Tuesdays with Nuria

Every Tuesday I take a Family History class with Nuria Martinez. She is very passionate about doing Family History and I want to learn. She has done so much using familysearch.org that seriously has found people from way back in the 1500's I also want to start finding my ancestors too. I remember once reading something by Amy Anderson about this subject a few months ago so  here it goes: 

"Figuring out who your ancestors are is one of the coolest things in the world.  I was lucky to have Grandparents who were big into doing genealogy research when they were still alive and they provided me life history books for their own lives as well as providing me life histories written by my great-grandparents and great-great grandparents. Reading those life histories has been one of my favorite things to do.  Reading the stories of my grandmothers helps me see where my own personality came from…sassiness and all :).  I come from a long line of amazing women and men.  But I wanted to know even more so I started researching sites that could provide me the best information and that is when I was introduced to the website www.familysearch.org .  Signing up for the website is completely FREE – always – no charge now or later – its 100% free.  The website taps into one of largest (I actually believe it is the largest in the world) databases of genealogy databases which is hosted by the LDS Church. Now for those of you out there who are not affiliated with the church – don’t worry – you do NOT have to be affiliated with the church in any way to sign up for an account and find all your ancestors – this database is a database of everyone’s ancestors from all over the world.  It was created from birth records, death records, city and country records, and from people doing their own research and adding to it. The database is prepopulated with people who have died and then people can manually add in living people – so for example, when I logged in I found my deceased grandparents and then I manually added my living parents and all of my living siblings.  Once I linked us to my deceased grandparents I was able to then follow each grandparent for generation after generation after generation into the past.  It was amazing!  The entire chart was already there and built for me – I just had to link myself onto it.

Even cooler is that I can click on any past relatives name and it shows me any photos people have added of my relative and it has stored documents and life histories and other uploaded items added to my ancestors.  I was able to find photos of ancestors I have never even seen before – it was SO COOL!!!  In addition I found news articles about my relatives linked to them and I found journals that had been uploaded to some of my ancestors clear back from Wales and Ireland and Scotland and Sweden and on and on.  I even found that I come from real life actual royalty!  SWEEEEETTTT!   I always wanted to be a princess and come to find out I actually am  .  It was SO EXCITING!  You will be amazed what you find out about who you are!

I have become absolutely obsessed with this website and reading information about my relatives and now I am trying to gather more information using the tools they offer to continue extending my pedigree chart as far out as possible.  It is amazing how much data you will find on your family day one because so many people worldwide are adding information to this database every single day.  It is AWESOME!

Log in and try it out today – you will be so excited at what you find!  Just go to the homepage and in the upper right hand corner click the words “Join for Free”. Then fill in the About Yourself page with where you are from and your date and place of birth (this will start your personal box that will begin your family tree). There is a checkbox on the page asking if you are a member of the LDS Church or not – just click yes or no – the only thing this affects is that for LDS Church members it will show information on baptism into the church and temple attendance.  Whether you are LDS or not you get full access to all the family tree information and photos and memories and journals, etc.  So you don’t miss out on any of the exciting things the system offers either way.

I guarantee that as you get into linking to your grandparents or great-grandparents (or whichever generation is no longer living because remember that your living relatives only show up if they are added manually to the system) and you see the amazing family tree automatically start to show it you will become obsessed just like I am – SO SO SO COOL!"

Have a great day everyone and make sure and figure out who your ancestors are on www.familysearch.org  !"

~Amy

I am about to sign in to all the free websites to find out for myself what is out there from my family. I know some members of my family have done a lot of research from my mom's side but almost nothing has been done from my father's side. My family is particularly tricky because many of the women in my family didn't get married so the children carry their mother's name and not their father's last name which can be confusing.