How to Research Your Family tree
Do you ever wonder who your ancestors were? Do you ever wonder if you're related to anyone famous in history? I would guess that at some point you have pondered these questions. I know that I have. But how do you find out who your ancestors were and what they were like? Genealogy is the study of your ancestors and their descendants. In the last few years I havebecome very interested in genealogy and want to start researching my family history. With very limited experience in the field, where would I start? I figured that I could get at least some information from the Internet, so that is where I went.
My home page on the Internet is through ALL so I started with its web page (www.aol.com). On the web page is a direct link to genealogy areas of ALL and links to other sites on the web. On ALL sites, Genealogy Community Center, you can search for surnames by home pages that are linked to ALL. Of course, you can just about imagine that with all the surnames out there this might be a difficulty task. It's not, if you know what you are looking for. Of all the web sites, I visited every one said work backwards from what you know to what you don't know. I started with the farthest point I could remember. I began by searching for the surname "Walker." There are thousand of links to "Walker" families, so I chose a few that looked promising. I went to http://voyager.dvc.edu/~bmckinney/www.sisna.com/users/ryoung/walker/wgaf22.html. This site has an extensive history on Walker families. Names, birth dates, and death dates are all part of the information that is provided. The hardest part of genealogy is matching names to names and birth dates to birth dates to get accurate information. If you locate that information, it can lead you to people you didn't know about. But the challenge is getting through the thousands of names that come up.
I decided that I really needed to narrow my search so I tried a different web site that could help me. I went to Ancestry.com (http://voyager.dvc.edu/~bmckinney/www.ancestry.com). This web site offers searches of large databases such as the Social Security Death Index. The web site is not entirely free. You can use several of the databases to get information you may need but to use the large databases like birth records, death records, and obituaries you have to be a member of the web site.
“Tracing a single Native American family from the 1780’s through the 1920’s posed a number of challenges,” for Claudio Saunt, author of Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmaking of an American Family. (pg. 217) A family tree is comprised of genealogical data that has many branches that take form by twisting, turning, and attempting to accurately represent descendants from the oldest to the youngest. “The Grayson family of the Creek Nation traces its origins to the late 1700’s, when Robert Grierson, a Scotsman, and Sinnugee, a Creek woman, settled down together in what is now north-central Alabama. Today, their descendants number in the thousands and have scores of surnames.” (pg. 3)
She saw the beautiful horses, so she tried being a horse, because she thought nothing could go wrong. Shayla thought wrong, because at eating time, she spat out
The phrase “family of origin” is usually used to define the family that one was raised in or with. Family is often viewed as a social institution, responsible for the socialization and care of its members. The institution of family has a strong influence on individual biopsychosocial well being
Taffy mounted her horse, dug her heel into the animal’s barrel, and rode off with little Dee. Rion squirmed away from Percival and chased down the horse. The lane was long, and Percival knew Rion would tire before Taffy and Dee reached the woods, so he let him go.
People study history because they wish to strengthen human connections. The same can be drawn about the pursuit of genealogy. Whether it be connections to nobility, to a specific ethnic group or a specific event in history, there are diverse motivations to study genealogy According to Francois Weil, “Genealogy provides a powerful lens to understand personal and collective identities.” In essence Weil’s Family Trees: A History of Genealogy in America is a study of American identity over a span of four centuries through a discussion of genealogy and family history.
A pedigree, which is also called a genealogy, can be formally defined as “a group of individuals together with a full specification of all the relationships among them” (Thompson, 1986). Pedigrees can be shown graphically. One example of a pedigree is shown in Figure 2.3. By convention we use a square to denote a male and a circle to denote a female. Horizontal lines below couples are used to represent marriages. Parents and their children are linked through vertical lines. The individuals who are in the same level in the pedigree are in the same generation, often denoted by Roman numerals. Each person in each generation is labelled by Arabic numbers. Individuals with data e.g. those who are affected by a disease, are shown by shading. By
I have many nationalities, among these are Irish. Scottish, german, Belgian, Norwegian, Swedish and Native American. History is important, especially when it comes to your family. If we ask a family member about our roots, we can learn about ourselves. By asking many of my family members, I have learned many things about me and my family.
The book Saint Anything is about protagonist Sydney Stanford, a teenage girl who believes she is invisible, existing only in the shadow of her older brother Peyton. The novel opens just as Peyton is sentenced to prison for a drunk driving accident that left a young boy paralyzed. For most of Sydney’s life, her parents have focused on her older brother and his mistakes. Her mother lives in a world of enabling and denial and her father simply follows along. Ames is Peyton’s best friend who he met at Narcotics Anonymous. Ames spends a lot of time at the Stanford house, comforting Sydney’s mother and quite frankly creeping Sydney out. Ames says and does some weird and disturbing things to Sydney; her parents do not believe her until Ames has Sydney
Contrary to my achievements, my first tryst with horse riding wasn’t smooth sailing. Distinct images of the first day at the stable flash before my eyes every time I reflect upon my humble beginning. I was helped on to the horse by my trainer and instructed to take the reins in my hands when suddenly the horse spooked and charged towards the fence. I fell off and lay still; the
He gathered wood and built a fire before removing Nocturne’s tack and setting his bedroll down on the forest floor. Kneeling down, he smoothed the roll out on the grass, and bunched up one end to make a pillow. Nocturne nickered, and came to stand beside him, and she pushed him with her muzzle. Link turned around to look at his horse, and she took a step sideways, now parallel to the bed roll. Sliding her limbs beneath her, Nocturne laid down protectively behind Link. Laughing softly, he moved towards her to pet her nose in
Living in a limited town reduces the opportunity for civilians to get the glimpse of therapeutic resources. Witnessing firsthand the dissatisfaction that emerges within a family really affected me. My dream of becoming a speech language pathologist was highly influenced by my step brother. Watching him grow up for several years and continuously struggle with the same speech problems encouraged me to pursue my goal in helping kids like him.
I’m going to write about one of my ancestors, Amanda Barnes Smith. She was a faithful and kind person. She was born on February 22, 1809, in Becket Massachusetts. Her mother was Fanny Johnson and her father was Ezekiel Barnes. Her grandfather came to the United States from Scotland and served in the Revolutionary War, under George Washington, as a general. Amanda had three brothers and five sisters. Amanda was still young when her family moved to Amherst, Ohio. She spent the rest of her childhood there.
Even though the girl thought that she would be in trouble for letting the horse out she did not regret it, even though she wasn’t sure why she had done it. After everyone arrived back home they had dinner. Laird was excited and showed off the blood that he had on his arm from the horse. During dinner Laird told everyone how she had let the horse out of the gate. She began crying and her father said, “Never mind, she’s only a girl.” Finally she didn’t protest it and thought that maybe it was true.
There are two sides to a person’s family and one side of my family has been traced all the way back to slavery. My father’s side of the family originally came from a Georgia plantation. Although my father is Afro-American, his great-great-grandfather was a general who owned slaves. From Georgia my father moved to New Jersey. After settling in New Jersey, my father enlisted in the military and began his life as a military man. My mother’s side of the family is all from Puerto Rico. My grandparents moved my mother and her sister to America when they were very young. They moved to Macedonia, Illinois. When my mother got older she too enlisted in the military as a nurse. My mother met my father while they were both serving in the military in Germany. After they both finished their time in the military, my mother mov...