Building a family tree graph is a very time-consuming process, but it is extremely rewarding.  Having a personal record of family lineage is a great treasure. Family lineage is one of the most interesting topics for anyone to discuss because it is unique to each family.  Through either the help of professionals or your own efforts, family lineage is a treasure worth discovering.

Finding everything from royalty to heroes in family lineage is exciting. Recently, the Latter-day Saint church provided Larry King with a copy of his family history during his evening TV show. King commented that although he had received many gifts during his life, he would cherish the gift of his family lineage above all the rest.

Did you ever consider that your great-great-grandfather may have fought in the civil war? Perhaps your great-great-great grandfather made his way here from the "old country" on a great old sailing ship with just a few pence in his pocket. What of your grandmother? Perhaps she was the local librarian in her town. Once you start a genealogy search, you most likely will find tracing your family history fascinating. What may start with the simple desire to know a few names and dates may turn into a passion.

To help in gathering data, have in hand an example of a family tree diagram.  This diagram of a family tree will help you in asking the right questions and gathering your data. You should be able to easily find a printable blank family tree if you do a search for family tree for free.

Field research is not always the most practical method for filling in the gaps of your family lineage. After exhausting the data that’s already been compiled in indexes, the next step is to do your own research.  It is certainly the most time consuming, but it is also often the most rewarding. You can hire an accredited genealogist to do this for you, or you can tackle it yourself. Field research is done by going into census records, birth/death records, marriage records, and anything else that’s available in order to find information on a family.

There are many ways to get tidbits on your family history. Perhaps you’re lucky like me and your family never threw any scrap of paper away. You may have a handwritten birth certificate, as I do, for my great-grandfather who was born in Germany. You may even want to take a camera to the cemetery and take pictures of the tomb stones.

Here is another example. A few years ago, I was renting a beach house for a week. I bumped into the owner while he was doing a little maintenance on the house. We struck up a conversation, found out that both of us had German ancestors. I told him that my mother was helping me build our family tree and we ran into a stumbling block. He told me that he had a friend in Germany that might help out. I sent this gent in Germany a letter asking for his assistance. He agreed, did some research at churches and other places and mailed me some documents.

Interviewing relatives is free! As part of your free family and friend search sit down with your parents, grandparents and other relatives and find out as much information as they know; names, dates, and places about their parents and their grandparents. These interviews should help you make your family tree back to your great-grandparents or even your great-great-grandparents!  As a token of gratitude, consider giving them a engraved family tree gift. Contact the local historical society in the town where your ancestors lived.  Contact the cemetery where family members were buried to get birth dates and dates of death.

Birth, death and marriage records are generally easy to find, especially if the family members you are searching about were born here in this country. Maybe you have letters sent back and forth that have information about your ancestors in them. I have a bible that belonged to my great-grandmother where she recorded family births, deaths and marriages.

These are some basic sources of finding information. Certainly, volumes have been compiled on the subject of family lineage, but only recently has a new method of research been revealed - DNA testing. Through DNA, people whose research has hit a roadblock and hasn’t moved for years can conduct a DNA test to either confirm records already obtained, link themselves to someone they believe to be a relative, or determine what ethnicities make up their DNA.

All of the above assumes you are tracing your roots, however, you can follow the same advice if you are searching others ancestry.

Tracing family roots to build a family tree graph may turn into a hobby for you or may become a passion. Wherever you fall, you will find that the research into family history and the result will be a treasure for not only you, but for all those in your lineage that continue your work.

Creative Gene: Carnival of Genealogy
Welcome to the January 18, 2009 edition of the Carnival of Genealogy. The topic for this edition is: Winter Photo Essay. We couldn’t have better timing for this edition as the pacific northwest has had wicked winter storms.

Tracing the Tribe: The Jewish Genealogy Blog
A reduction in financial resources earmarked for hobbies - even passionate ones like genealogy - will definitely impact book sales, magazine subscriptions, for-fee website renewals. I wouldn’t be surprised to see professional people here.

GenBlog: Weekly Genealogy Blogging
Genealogy bloggers LOVE carnivals because there’s something for everyone. To learn about when these showcase-type events are happening, read others’ genealogy blogs. Someone’s always talking about a carnival.

Louisiana Genealogy Blog: Search the Gulf South Historical Review
You can find links to other genealogy blogs from a variety of sources below this blog. There are links to news stories about genealogy in Louisiana (when that Google thing works) and genealogy tags from Word Press.

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When you are tracing ancestors, one of the most common problems you will come across is the variation in surname spellings.

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Here are some of the reasons why this happens.

1. Until the 19th century there were no standardized spellings for surnames. Around 90% of the population could not read or write, so spelling was not important.

2. Most documents were written by someone in authority, and when writing someone’s name, he could only go by what was given to him by speech. So, when one of my Reid ancestors got married, he would give his name to the presiding priest (the Reids were Catholics), who would write it down as he heard it. Therefore, this line of my family can be found under REID, REED or READ - and possibly even REDE, all of which sound exactly the same.

3. Some foreign immigrants would anglicize their names because they wanted to fit in with the local community or because of discrimination. The German name, ALBRECHT could therefore become ALLBRIGHT, and the Jewish name COHEN could become KAHN.

4. Strong accents could result in surnames being mis-heard when given to someone from a different area. If your ancestors have moved from place to place, this could often change the spelling of their surname drastically.

5. Where surnames have been indexed in more recent times, the indexers have had to decipher some difficult handwriting, and very often names have therefore been mis-spelt.

It is very important, therefore, that you look at all variations of a surname when you are doing your searches. NEVER assume that someone is not your ancestor because the spelling is not correct!

