When I first started looking at making a family tree that was my first question, Where do I start? So me being me, I plugged my great-grandfather's name into the google search bar and got one hit for a man by the same name, in the same family but was not my great-grandfather. Well that was no help at all, but I do not give up that easy! So, I thought well let's see what happens if I just leave out his first name and google his last name. Google had a heart attack! Apparently he has a HUGE extended family, and there began my plunge into genealogy. What a trip it has been over the last almost 10 years. I've always has a certain curiosity for knowing where my family came from but it wasn't until that night about 10 years ago when I put my google skills to use that I started to find out just how much fun and rewarding it can be to find documents and pictures and learn how my ancestor's lived and where they came from. I have learned a lot over the years and continue to learn more every day.
One of the first sites that I came across back then was Ancestry.com, now it's a good site, has some really good information on it, lots of data bases, some that are hard if not impossible to access anywhere else BUT it's a costly site and I am far from a rich person! After a few free trials and a couple of 6 month paid memberships, I came to the realization that although the site itself had some good information and data bases there were far to many "cooks in the kitchen" so to speak.
Looking more closely into the family trees on this site revealed that some of the relationships/trees on the site had the wrong information or the completely wrong family line or documents were connected to people they didn't clearly belong to. This site was getting me nowhere. So I decided that it was time to branch out and do some exploring on my own I didn't NEED to pay good money to find incorrect information, be told by people that my information was wrong when I knew for a fact that it was not wrong or told that the original documents I had in my possession were "fake". Yes some people are that brutal, even when faced with the correct information and documentation they refuse to believe that someone might know a little more about their own immediate or close extended family than a person that lives in another country and has no connection to that branch of the family what.so.ever.
This was the beginning of something beautiful..... gathering free documents and information online and building a well documented and finely sourced Family Tree. I won't say it's been easy, because that would be a lie, but it has been a fun learning experience. I have found some amazing documents and stories, and met some amazing people. Fine tuned my research skills to a point it no longer takes me months to find information or documents. Of course I am only human and I have at times forgotten to save a source or two....maybe more than that but I almost always stumble across the site again and for the most part remember to save the link or at the very least bookmark the website so I can add the source later.
In future blogs I will share some of the interesting sites I have found as well I plan on sharing some of the family lines I am working on, hoping to help other researchers with their family lines.
Good Luck and Happy Hunting!
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