Young Writers Society

Lately I've been trying to research my family line, my father's side first and then my mother's. I quickly ran into a roadblock: i.e. you're expected to pay for every little bit of information the saerches find. I'm broke - all I really want to do is see if I have any surviving relatives in Germany or Slovakia.

Would anyone have any advice on how to get answers on this? Something free? o.O

Yeah, its a rip off. Its better to go find the hard copies of that stuff yourself. People like to charge a lot for that, so you've got to make some contacts.

More often then not, those sites have no information to offer you anyway.

My great-aunt is obsessed with geneology, and if I knew how she does it I'd tell you. She gets everything, paper documents, photographs, etc. It's pretty hardcore, but I dunno how she gets all her information.

(/random useless info)

DD, don't you love what you do find out from your parents? Mine have tons to tell me but get distracted so I never hear the full stories of their family history.

I don't know if this is what you wanted but it is from the BBC site (Who do you think you are?): Family History.

A site I just found through my language arts class that's completely free is www.myheritage.com

Hope that's helpful.

I guess I better speak up since I was able (finally!) to track down an ancestor of mine from the 1800's.

Firstly, choose a side (surname) of your grandparents as that is where your relation will start. I started with Butler on my dad's side and went backwards. It wasn't an easy task and took six months of constant research. I asked many realitives I knew that had any knowledge or once were in contact with the deceased to help fill in the gaps. So, that's one meathod in researching - word of mouth.

Second, when "word of mouth" ran its course and I hit a brick wall, I search through Civil War archives because I knew my ancestor served in it. For you, if you find any interesting or any details in general - write them down! Any detail could be imparitive later on, even if the person had two different eye colours or a "large shnoz," they could be the key in locating your family members.

Third, pictures, if any, are your friend. Because I'm a history geek, although, the majority know the "substance" of pictures have changed through the years. Certaintly, there's the B&W photos, and someone can kinda gage on the age of it but the real clues is how the picture was photographed and the type of paper used. Antiques intrigue me, and thus, I've looked at thousands of photographs. Pictures that are B&W - you can assume at least the era was in the mid 40's-50's. When you hit the 30's, the outside of the picture may be "curvey" like someone took siccors, and snipped "loops" around the edges. Also, in the 30's, photos were horribly blurred - usually anyway because there was no way of focusing the lense - not to mention lense to my knowledge didn't exist, lol. Beyond that, if you enter the 19th or older than that, photos have a very distinct appeal to them and any person will know right away, "Wow, that's old!" For an example, my ancestor would was born in the mid 1800's, his photograph is in a little, tin picture frame, and the substanc of the photo - he's in B&W for sure but it's almost a brownish colour - very weird, and you don't find tin picture frames often - they are collector items and worth a lot to some people.

So, observing and learning about photos is an instant look into the past, and is a good learning tool when trying to find a timeline. You may, like me, will have to look around - a lot - because that's the only way to learn. Books will not teach you as in depth as your own two eyes.

Fourth, and lastly, there are the archives. Most towns locally or nearby have archives about the county to preserve its history. For me, the archives to my county is in a town called Barre, and there is also the Collage, UVM, which was founded by Ira Allen. So, the collage itself has a huge datebase for vistors to browse. Fortunately, because I read a decent amount about Vermont's history, I'm aware of the millions of unmarked graves near Lake Champlain - most from the Civil War. If you don't have access to any local archives or collections, you can do either of two things:

1. Run a search on the Net and see if there are archives near you. It may not be in your county but several hours away. But if you really are intent on learning about your family tree, the gas milage and hours spent driving shouldn't interfer too much.

2. Try your local library or several if you have access to more than one. Some libraries have collections of the town's history and even keep newspapers all the way back to the 19th or late 18th Century!

As for me, with a lot of prying and poking to my second uncle, he finally told me that a distant realitive; his father recorded and traced the surname, Landon, to the 16th Century! Now, I just need to get copies of those records, LOL!

I hope I helped and good luck.

Much thanks, fishr! That helped a lot... ^_~

Welcome!