With some surnames, this can cause time-consuming searches. I have experience of this with my own family tree. My maternal grandfather’s birth name (he was adopted) was MCEWEN. The variations on this surname appear to be endless. I have found the following possibilities so far, and there are many more: MCKOWAN, MCEWEN, MCEWAN, MAGOWEN, MCKEON, MCKEOWN, MCKEWEN, MCKEWAN, MCCUNE and so on.

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Most index search engines will do a phonetic search, which does help to a large extent. However, these do not always cover every possibility, and it may sometimes be necessary to use your imagination and try a few different spellings in the search box.

Sometimes surnames can evolve into something surprisingly different from their original spelling. I once discovered that the Northamptonshire family surname of PETTIFER had evolved from the 17th century name of PECKOVER.

It is a good idea to say the name out loud using the dialect of the region they lived in, or came from, and seeing how the vowel sounds flatten or widen. Don’t forget that consonants can also sound different with a heavy accent, and particularly if a person had a cold at the time!

Common mis-spellings also need to be taken into consideration. For example, the "S" at the end of some names, such as SIMMONS, could be dropped, or a double letter shortened to one. Modern typing errors often involve a key that is next to the correct on, so NUNN could become MUNN.

Some of the letters used in old handwriting can look very different to the same letters today, and even experienced indexers can make mistakes when transcribing these. For example, the letter "t" can look like a "c", and "o" can look like "a". On one of the census indexes I found that my BOTT ancestors had been indexed as BATT.

Genealogy is never straight-forward! But this is what makes it such an absorbing hobby, and when you have used some imaginative detective work to work out your ancestors’ different surname spellings you will feel all the more rewarded by your efforts when you eventually find your missing person!

Author: Rosamunde Bott

Ros is a professional genealogist and writer, and offers free help and advice and an ancestry tracing service at her website, Tracing Your Ancestors In The UK.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rosamunde_Bott

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Family Tree Search: How To Find Your Ancestors

Are you planning on making your family tree? Are you curious to find where you come from and uncover your family’s history throughout the years? You must know that it’s not an easy task and you will need time and effort to create a complete family tree. You have to be organized and patient. But when you’re done the feeling you get is really unique. So let’s start.

Enlarge Image I will try to give you some basic tips to get you started but you must remember that you need to research a lot unless there’s already some kind of family tree created by some of your ancestors.

If you are serious, invest on a family tree software that will organize all the information you find. Paperwork may become overwhelming as you will notice.

You will need a lot of paper.

Use a single sheet of paper for every person/ancestor in your family. Then make small family groups of ancestors. You will write information you find for every person in the single piece of paper that belongs to that person. And you will write a summary of the information from all persons who belong to a family group to the sheet of paper that belongs to a certain family group. For example for your family group (e.g. you, your spouse and your 3 children), use 6 sheets of paper one for every member of the family and one for the family group (5 members and 1 family group).

In the ancestor sheet of paper you will write all kinds of information you find about that particular person: Date Born, Birthplace, Marriage Date, Date of Death, Father’s Name, Mother’s Name, Spouse Name and all other information you decide is worth mentioning in the family tree.

In the family group sheet of paper you will write a summary of the information you have gathered from all persons who belong to that family group: Number of members, Husband, Wife, Children and other kind of information you might find and want to include.

Now it’s time to work and research. Start with yourself and your family. Gather information from your parents and their children. Then your grandparents and their children. Remember to keep track of the family groups and the sheets of paper that belong to each ancestor. As you go back in time you may need to contact other relatives, family friends or even researchers. Ask them to help you fill the information on your sheets of paper. Tell them you are creating a family tree for your entire family.

It’s a good idea to keep a family tree log of your actions. For example when you find a birth certificate update your family tree log writing the date that you found that death certificate and the person that death certificate belongs to.

Check out if there’s already someone who has created a family tree for a certain family group. Use that information to save time but verify if the information you find is correct. Look for wedding books, divorce papers, birth or death certificates, funeral cards, awards, diplomas, school books, employment records, military records, medical records and anything that you might find useful. You can obtain a lot of information from such papers like dates, ages, parents, witnesses etc. If you are really motivated and determined to create a family tree, this journey to the past will be fascinating.

And now let’s move on to the fun part. After you have gathered all the information you need, it’s time to design your family tree. You may want to use paper and fill the information so that it is organized and easy to access. But I’m sure after all that paperwork you will definitely need help from a family tree software that will save you a lot of time. I hope you will reach your goal of organizing your family’s history and creating a family tree.

Family Tree System
If you are interested here’s a step by step family tree system that could really help you

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George Geder: Genealogy - Dis-Remembered Ancestors

From my favorite genealogy reference book, ‘Finding A Place Called Home, A Guide to African-American Genealogy and historical Identity’ by Dee Parmer Woodtor, Ph.D. comes the idea of "Disremembered Ancestors".

Zoe Williams on our obsession with genealogy

Zoe Williams: The latest census site’s appeal is clear but using it as proof of social mobility is seriously misleading.

The Geneaholic: Genealogy Journal - 01/15/09

After reading blogs and email and Facebook, I posted How will the economy affect genealogy? and then worked for about an hour on my Project M find - a wife’s maiden name. I couldn’t find her family in the 1900 or 1880 listings.

Genealogy Gems News: New Year Blog Series: Genealogy Strategy #7

New Year Blog Series: Genealogy Strategy #7. Strategy #7. Post your family tree online. This year reach out to the rest of the world and find out who else is  researching your family tree.

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