Family history

[PaulaSB12]

I have been researching my family tree for a year now, my father wouldn't talk about his family at all and since his death I have been looking for information about it. I was just wondering if any us disers where researching their family tree and how easy or hard where you finding information about relatives who came from europe.

 

[OK!]

I started researching my family tree a few months ago, mainly through ancestry.com and the main branch of the St. Louis Public Library, which has a HUGE resource area dedicated solely to genealogy. I lucked out on one side of my mother's family because someone else had done all of the research already and had traced that line back to Switzerland in the early 1500s and posted that info on ancestry.com. On the other side of her family, I have hit a major speed bump because my great-great-great grandfather immigrated from Ireland and his last name was Ryan, which is one of the most common Irish surnames; what I've been doing is going through a massive list of William Ryans and attempting to match them with what I do know about his daughter Ellen (and to complicate matters further, she's listed on some censuses as Ellen and some as Nellie, and her birthplace is either NJ or PA according to the censuses OR IL according to my family....sigh. So it hasn't been easy.)

But ancestry.com has been a very valuable resource for me; though expensive to join, they make it worthwhile for anyone who's got the time to devote to research. I've used mainly census records and have dabbled a bit with the immigration lists, but not much recently with school winding up and all.

 

[Sleepy]

My mother thought getting info about her family (both mother and father side) would be next to impossible. Rarely was family spoken about and nothing was written. My mother found that the best way to find info was to use public census forms for the info. SHe subscribed to one of those online geneology sites that contains some of the census dating back to I think late 1800's so far. I have found this to be the most accurate for info as it is the original documents and all the info came directly from the person questioned. We found that many of the names used by the family were just family nicknames. In fact, the Aunt I was named after.....it was not even her real name. She has been long dead. With the census you find info such as employment, whether they rented or owned land, who lived in the house, how old they were, if they could read or write, where they originally were from (well, what they admitted), how each person was related in that household and some other interesting info. You can also look up birth, death and marriage info on people from court sources. You would be amazed at how much trash you can dig up and how many lies you discover.

 

[Tink's Pixieduster]

I've been researching families in both my parent's lines since 1997. I would like to offer a word of caution about using census records. They do contain a wealth of information, BUT, sometimes people would lie when reporting their name, or more likely, their age and work status. Also, many census takers, and sometimes the people being recorded, didn't know how to spell their names. Although I'm sure the census takers had to have some proficiency with spelling, I think sometimes they guessed, especially if the family he was recording wasn't sure how to spell their name. If you don't find a name you're looking for, be creative with your spelling. For example, I was looking for the name Holland, but instead the name turned out to be Hollen when I finally found a record of the family I was looking for.

I used Ancestry.com A LOT when I was beginning my research. I have also used http://www.familysearch.org quite a bit. This is sponsored by the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormon), who are meticulous about trying to record everybody, whether they belong to the church or not. A very good (and free) resource.

A third resource I've used is http://www.usgenweb.com. In Genweb, each State has volunteers who research and provide information, and this is also free.

You (the OP) don’t indicate how recently your ancestors came to the U.S. from Europe. Through my research I discovered that all of my direct antecedents have been here since before the Revolutionary War, and I found researching them to be challenging but in 9 years I’ve hit only two roadblocks out of all the people I’ve been trying to find. My best advise is to be patient and keep an open mind.