When I started researching my
family tree I first looked at how others research their families and the web
sites available. The first group that hit me right in the face was those
looking for legendary ancestors. I knew from talking with my parents there was
little chance of any aristocrats in either side of my family, they were for
generations poor struggling people from Ireland, Scotland, England and on my
wife's side Germany, which meant that information about them would be harder to
find, but their life stories should still be told. Some others just played the
numbers game just a long list of names with not too many facts about how they
lived. So I decided to try to find out as much as I can about each generation
to best reconstruct their story with as little guessing thrown in as possible.
My wife and I did
a DNA test through ancestry.com to see what that would tell us and it confirmed
what I already thought that our family came out of Africa some forty thousand
years ago around the Black Sea and down the Danube River valley. Some becoming
the Celtic peoples others the Germanic peoples of Europe. Even if you think you
know the answer it is good to confirm it as much as possible. I have a outline
of where we came from, what I and hopefully future generations have to do is
fill in the blanks.
One thing I
learn along the way was get as many fact about a person before you add them to
your tree. Just name is not enough, when I put the name of my 2nd
great-grandfather on a site for Ireland there were a enough Hugh Boyle to fill
a good size book. When I page through indexes I notice that people in Scotland
name their children the same names John, Hugh, Peter Steven and Patrick for
boys and Margaret, Sarah, Anne (or Ann) and Mary for girls so it is easy to go
down the wrong path. So if you can get Location, Age, Occupation, and relatives
to be sure you have the right person.
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