• Genealogy & Ancestry - "My 12-times-great-grandfather invented the toilet seat!"
    13 replies, posted
What the Fuck is Genealogy? To keep it simple and short - it's the history of your family & ancestors. It might not need to include what kind of beetroot your great uncle in year 298 was farming, but even just a close-family tree showcasing even just your parents, grandparents and siblings is a start to digging up your family's past! It can be summarized as being the research or study of your bloodline, as far-reaching as it might be, to find out where your ancestors came from, when they were born, when they died, where they lived or what they did for a living. A lot of this information can be hard to find, but in the past 2 decades with the introduction of the internet into the mix it's become increasingly easy to find a relatively long path thanks to services like Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com and FamilySearch.org, which hold global databases for anything from birth-records, marriages, funerals, criminal records and so forth. Some of these sites cost money to access, but it can be argued a "small price" to pay for finding out your familys history. Since I've been using Ancestry and MyHeritage almost exclusively, I'm gonna give a nice little rundown on how they work - specifically, Ancestry.com! Ancestry.com 'Ancestry' is, at least in my experience, the cheaper option. And when I say "cheap" I mean "it still costs a shitton, but at least it's a smaller shitton than other sites". Ancestry, like MyHeritage, which want you to cough up $200 for a year-long membership, where as Ancestry at least lets you go by the month. Their pricing is pretty decent, accessing records within your own country is ~$20 / month, international records at ~$35 a month. There's also an all-access membership for around $45 that gives you access to newspaper archives, which could be useful to find death notes, etc. There is also a free trial, which I recommend you try out before you buy, to get the base of your tree up and see if there are any records. Now, because the site requires you to enter payment information in the registration, I can't really go through the registration process step-by-step, so you're on your own there. But be sure, it's not that hard. Once you've set up your account you'll immediately be asked to set up your family tree, meaning you add yourself, and your parents, and your grandparents. Now the fun part begins! Welcome to your Family Tree! https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/110384/69fd28aa-5502-498a-9e47-a1caf048f1bb/image.png If you just set it up, you'll notice it's a bit empty. Well, what's nice about sites like these, and these types of databases in general, is that while most of these things you enter will be somewhat public record, it's generally seen that if the person you entered into your tree is still alive you likely won't be able to find their information. Sometimes there's exceptions, but I've found it's rare. This can make the first few layers a bit of a pain in the ass to set up since you'll need to do some "manual labour", so to speak, until you reach a point in your family history where your relatives aren't alive. For most people that would be grandparents or great-grandparents, so now would be the time to grab a notepad and talk to your parents about your familys history as far as they can remember! The more you can get, the easier of a time you'll have in the process of expanding your tree. Generally you'll want your parents, grand-parents and possibly great-grandparents full names, date of birth and date of death (if applicable). If you can find out where they were born and where they died, that should increase your chances. Once you've got the info you need, enter it into your tree! Grow some Leaves on your Tree! https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/110384/bcc3e0f1-da07-44c0-8632-e3808138a07d/image.png Voilá! If you committed to the previous steps of gathering info on your grandparents and/or great-grandparents, you should now have a slightly bigger tree - and one that hopefully it spouting some leaves! Depending on what site you use, it might not be a leaf, it might be a big button that says "records available" if you use MyAncestry for instance. The point is that this little icon means that the system has recognized the info you put in about your relative, and you can proceed to find out more about them! This can be anything from records found in churches/mosques or police-stations - any trace of them that has been stored in the genealogy-sites databases. This can also include OTHER members family trees. If you go on bigger sites to do your research, there'll be more members. More members means you're more likely to run into someone else who has already researchrd a bit, which means you can compare your tree with theirs and adopt whatever information they've found. Once you find tips, you can go in and check them. Usually this will include a photo-copy of whatever document the mention is in, with transcribed information so you can cross-reference it with reality. I've found that most of the time it checks out pretty well, though. The tips-page will also tell you if other trees mention the relative you put in, which can be extra useful since it can mean other members of the site have already researched your relative! Cross-check their info with yours and see if it's a match! Genealogy Software Now, while these sites are super-useful, I don't really build my family tree in them, for a couple of reasons. Firstly the sites can be a bit slow to work with. They don't give you much freedom of design. They're