How to Unearth Your Family Roots
Are you are curious about your family tree and want to know more about your roots? While it may feel like a daunting task, there are a number of ways to help an older loved one share your family history and lineage. These include:
• Compile what you already know about the family. Collect old photos, family records, letters, diaries, newspaper clippings, films, videos, and other recollections.
• Talk with your elderly relatives. Family reunions and special family gatherings are a great time to connect and talk to ageing family members. Face to face conversations are usually best, but after an initial conversation you can follow up with phone calls, e-mails, letters and social media.
• Engage in a conversation, not an interrogation. Avoid pressuring older relatives to remember every date and name. Ask open-ended questions using phrases such as “Why don’t you tell me about…?” or “What do you remember about…?” or “What was it like when…?” These interactions may also be a good time to ask about family medical conditions to help create a family medical history.
• Record the conversations with videos, voice recordings and photographs to help with accuracy and have voice and visual information to pass on to future generations.
• Organise and chart the family history. Family tree software programs are available to help. Consider sharing the completed chart with your entire extended family and update it every few years.
• Use the Internet. The Irish Genealogy website helps you search for family history records using genealogical information as far back as the 1901 census, along with Church indexes such as birth, death and marriage registrations. The website www.findmypast.ie provides access to 10 million historical records such as travel and migration records, parish records etc. to learn more about your ancestry. In addition, subscriber-based Roots Ireland claims to have the largest database of family records in Ireland.
• Investigate locally. Look through local records by visiting churches, cemeteries, courthouses and other places that keep historical records.
You family’s life story is a gift to future generations. Enjoy the reminiscing adventure!
Do you have any tips for fining out more about family history?
