Researching & Writing Your Family History and Memoirs

By Joelle Steele

Copyright Joelle Steele 2014

Published by Many Hats Publications/Joelle Steele Enterprises Publishing at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1: Researching Your Roots

Chapter 2: Compiling Your Stories

Chapter 3: Writing Your Family History

Chapter 4: Determining Kinship

Chapter 5: Publishing Your History

Recommended Reading

Other Books by Joelle Steele

About the Author

Preface

Genealogy is one of the most popular hobbies in America today. We have become fascinated with discovering our roots. After much painstaking research over periods of years, we will, hopefully, end up with a completed family tree and an accompanying history.

But while those are great historical works in their own right, they are also yet one more important demonstration of how small and interconnected our planet really is. For example, in west central Finland are at least 300 people to whom I am related. I did not even know of their existence until I first began my genealogical search in 1985. And here in the United States, I have met about 60 people to whom I am related whose roots are in that very same part of Finland.

Knowing where you came from and who your ancestors were fills in what is otherwise a very huge gap in our interpretation of the word "family." We are the sum total of all that has come before us, and when you begin to "meet" your ancestors through your research, this will become readily apparent. And, when you meet your long-lost distant cousins, you may be pleasantly surprised to find that you have a lot more in common with them than just your DNA.

While genealogy is fun, it is also detailed, challenging, and often difficult work that can take years to complete. But the rewards from all that work can be very satisfying. When you take a look at your completed tree and see all the many people it took to bring you into this world, and then look at your family history and discover that you now know a lot about those people, it can make you very humble and it can also make you very proud.

The following is a brief guide to researching and writing your family history. Be prepared to work hard at it, and at the same time, be prepared to have fun!

Joelle Steele

May 2014

Chapter 1: Researching Your Roots

Getting Organized

Before you even think about searching for your ancestors, know that you will be dealing with a ton of information and some of it will be conflicting, some will appear to be irrelevant to your search, some will be for other lines in the same tree, etc. Keep everything. Never throw any of it away, even if you know it is not for your particular line of the family, because someone else may need it and you will be able to give it to them after they have given you something you need. In other words, it is a good way to reciprocate in kind. Write in pencil on the backs of these items why you think it isn't about your family and where you got it. Sometimes you think it isn't for your family and later find out that it is.

You will probably have a combination of computer files and paper files (especially official documents) for each line, for each individual, or for whatever works best for you. Keep all your trees in separate files. Keep original documents in a separate file or under sheet protectors in a binder with tab dividers for each person they pertain to. Keep maps, photos, and histories (such as original stories, memoirs, or diaries) in separate files. Carefully label everything on the back in pencil (not pen), making sure that you do not put glue or tape on top of photos or other valuable documents.

Make a cover sheet for each person you are researching, showing alternate spellings of names (because you have to search every alternative you can think of and you may find the person you are looking for under a variety of names), addresses where they lived, churches they attended, names of their children (and variant spellings for the children's names), names of people who knew them, notes on what they did in life (e.g., military services, farmer in a particular county, attended a particular school, owned a business, etc.), where they are buried, when they were married or divorced, etc. On the back of that cover sheet, or on a separate attached blank sheet, make a list of all the questions you need to get answered about this person.

Storing Your Family Data

You can't rely on a hand-drawn family tree for very long, because it is always growing and changing, especially during the initial research stages. Back in 1979, I started out using a hand-drawn tree on large sheets of graph paper that were all taped together. By 1989, it had grown into a seven-foot wide by four-foot tall tree that hung in my front hallway (the only wall big enough for it) for three years as I constantly added to it, corrected it, scribbled notes on it, drew lines all over the place, etc. I finally invested in Family Tree Maker software. It is one of the most widely used genealogical software programs in the United States. Having genealogical software is really great, especially when you are exchanging data all over the world. There are other excellent programs available too, but this one just happens to be my favorite. Search the Web until you find something that works for you. Here are, in order, what Family Tree Maker, Personal Ancestral File, and Brothers Keeper data entry screens look like.

