Most of us are curious about our ancestors – who they were, what they did, what kind of world did they live in?  We want to know because those who came before us determined, in great part, what and who we are today.

When you set out to dig into the past, you often find things you didn’t expect, both in the past and in the present day, too.  Sometimes you find things that were hidden because nobody wanted to talk about them, and sometimes you find out that the stories you were told, or you remember, aren’t exactly what really happened.

I have been doing genealogy research regularly and fairly seriously for more than two decades.  Digging through public records, family documents and photographs, talking with close family  members and more distant relatives, and even shirttail relations met during the search.

My search began casually around the time of my mothers 90th birthday, in 1996, while my daughter and I prepared her birthday celebration.  We had a big party with many relatives and friends, and had an attendance of about 75 people from all over the United States.

As part of that celebration, my daughter and her then fiance, now husband, and who is a graphic designer by profession, gathered pictures, stories and family letters and remembrances into a rather professional looking book that was distributed to members of the family as a keepsake.  My daughter interviewed her grandmother, and went through our considerable hoard of family photos with her to identify who, what, when and where.  We asked family members to write their own remembrances, which were also included in the book, and the fact that my mother wrote poems and stories about everything family made the book all that more interesting.  The book is titled, “Treasures of Age”, taken from a poem that my mother wrote.  This research proved to be invaluable when I began to seriously set down the facts about my family.  Because of the photo id’s, I could put a face on many of them too.

I had been photographing gravestones in our family plots, photos that my daughter refers to as my “dead” pictures, when I accompanied my mother to decorate the graves on Memorial Day. I have continued that practice over the years, expanding the list of cemeteries that I visit to search out more members of the family.

All of the preceding is to explain how I started my own family investigations, and most people do pretty much the same thing I did.  Once you get a good base for your family tree, things progress more slowly, but steadily, as you find new facts and new databases become available.  Without the internet, the extensive investigations of our family histories would not exist.

I personally have an Ancestry.com membership, and several family trees.  My main tree now has more than 4,500 members, but it also includes my daughter’s father’s family.  I also chose to include many relatives not in my direct line.

My tree exists on line, but is also synched to a copy on my hard drive, using family tree software.  It is possible to download your tree data into a GEDCOM file, short for GEnealogical Data COMmunications. In simple terms it is a method of formatting your family tree data into a text file which can be easily read and converted by any genealogy software program. The GEDCOM specification was originally developed in 1985 and is owned and managed by the Family History Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

In case you are not aware, much of the data available on line is there because of the Mormons.  The church has a huge database, and founded Ancestry.com (now a publicly- owned company).  FamilySearch.org (free) is also Mormon owned.  Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, usually referred to as Mormons, place great emphasis on genealogical research. This is because their Church doctrine states that “saving ordinances” (including baptism, confirmation, endowment, and sealing-marriage) must be made available to every individual who has ever lived.

To make these ordinances available to people who did not have the opportunity while living, Mormons identify their ancestors and arrange for baptism and other ordinances to be performed for them by proxy – that is, with a living person standing in for the deceased person, in a temple. Often referred to as temple work, this search for ancestors is an important part of the Mormon faith.  Some people find this odd.  Personally, I’m glad to have easy access to information that would otherwise be difficult, if not impossible, to obtain.

If you aren’t currently searching for family information, but are interested in doing so, here is a beginner’s guide:

http://genealogy.about.com/cs/beginnerscorner/ht/family_tree.htm

I must warn you.  You could get a big surprise while doing family research, and it might (or might not) be a happy one.  You might also be one of those who becomes addicted to the pursuit of family knowledge, so that you will do research for distant relatives and even friends.  Don’t ask me how I know this.  You will probably also make new friends and acquaintances as a byproduct of your quest.

Every once in a while, I make a significant discovery.  My father was estranged from his family for years, starting before I was born, and talked little about them, so my primary discoveries have been about his family.  He died in 1976, so he wasn’t around to ask questions of when I started searching.

For years I could not find my paternal grandmother past the early 1930’s. I finally found her grave location (because it was in the same cemetery as her parents, and her record was linked to theirs), and through that (via the Find-A-Grave network), I discovered her second married name, her second husband’s identity, and when and where she died.  Armed with that information, I sent away for a copy of her death certificate. I was shocked to discover that she died at the age of 62 as a result of an apparent suicide – ingesting ant poison.

I still haven’t traced my paternal grandfather past about 1933.  I know he was alive in 1932, but the marriage license of one of his sons in 1933 says he is “deceased”. I have been unable to locate any information about his time and place of death. He seems to have dropped off the face of the earth.  He and my grandmother divorced at the end of the 1920’s.  My father married, had a family, and divorced in the 1930’s.  The reasons for family estrangement are a mystery.  Dad moved to a new state, met my mother, and remarried in 1941.  I came along a few years after that.

In 2005, via an Ancestry.com connection, I found my two paternal half brothers, and a number of living cousins I didn’t know existed.  One of my brothers, Bill, died just before the discovery, but my other brother, Glenn, and I forged a friendship, visiting each other several times over the years (he lives on the West Coast).  It is a relationship that I cherished, as my two maternal half siblings both died in the 1980’s. Glenn has since died.  I am MUCH younger than my siblings, but Glenn was the closest in age, being only 16 years older than I am.

Anyway, feel free to share your experiences, ask questions, or otherwise comment on the wisdom (or not) and practice of genealogy.