Researching your family history could connect you with relatives you never knew you had. It could uncover a famous or an interesting ancestor or a personal connection with an historical event. It could help you understand who you are or where you came from.
But you may not need to pay for a genealogical resource such as Ancestry.com. You may be able to do your family tree on your own.
Here’s how…
1. Look for important family tree clues hidden in your home. Look through boxes in your attic or basement for old family Bibles, address books, photos and letters, deeds, tax bills, wills, insurance policies and other documents. Generations of births, marriages and deaths sometimes are recorded in Bibles. A parent or grandparent’s old address book might yield former family members’ names and addresses. Old photos could have names on the back identifying family members you didn’t know you had. Now-departed relatives’ wills, trusts and insurance policies might list additional family members among the heirs or beneficiaries.
Helpful: When you ask family members what they recall about your ancestors, also ask them if they have any of these items in their homes…or if they know of relatives who do.
2. Don’t overlook old-fashioned libraries. Local public and academic libraries still play a key role in genealogy. Once you identify towns where your relatives have lived, contact those towns’ libraries to see if they have local histories, family histories, old diaries or other books or documents in their collections that might mention your family. If they do, visit the library…ask the librarians if they can scan and e-mail (or copy and mail) relevant pages…and/or see if you can use the interlibrary loan system to borrow books from these libraries through your town’s library. (A librarian at your local library should be able to provide details about interlibrary loan.)
Helpful: The website WorldCat.org offers a searchable catalog of more than two billion items available at libraries around the world.
3. Try free family history research sites. Ancestry.com is the most popular genealogy site not because it is the best but because it advertises very heavily. Before you ante up Ancestry.com’s subscription fee ($99 to $199 for a six-month membership), try FamilySearch.org, a free genealogy website provided by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It contains a large number of digital genealogical records from around the globe plus thousands of instructional articles and videos about conducting genealogical research (sign-up is required).
If your heritage traces to England, Ireland, Canada or Australia, try FindMyPast.com, which is comparable to Ancestry.com but much stronger with records from those countries ($9.95 per month or $34.95 for 12 months).
Or consider MyHeritage.com, which is much like Ancestry.com but costs less—$9.95 a month.
4. Explore newspaper search sites. Old newspapers are a great place to find obituaries and many other articles that mention ancestors. And you no longer have to spend long hours scanning reels of microfilm to accomplish this. Several websites now provide searchable digital access to thousands of newspapers, including local newspapers. Newspapers.com ($7.95 per month to $74.90 for six months, depending on the plan) and GenealogyBank.com ($19.95 per month after a $9.95 30-day trial or $69.95 for one year) are the most comprehensive of these. ChroniclingAmerica.LOC.gov, a 100% free site offered by the Library of Congress, is excellent, too.
Also: Fold3.com is another often-overlooked online resource. It offers US military personnel records going all the way back to the Revolutionary War ($7.95 per month after a seven-day free trial, though some information can be accessed for free). I found military records from my fourth-great-grandfather on this site, including a request by his wife to continue his pension after his 1834 death.
5. Try DNA testing. Send a swab of your saliva to any of several companies, and they will provide a report detailing where your ancestors were from. You might discover that one of your great-great-grandparents was Native American, for example.
But ethnic heritage is not the only thing DNA testing can tell you. You could learn of a long-lost relative—these sites will let you know if your DNA shows a family connection to someone else who has used its services (as long as this other person has given permission). These services are great ways to double-check genealogical research as well—if you and someone you suspect is related to you submit saliva samples, the testing can confirm the family connection.
There are three major DNA testing companies in the US, all offering the same basic service. Ancestry.com is the most popular (DNA.Ancestry.com, $99)…followed by 23AndMe.com ($199)…and then FamilyTreeDNA.com ($79 for the basic DNA test, though more extensive tests are available for higher prices). This is one time when popularity is important—because Ancestry.com is most popular, it has the largest database of DNA profiles, increasing the odds of locating relatives.
Also: Enter the DNA results you receive from any of these services into GEDMatch.com (basic information is free). If someone you are related to has done the same, you can learn of each other even if you used different genetic-testing services.
6. Look for misspellings of ancestors’ names. The further back in history you go, the greater the odds that your ancestors were flexible with the spelling of their names. Brainstorm about potential variations of ancestors’ names, and enter those into Internet databases and search tools, too. Example: One of my ancestors suddenly changed the spelling of his name from Whitfield to Whitefield.
7. Don’t let a foreign language stand in your way. If your family tree search leads to records that are in a foreign language that you cannot read, enter the text into Google Translate. If this Google resource will not translate a particular document—it cannot handle certain formats—contact the languages department of a local university and ask if a student might be available to help.
8. Don’t give up. Every family tree search reaches an apparent dead end where the direct line seems to disappear into the fog of history. Before you give up, try tracing your seemingly untraceable ancestors’ siblings. This sometimes leads to clues about where to look for the missing ancestor. This “side step” technique is very useful when an ancestor has a very common name, such as John Smith, but a sibling has a less common name such as Obadiah Smith.