Researching With An Open Mind

Any form of research requires that you keep an open mind about anything and everything. If you don't, you may miss a valuable piece of information along the way, or you may end up on a wild goose chase. Nowhere is this more true than in a genealogical search. So keep the following in mind as you research. Genealogical research is all about being a family detective. You must leave no stone unturned in your search for information. You will find that you become very resourceful as you learn to navigate all of the various sources for documents that help you tell the story by giving you a better understanding of who did what and when.

Number one rule: always search for the TRUTH. Family stories are greater sources of inaccuracies than anything else. Perpetuating a family story that is nothing more than a lie is always a mistake. The true story is always going to be far better than the gossip and rumors that are passed on as history when they are sometimes completely untrue. This doesn't mean your ancestors are liars. Some stories are merely incomplete, told to a child in a manner that was "age appropriate" at the time and then passed on by the child who never knew there was anything else to the story. Some stories are inaccurate because they have been retold so many times and by so many different people that they have missing pieces or have been unduly embellished. Here are two examples:

Story: When I was about 10 I asked why some of my cousins were called "half-cousins." My mother told me it was because we had a different grandfather because their grandfather had died and our grandmother had remarried. I asked what happened to their grandfather and my mother said he had died in a train accident. I assumed he was riding in a train that crashed.

Truth: A title search contained documents that revealed the true story. My grandmother's first husband's death made the front page of the local paper. It was 1917, he was crossing the train tracks in his milk truck and his son was with him. There was no crossing gate at the tracks, he either didn't hear the whistle or the train didn't blow it, and it hit him, killing him instantly. His son was thrown from the wreckage and was found alive but badly injured hours later. There was an inquest, my grandmother sued the railroad and won.

Story: When I was researching my distant cousin Nestor, I kept hearing the same story about how his brother Edvin shot and killed himself and then Nestor lived "in sin" with Edvin's wife Ester for a year before they got married. This was always told as a "big scandal." The scandal part didn't sound accurate to me since these were Swedish Finns, and they were not generally scandalized by this sort of thing. My own grandmother didn't get married until about five weeks before her first child was born.

Truth: I contacted Ester's niece, who took care of her aunt and knew her very well. She told me this was a jumbled up story. Edvin had tuberculosis. Nestor was in Finland in the military at the time and took leave to come take care of Edvin's farm while he was ill. Edvin died a year later and Nestor returned to Finland and finished his military service. While there, he and Ester corresponded. When he returned to the U.S., they married two weeks later. The story about Edvin shooting himself was probably a mix-up with a story about Ester's sister Selma's fiancé who was a logger. When Selma ended their engagement, he went into the woods and shot and killed himself.

The best way to avoid passing on misinformation is to start your research by pretending you know absolutely NOTHING about your family history or your own life story. Verify everything you have ever heard, including your own stories from your own life. Remember that what you have heard is only as accurate as the person who said it or wrote it down. It's like the saying "garbage in, garbage out." Always consider the source. There is data that came directly from original documents, meticulously copied by people who reviewed those documents; there is also data that is just passed along and may be carelessly copied. Do not be afraid to ask people where they obtained their information and to ask if they have actually viewed original documents or if they have copies of those documents that you can review. And always offer to pay them for their time or reimburse them for postage and copying.

One thing that can really help when you're doing family research is having someone who is also researching the family. They may be a distant relative or someone researching the same geographic area. Sometimes they will already have some of the research done and need some updates that you can provide. When I was in the early stages of researching, my mother was still alive and she obtained a lot of information which she translated into English. Years later, when I was in the final researching stages, I found that working with a very distant cousin was very helpful.

Natural & Adoptive Parents

Not every mother is a biological mother of the children she raised, and this is important when you start tracing maternal lines. The woman you know of as your great-great-grandmother could have married your great-great-grandfather immediately after the death of his first wife in childbirth – a very common occurrence. Your biological great-great-grandmother may be someone else entirely.

