Ancestry

There is something so invigorating about discovering where you came from. To learn of the people whose actions brought you to where you were born. Every choice, of every past family member essentially brings you to this place in time.  It’s overwhelming and exhilarating to think of.  I love researching my families' history; it’s a great project for those who have insatiable curiosities, right up this Nancy Drew Wannabe’s alley!  This is without a doubt, one of the most addictive projects I have ever embarked on. I love to find out the information for my parents, my grandparents, my sisters, my (future) children, and most selfishly, myself.  There are times where I will come home for work, turn on the computer, start researching and then next thing I know it’s midnight and my eyes are stuck open, I have to pry myself away.  It's addicting and SO REWARDING!!!  I loved seeing my grandparents’ faces when I presented them both with copies of their parent’s marriage certificates, I loved seeing my Dad’s face when I showed him the passenger list of the ship his father came to Canada on, and I really loved telling my Mom she was related to royalty when I traced her family back to 853AD: to present your family with the gift of their history is a great gift.  A fascinating history story, your OWN history. 

I am overly emotional sometimes and try to place myself in my ancestor's footsteps. How scared and excited my Grandfather must have been to board that boat and venture off to a new world. How happy and nervous my great-grandparents were on their wedding days, to sign their marriage certificates:  Did they marry their best friends?  Were they madly in love?  Treasures that remained hidden for so long, brings these mystery people to life...

Here’s how I research my family history:

Pick a time of year that you can devote a big chunk of time to this project; I initially started my project during the winter time when I wasn’t able to enjoy the outdoors for long periods of time. The only tool you really need is a computer, a family tree book is incredibly interesting to try and fill in, but it is not necessary. I would strongly recommend creating yourself a free new email address, preferably without your name in the email address, for ancestry research solely as you may come across forums that you may want to ask questions on, but you will may want to be selective who you are in contact with.  (Use an alias if it makes you feel safer!  Plus it adds to the detective vibe!)  You may find you will get a lot of emails from forums.

It is so much easier to start your research while you are young and while your senior relatives are still with you, as the first step to any ancestral research is to sit down with a family member: grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles: anyone who can give you the names of past family members. Always, always, always get as many names as possible. You will find sometimes the only way you will be able to proceed is to have the names of siblings of grandparents, great-grandparents, etc. So often family names are passed down and it may be hard to follow a person back. If for instance there are 5 John Smiths listed in a search find, if you know the John Smith you are looking for had a sister named Bertha, this could be very helpful in narrowing down which John Smith you are looking for when going through Census and other documents. I would have loved to have owned a voice recorder for this stage, or even a video camera, if you have one, use it! How great to keep a documented copy of your conversation with your grandparent (s) and so often they will lapse into a great story of their childhood that you will want to hold onto forever.

I found the most helpful website to start with is Ancestry.ca. You can do a FREE 2 week trial of their CANADIAN membership with a valid credit card. (Just make sure to cancel the membership at the end of the 2 weeks as they will then charge you! Also this is why I mentioned make sure to pick a time of year when you can devote your time to research.) This is hands down the most informative website and if you are one of the lucky ones, you may discover a distant relative also using Ancestry.ca who has pictures or who can help further your research. The St. Catharines Public Library has FREE access to Ancestry.ca (you do NOT need a library card!) and you are able to use Ancestry.ca for free from their location, in addition to the Canadian membership, they also have the WORLD membership. The only thing is, they don’t have the license for to view other users’ family trees so you may miss out on pictures etc. But at least you can have access to government records. The library’s historians are super helpful and informative and will show you old newspaper clippings, obituaries, cemetary records, that they have for the area.

Depending on where your family is from you can look at local governments to see if you can find exciting documents that may be made available to the public. Some of my family is from New Brunswick and their province has a fantastic archives website that allows you to look at scanned copies of birth, marriage and death certificates.

I could keep going on, but once you start researching it will grow and you will discover more websites and forums that may benefit you!  Happy hunting!