We’re a couple of weeks into the Covid19 challenge and I’m still writing something each day. On Sundays, the focus of my post is Prayer. I’ve decided to use my Saturday posts for activity suggestions, beginning last week with watching What’s in the Bible.
If your role in the crisis is to stay at home or if you are an essential worker who wants something other than coronavirus to think about, it’s a good time to look into your Family History. You can read about the journey I took from my first click on an ad from Ancestry.com to producing a family history book for a reunion HERE. Since then, I’ve repeated the process and written family histories for the other three branches of my tree.
Front cover of the VENT Family History book I made
What I want to do today is share some tips for getting started with no financial commitment.
First, start with what you know about parents and grandparents, collecting maiden and married names, dates and places of birth from those who are living if possible, putting together a little tree to begin with. Then choose a branch to research.
Some genealogy sites, including Ancestry.com, offer free trials, but do require a credit card in the account set-up. It’s easy to cancel before a paid subscription starts, but there are some websites you can access without payment info.
Family Search, a project of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is a good start. After you set up an account, click SEARCH and then RECORDS to get started. Put in what you know and you’ll get a list of possible records. Check out the ones that look promising based on what you know.
Find-a-grave is an excellent resource, often telling you much more than where your ancestor is buried. Links are made to spouses, children, and often parents. Other users have sometimes added pictures, memories, or obituaries. Military service is often noted.
Plaque on the back of my dad’s gravestone
National Park Services is helpful if you have a Civil War Soldier in the family. Click on PEOPLE and then SOLDIER AND SAILORS DATABASE to look for your person.
Newspapers.com, a part of Ancestry.com, is fun to search if you want stories and obituaries in addition to names and dates. If you want to avoid a subscription, pick a week when you have time to look up the names you’ve gathered, sign up for a FREE 7 DAY TRIAL and be sure to put in the state where he/she lived and choose newspapers in the area of their residence.
Story about the 1936 Vent reunion from newspapers.com
If you are serious about finding your family history and are willing to put a lot of time into it, sign up for the 14-day FREE TRIAL with Ancestry.com and then choose the plan you want to pay for.
Lastly, think about how you will store your records. You don’t necessarily want to set up a tree and start attaching records to it, and if you look at other researchers’ trees, be sure to verify the information. I chose to print out a lot of records, especially the Find-a-grave memorials, and to copy and save pictures of birth, marriage, and death certificates. Another way to keep information is to take a cell phone picture of your screen. The trouble with keeping everything on-line is that you sometimes have to maintain an account to access it later.
Happy hunting!
Two generations of a Vent tree branch – Robert Vent and his sons and Carrol Vent (Mom) with my brother (in red),me, and my sisters