Discovering YOU Magazine July 2017 | Page 14

FEATURE ARTICLE

".... you will find that your father’s side of the family can be easier to research than your mother’s side, because on your mothers’ side last names change

more frequently. "

are blank and can be filled out with the information you already know starting with yourself. After you enter all the information on yourself, then you can add the information on your mother and father, your grandparents and so on if you know that information. Don’t try to move too fast.

When doing your Genealogy, you will find that your father’s side of the family can be easier to research than your mother’s side, because on your mothers’ side last names change more frequently. The information you can enter will be shared with all the members of the ancestry.com family. Also, this site will have many other trees online for viewing, such as well know people. I have already made my own online family tree which is now over 400 cousins all related to me. After your tree starts to grow with all the information you entered, then you may start getting emails from people like I did that have some of the same names on their tree as you or I do, and now you are finding cousins related to you.

When I did my family tree, I went back as far as I could before adding the names of my grandfathers and great grandfathers’ siblings, which can be found on census reports. In my family, I’m a 7th generation American and my dad is 6th generation. When you start searching, you may not know right away which generation you are until you go back far enough to find out. Once I made it back to the 1st generation that recorded that my 4th great grandfather who came to America was from Ireland, then I knew I was a 7th generation Lynch. Once I added all these names going vertical on my family tree, then I started adding the siblings on my direct line, which made my tree fatter by going horizontal, which added more than 400 cousins all related to me.

When you do a family tree, you can always have it set up on your computer where you are just one click away from accessing your tree when you need to add more data, which you will. I’ve had my tree for over 10 years. Every month I’m adding more information such as dates, photos, documents or other found relatives. You may want to document all this information on your family tree and not have to rely on your memory. Genealogy never ends unless you put it on the shelf for a while, but it can be very addicting. I’ve been doing this well over 10 years and I’m still locating more information, all the time.

Having cousins out there related to me is a great source of information because they send me documents, photos and other information to help me with my direct family line. By receiving this