For many of us, comprehending our family’s rich and diverse history may not be the easiest task at hand. Many extended families are marked by numerous divorces and separations, the conjoining of several lineages and even adoption. While figuring out one’s family tree may look intimidating, genealogy services are a reputable source in untangling even the most complex family background.
A genealogy service allows inquisitive individuals to enter their family names and scour through results in the family tree database. While every service is unique in its search mechanisms, one popular genealogy service reported by 6StarReviews.com is Ancestry.com. Ancestry gives users access to fun facts like the meaning of surnames and international record collections for paying members.
Say you’re a “Smith” and you feel like the quest for your true family background may be worthless because of the prevalence of your last name. One genealogy service, One Great Family, allows members to utilize special family tree software and link their lineage with global ancestry links. That way, you’ll be able to browse through existing records and have your family tree updated automatically for you.
There is no feeling quite like knowing where you came from and discovering a hidden family secret, such that you’re related to Abraham Lincoln or Marilyn Monroe somewhere down the line. While relying on Uncle Barry’s word that you’re delineated from royalty may be trustful on your part, a genealogy and family tree service can truly divide fact from fiction.
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Genealogy & Family Tree Services
Saturday, July 17th, 2010Get Ready to Begin Your Irish Genealogical Quest!
Saturday, July 4th, 2009Are you ready to begin your own Irish genealogical quest? You’re not alone. Today, over 34 million people in the United States alone have Irish ancestry. It’s one of the most commonly searched nationalities in American genealogy! Irish roots are found in every part of American life, thanks largely to a huge influx of immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Not only is Ireland well-represented among the population of the United States, it can be found throughout the world. People in nearly every nation on earth have ancestry that could ultimately lead them on an Irish genealogical quest. The people of Ireland have been fanning out throughout the world since as early as the 7th century, when monks from the “Emerald Isle” set out to bring Christianity to the masses in Europe. Emigration continued at a steady pace until the 19th century, when it exploded! The infamous potato famine was happening then, and it caused 2 million Irish nationals to emigrate to nations all over the world, but particularly England, Scotland, Canada, Australia, and the United States.
If you want to identify your Irish ancestors and get to know who they were, there’s now plenty of opportunity to do so. Today, there are more records than ever that have been opened to the public, and even made available online! Lots of websites, such as the Origins Network, now make Irish genealogical records available online for a small monthly fee. You can use these websites to find such important records as birth, death, and marriage records, church registers, census records, and rosters of property owners (also known as Griffiths Valuation). These records typically go back into about the mid-19th century, but that’s just the beginning of what’s available. Keep looking, because your Irish ancestors are there!
Breaking Through #1 Mexico Family Genealogy Research Challenge: Frustration
Monday, June 1st, 2009What are the leading five challenges that prevent people from finding someone in Mexico or starting their Mexican family genealogy research? The most common challenge that I have come across in my research is frustration. People may feel as though there may be no hope in finding the person they are looking for.
Maybe they are frustrated because they don’t know or speak the Spanish language. This can be especially upsetting for people who are doing their Mexican family genealogy and researching to find a mother or father living in Mexico.
Some clients have told us that their biggest challenge is they do not speak Spanish, have never visited Mexico, don’t know much about the country and have no idea where to start. Some tell us they have names and some information, but have not had any luck at all finding anybody. They may be ready to stop their Mexico family genealogy research because they feel overwhelmed, confused or even depressed. They are possibly frustrated because they may have spent hours on the Internet and have come up with nothing.
Let’s talk about that for a minute. There’s a good reason why a person doing family genealogy research for someone in Mexico has not found any information. Let’s start with the Internet. For most people, the Internet is an easy way to find people. Let’s face it, if you are trying to find someone in the United States, all you need to do is put in their name, city, state, and maybe their zip code.
There are many online search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or the Internet White Pages. If a person has done something that got them listed on the Internet such as: owning a web site; have published articles; been in a newspaper; or even just have a residential listing that is online, they can easily be found through an online search just by plugging their information into a search engine. There is a lot of personal information on people living in the United States and there are several ways to search for them and it is very easy to find them–if they are living in the United States.
So naturally, when most people think about finding someone in Mexico, whether or not they are doing family genealogy research, they turn to the Internet. However, the problem with trying to find someone in Mexico by using the Internet is that very little of the information on individuals who are living in Mexico is digitized. Herein lays the problem. The information is not on the Internet including free family genealogy web sites. If you did an Internet search for Mexico, you would receive a lot of results, but a closer look at the results reveals that most of them have to do with New Mexico or Mexico, Missouri. The results you get from these online searches are almost always about people living in the United States and are not focused on the Country of Mexico which is where you want to get information.
Marie Daly, director of the Research Library at the New England Historic Genealogical Society gave this comment about family genealogy research on the Internet, “I’d say perhaps only 10 percent of the genealogical information out there is on the Web. But when people do genealogy research, they think that’s 100 percent, and they make a big error that way. Not everything is on the Web. And some of the things that are on the Web are erroneous.” – How to be a Self-Sufficient Researcher by Margaret Moen
Even though you may spend a lot of time looking for this information and have visited some of the family genealogy research web sites, it may be in the wrong direction. So rest your fingers for a minute if you have already spent an hour or more looking on the Internet. Why would I say this? Because most people have used up their own ideas of where and how to search online after an hour. There is a science to searching online. After an hour most people have used up all of their resources and ideas of how to look for information. After that a lot of people are just spending time surfing the net, bouncing from site to site, looking and hoping for some new information.
People may feel that if they keep searching, they will find that one family genealogy research web site that has the information they are looking for. There is no one magic web site that will give you a simple answer to locate someone living in Mexico. It is just not out there and this includes free family genealogy sites.
If you are frustrated because you have spent a lot of time looking for someone, have tried free family genealogy web sites and nothing you have done has worked, you are finally in the right place. In the next few articles, I am going to share with you information on what to do and how to do it. So don’t give up.