Many histories written in books have often resulted in disputes and disagreements by other researchers and historians. These published historical accounts often end up hard to retract because they have already rooted in the minds of many people. But for those who want to think outside the box, doing genealogic research about himself can make him discover history about himself and his community in an interesting and educational way. Who knows the history he would eventually discover is more accurate that popular published ones?
Below are steps and steps in doing intensive genealogic research:
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Carefully prepare your questions. The information you need to know include exact full names, exact date of important events like birthdays, death days, marriage, baptism, etc. Other information to obtain are significant events in certain era or periods related to a person.
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Start small. Start with both your parents. Ask them the questions you have prepared. Then get four more leads from them – two grandparents from both sides.
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If all four grandparents are still alive, very good. But if they are already deceased, then you need to get information from other sources. Perhaps you might want to go to the town of your grandparents. Ask the neighborhood about information on your grandparents if they know. Or just ask anything about the place. You can use the information later. If possible, bring camera with you and take pictures of the place.
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Validate the data gathered with documents you can find in local town or church registries. You can also research online but make sure you do not rely on few websites only. The internet is a very rich repository of both junk and important information.
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If possible, use a software specially designed for genealogy. Start firing up your favorite browser and look for free downloads of genealogic software.
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Start writing your pedigree chart or family tree. Arrange all nodes and names and the related information. One everything is in place, you can easily spot trends. Can you see history similar to the published popular ones?
With today’s global community on the internet, one should not limit having a family tree at local level. Millions of people are sharing data online – and sharing genealogic data is of no exception. Some websites offer free service to make people see their genealogy. This involve letting a person draw his basic family tree structure with pertinent information such as correct spelling of names and accurate dates. The person can then share this family tree to other relatives and friends who will further share the information to more relatives and friends. These people who have been shared the information can add any relevant information to the tree. The result would be a bigger family with members from many different countries of the world and may span many generations. New histories can be written and new realities about person can be found. What makes this amazing is that such an undertaking of global scale can be done by just sitting down and hitting the keyboard.
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Do you want to know exactly who your ancestors were: where they lived; what they did for a living; whether that story of highwaymen, criminals and corrupt relatives is factual, or a figment of Grandma's over-active imagination? |
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