealogyBank also has resources that can help you find records of your ancestors. In the newspaper and obituary collections, you may find information about your relatives that you can’t find anywhere else. Your ancestors’ obituaries give a few details of their lives and list surviving relatives. The newspaper collection contains more than just obituaries. It also includes marriage, divorce, and birth announcements. In addition to vital records, newspapers also have the stories of your ancestors’ lives, helping you get to know them as real people.
In addition to articles that name your ancestors, you can read newspapers from your ancestors’ time to learn what was important to people back then and find out more about their lives that way.
GenealogyBank also houses collections for the U.S. Census, Social Security Death Index, Government Publications, and Historical Books.
Census research is a good first step in researching a family. Census records show where the family lived every decade and show the growth and migration of the family. They also give additional clues for research. Some censuses asked couples how long they’d been married, so this information indicates when to search for marriage records. Some censuses asked mothers how many children they’d had and how many were still living, which helps with searching for birth and death records of children. Some censuses collected immigration and naturalization information; finding the naturalization and arrival records of immigrant ancestors can help in jumping the pond to their old country.
The Social Security Death Index is a good starting place to search for death records of ancestors who died in the latter half of the twentieth century till 2014. The entries give the death date, the last residence, and often the birth information. With the death date and last residence, you can search for the death certificate or obituary.
These collections can be searched by entering your ancestor’s name into the search box. You can either search an individual collection or search all the collections together. With the newspaper collection, you have the option to browse the entire paper.
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(2) Interview Living Relatives
How familiar are you with your parents’ and grandparents’ stories? Sad to say, they will not always be here to share them. If you collect and preserve their stories now, your posterity will have a way to know these relatives even after they’re gone.
Start by deciding which relative you want to interview and what you want to know. You can interview a relative about their own life or what they remember about an older relative who has already passed on. Make a list of questions to ask the relative.
Be prepared to record the interview. You can either video or audio record it. Zoom allows you to record calls in video format. Call recording apps can be downloaded to smartphones. Note that older people might have an easier time with a phone call than a Zoom call. If you can meet in person, you don’t have to worry about them using technology. You can either make a video or an audio recording of the meeting. In any case, you can also record notes the old-fashioned way – with pen and paper.
It might help to have a way to spark your relative’s memory. Find something to show your relative, such as an old photo, a census of their immediate family, or a newspaper clipping about them (census record or newspaper clipping can be found on GenealogyBank). Your relative can then share the memories that are sparked. You can set up a slideshow presentation if you’re interviewing over Zoom. Music is good for sparking memory, especially for dementia patients, so playing songs that were popular in your relative’s youth might be helpful.
Whatever means you use to record the interview, you can add it to FamilySearch Memories.
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(3) Get Children More Involved in Family History
How familiar are your children with your stories? Your parents’ and grandparents’ stories? Studies have shown that knowing a family narrative is good for children’s mental health. But to get them interested, it has to be fun for them.
Stories are interesting and engaging to everyone. Find stories of your ancestors to share with your kids at the dinner table, at bedtime, in the car, etc. In FamilySearch Memories, you can find stories that others have posted about your ancestors. You may also be able to find stories in GenealogyBank’s newspaper collection. An interview with an older relative might yield some stories of interest to the younger generation.
It might also be helpful to show your children that your ancestors were once children like themselves. This can be done by showing pictures from your ancestor’s childhood, or finding your ancestor on the census as a child, which can be found in GenealogyBank’s census collection.
Whatever your genealogy-related New Year’s resolutions are, take advantage of FamilySearch and GenealogyBank’s resources. Instead of being more ditched New Year’s resolutions, these can be resolutions that leads to closer family ties.
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