Building a family tree or going through one’s genealogy is one of the most fulfilling and rewarding undertakings one can do in his lifetime. Oftentimes though, people are intimidated, if not clueless on how to execute such. Hence, more often the not, they disregard the interest to look up relatives and family history, and just go by life, not knowing the possibility of tracking notable or unexpected relatives.
It must be known however that there are many ways on how to make possible genealogy tracking. There are many websites which offer tips, instructions and actual software which enables one to trace family lineage, allowing him to build a family tree online.
Most friendship and networking sites in fact offer the possibility of tracking of relatives although these may not offer very thorough and very reliable service. These sites, most people are familiar with, Friendster, Hi5, Multiply, Facebook and a lot more. Since these sites, most often than not, are primarily used for picture posting and a little chit chat. They are hardly used for family lineage tracing to allow one to build a family tree online.
One of the best tips, of course, in building a family tree online is going through actual family records stored in the attic or treasure chests of great grandparents. Of course, if they are senile, their memories may not serve them right. This brings the genealogy researcher to zero. One of the best alternative search mediums though are readily available in most homes – the internet.
The internet, once one types in keywords in most search engines – genealogy, family tree, family lineage, etc. – offers a plethora of sites to choose from. These sites, such as My Heritage, Tribal Pages, Ancestry, Family Search offer the clueless lineage researcher some aid. These sites, basically offer leads in finding birth certificates, death certificates, marriage certificates, and most pertinent documents relative to the identification of various people belonging to a respective family tree. In effect, having available these documents should allow tracing of people and their “position” in their respective family trees. Some of these sites also lead one to the identification of criminal records, census information or even tax information. The great thing about the internet is its capacity to allow “accessibility” even to locations from opposite segments of the globe. The internet would not require plane fares, manual library digging, directionless legwork, etc. The downside is, most old documents are still not available via electronic file. Hence, there is a vast amount of files relative to one’s ancestry that is not accessible via the internet. Careful information filtering and discernment amongst a pile of files (some records may show misspellings or unusual alternate name or surname combinations) would be required in this task. This can be pretty daunting.
Funeral homes, cemeteries, local statehouse or municipal offices may provide additional clues and verifications in this search process. Apart from birth and death records, most of these places lead to links of children and grandchildren of the person. This should be an extra viable source of information.