You have to know where to start when you are doing your ancestry searching. For some people, they may choose to find the easiest way to look up their roots. They may have extended family with whom they keep in touch and find out about relatives through stories and pictures. Others may want to delve into the unknown and discover the truth about missing relatives or those who had lives that were cut short or of whom people knew very little about. I chose this path because we heard that my great-grandfather had left the family (one of the many rumors about my dad’s paternal family) so I decided to go and find out for myself. The fact that he was shot on duty as a police officer - that he didn’t leave the family and his children because he ran off, gives my dad comfort.
So pick a side that you want to investigate first. I say first because once you start looking up your family tree and finding relatives that you never knew existed, you might find that you are addicted to doing this and decide to look up all branches of your family tree.
Once you have decided on a side that you want to investigate, start gathering information about them. Get their last name and find out as much as you can about them. Bear in mind that stories about people get convoluted over the years as they are told and told again. Try to get as many facts as possible about the person. My paternal grandfather, who died when he was 50, for example, was in WWII and served in the Pacific. I knew this for a fact from my father and my grandfather. We had some photos of him as a young man. But nothing past his military status and his name was evident. We had nothing else to go on when it came to this man who I remember bouncing me on his knee and taking me to the five and dime to get candy and toys.
In the last chapter, I mentioned reasons why you may want to find missing relatives or get the story on those who have passed. There is another reason, as well. I felt that I owed something to my grandfather for the kindness that he showed towards me when I was a child. He died younger than any of my other grandparents, who all lived to old age. He died even younger than two of my great grandmothers. I never got a chance to know him and by discovering his family history, I felt that I was not only doing something for myself, but something for him as well. After all, if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be here.
After you decide on where you want to start and have as much information as possible such as the following:
Name
Approximate birth date
Approximate death date
Where they lived
Where they died
Marriages
You are ready to begin. You need to have something to go on and the best place to start is to look at social security records. They keep records on everything.
