Are you "up" on your family?

Genealogy may be an intimidating word to many people. We don't know where to begin, what it takes or who to go to for help.

When I started researching my father's family, I almost had nothing to start with. I had his father and mother's name. I thought I had his grandfather's name but it turned out to be only partially correct. I asked him where his family came from. He only knew that he was born in St. Louis, MO and that they lived there when he was a child but he didn't know anything about where his parents came from. That's pretty scary, especially for a newbie genealogist. So, take heart. You probably have a little more than that going for you. Some start with less but not many. The good news is that there's still hope.

In future posts, I plan to give you some tips about different places to search but in this post, I'd just like to talk about getting "up" on your immediate family. I have a very large family and years ago, I began gathering all of their full names, date and places of birth, including their spouses info and their wedding anniversaries. It is an ongoing labor of love for me. Now, YOUR family is probably smaller than mine so your job may not be as difficult. At this time, there are about 80 people in my family and that's just from my parents down!  I have several hundred in my database!

My father and grandmother.

To show you how easy it can be, I connected with one of my nieces who gave me several pieces of new information for her particular part of the family, a part that has been growing rapidly, I might add. It was so fun to connect with this bright young woman in her 20's and find that she is the person who already keeps all the birthday info for her branch of the family. She is my brother's daughter. He had four children and has added two sons-in-law and four grandchildren in recent years. A third potential son-in-law is waiting in the wings for his chance to join the family and I'm excited to say that I already have his information.

So, how about it? Are you ready to get started? Just start by listing your parents and siblings. It doesn't matter how many step-parents you have or step-siblings, add them all. For now, just put them all in one column. Don't forget middle names and if the spelling is unique, underline those names after you've confirmed their spelling. Your second column will be for their birthdays. Make sure everything is completely readable. Do it in pencil if you think it will help. In the next column, put their city and state of birth. IF you can find out what city and the county it was in, it would be even better. You'll write it like this: "Bakersfield, Kern, CA" but if you don't know the county, write it like this: "Bakersfield, , CA". This will become important when you start filling out genealogy software and researching things.

Silly women!  This is Rose up front...haha!...and me, my niece Dorothy, my mother and Cindi.

That ought to keep you busy for awhile. In my next post, I'll share where to get the software.  You can do it in Microsoft Word but if you know Excel, that's way better.  I've done it in Microsoft Word so that I can share it easily with family members. Even if someone doesn't have the software, which is rare, it is easily changed over by their computer into another word processing software so I can share it knowing it has a high chance of being downloaded and opened for their enjoyment.  Of course, I can also make it into a PDF easily and that's the easiest way to share!

First things first. Start collecting the data. Get it on paper or on the computer. Whatever you want to use, go for it. Write me if you'd like to tell me how it's going.

Till next time, have fun being the family gatherer!

Susan