overall a bit clunky to use, lots of refreshing pages and general website assery. So, while I have a very rough family-tree through there where I keep all the rough data, I transcribe all the info I need into a software called Family Tree Builder. The software is available for PC, iOS and Android (not sure if there's a Mac version) and uses MyHeritage's databases, so if you plan to use their service it should connect easily. My only problem is that it allows only up to 250 people in your tree, but even then that's pretty generous if all you want is a visual representation of your close family/relatives or a wider view of your entire lineage. The picture below was made in their software, but your tree can be very widely costumized to look in an range of ways, you can put more or less info beneath or next to each person if you want to as well. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/110384/823bd5ca-3754-4726-ae59-322949c15db4/image.png There's a lot of other softwares available out there, like RootsMagic, Family Historian, TreeDraw and so forth. Some cost money and some are free. Go and try some out and see which one fits you best! Personally I really recommend Family Tree Builder, though. It has some "premium-only" feature limitations, but nothing that gets in the way of making your tree. What now? That's pretty much it for the online-portion. Of course, not every document in the world will exist in these databases, but there's a fairly large portion out there to get you started. There's a multitude of "non-online" ways to do this research, for instance if you figure out where your grandparents were born you can visit local archives and dive into the books yourself if you feel like you're up for that time-consuming tasks. Personally I think it's really fun. You never know what you'll find! So! That's all I had to say really. Now you kinda know how to to family research! So tell us! What are you finding? Who are you finding? How far back? What did they do? Personally, I've managed to research my family back to the 15th century on my dads great-grandfathers side, some respected vicors and common ancestors of later branched-off noble families. No blue blood for me though, from what I can find. On my moms great-grandfathers side I've got to about 18th century, found out I have an entire branch of the family that exists because my third-great-grandmother was sexually assaulted. Found criminal records of it, convictions and all. What's your family like?
I'm reluctant to go deep into the details but we have traced my (paternal) family's lineage firmly into the 1200s, and more dubiously before that, through a long line of nobility. The ancestral hall bearing my family's name is still standing in England. Things are pretty boring until someone decided to come to America. All the American descendants are fucking weird.
My tree is boring except that my something great grand pappy came over on the mayflower and had tons of sex. There is even someone on else on Facepunch related to him if memory serves.
Honestly, my family tree is all over the place. All I really know is that my fathers side is full of Polish and my last name means "hole in the dirt" in Old Polish. As for my mother's side, well it's fun. Basically, my mother's side has many ~prestigious~ folk, including a man who survived the Charge of the Light Brigade, and lots and lots of crazy Irish and British folk. Sadly, I haven't been able to really do an Ancestery database lookup in a while.
I'm a direct blood relative of Robert E Lee. Yeah, that Lee. I hate it.
My Grandma is an armchair genealogist and apparently we descend from people who came on the actual Mayflower ship. Pretty cool
what's the point of a monthly membership? it seems like you can get all you want out of it in a few hours
Depends on how deep you wanna go and how much time you got, not to mention they always keep adding new documentation from all over the world so there's always a chance new information can pop up that brings new leads. If your'e satisfied just going up the line without much thought then you could probably knock it out in a few hours, sure. But larger branching and verifying that all the info is actually accurate is a whole other beast I've been doing my tree now for about a week and a half, a few hours in the evening every other day or so. The below is only covering direct ancestry and immediate family. Goes from me at the bottom and my siblings and immediate cousins, to my aunts, uncles, then up towards grandparents, great grandparents etc. Some of the upper generations have branches that aren't visible here because they're not direct ancestors, like for instance third fourth row from the top, that family has an additional 4 children. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/110384/2c18c9ea-6a28-49f6-ab32-b6a856be4d79/image.png
My mom's been doing our ancestry for quite a few years now and one interesting thing that she found is that we're apparently directly descended from the Viking bloke who settled Normandy. However, as cool as that sounds, those records also say that we're directly descended from Odin and Thor so I'm admittedly kind of skeptical about it all.
descendant of the last high king of Ireland, on my dad's side. He was overthrown by the normans, my mom's side of the family destiny awaits
sorry mush
I really want to, but the pricetag scares me off, though that's because I wouldn't just do ancestry, I'd wanna do the health one as well.
Sadly the health one isn't even available internationally
I've seen some alternatives at least for Sweden, but just as expensive. :[
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