Blended families are not new. They've been around for centuries. Husbands frequently adopted their wife's children from a previous marriage in which the biological father is deceased. Death at an early age was common, especially for women in childbirth, and a single father would be pretty much unheard of in the old days. Some men were married three or more times to ensure that their children always had a mother. You are related to all of the descendants of those marriages, but while you may want to tell the story of a non-biological ancestor, you will probably only want to trace the line of your biological ancestor.

Be sure that you are not adopted before you start tracing your family lines. Don't assume you are not just because no one ever said you were. Be sure your ancestors were not adopted either. Adoption used to be a fairly casual thing and there was not always a "legal" adoption. In many cases, adoption was of a related child, and male children were more often adopted than were females.

Difficult Lineages

Some ancestral lines are harder to research than others, and not everything is available online. The difficulties can be due to language barriers, a paper trail gone cold, misspellings of names and old name changes, or the movement or destruction of written documents or entire archives, often as a result of fire or the destruction of war. This almost always requires that you visit the city, state, or country of origin to do the research or that you hire a genealogist who is in that area to do the research for you.

If your family has been in the United States prior to about 1870 or so, it is possible that you have African-American ancestors. You could additionally have Native American ancestors. Do not ever assume that just because you don't look African or Native American that you do not have that ancestral background. The same is true for Asian ancestry, or any non-white ancestry. And it works in the reverse. You may look 100% African and be genetically only 40% Black. You may have a cousin with the same ancestry who looks white. It happens, and that is best explained in a book about genetics, not genealogy. Just bear in mind that appearance does not necessarily reflect ancestry. So, if you have even the slightest question about your ethnic ancestry, you might want to investigate having genealogical DNA testing. You can search online to find a lab that meets your needs and budget. The tests usually run around $200-$300 each, and there are basically three kinds:

Autosomal (atDNA). Tests for all ancestry.

Mitochondrial (mtDNA). Tests a male's or female's direct maternal line.

Y-chromosome (Y-DNA). Tests a male's direct paternal line.

African-American & Native American Ancestry

In the United States, researching slave ancestors is difficult, but it is not as hard as researching native peoples, which is also a common problem in countries like Australia and New Zealand. Native peoples often have few or no written records, and more frequently rely on oral traditions for relaying their histories. In the United States, finding your Native American ancestors requires that you search documents that could likely contain information about them, such as:

Church records (1500's to pres.)

Removal records and emigration rolls (ca. 1815-1850)

Tribal enrollment records (1827-pres.)

Annuity rolls (1841-1959)

Land allotment records (1856-1935)

Census rolls – indian and federal (1884-1940 & 1790-pres.)

Probate records (1906-1921)

Vital statistics (1910-pres.)

School reports (1910-1939)

School census records (1912-1939)

In the United States, slavery began in 1619. The northern states abolished slavery after the Revolution War in 1783. The Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863 and was enforced in southern states beginning in 1865, when the Civil War ended. When it comes to researching African-American ancestors, the task has been becoming far easier as more information is made available, particularly online, and more books and articles are being published that contain genealogical data and anecdotal material.

Immigration Laws

It is often very shocking to Americans when they first learn about the various immigration laws that were initiated by the United States government. These are things you should keep in mind when you are researching your immigrant ancestors, as these laws impacted how people were or were not granted access to live in the United States. Here's just a glimpse at some of these laws and how they might have affected the immigrants who wanted to enter the United States at the time those laws were in effect:

Immigration Act of 1819. Passenger lists required, contagious diseases required quarantine.

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo 1848. Citizenship to Mexicans living in territory ceded to the United States by Mexico.

14th Amendment 1868. Citizenship to persons born or naturalized in the United States.

Chinese Exclusion Act 1882. Banned Chinese immigration and citizenship (not repealed until World War II).

Contract Labor Law of 1885. No immigrant could have a job or promise of a job before landing.

Immigration Act of 1891. Banned persons with certain diseases, criminals, and polygamists, and deported them.

Immigration Act of 1907. Limited the number of Japanese, and barred "defectives," diseased, and immoral, and kids without parents.

Immigration Act of 1917. Banned healthy persons over 16 who couldn't read English or any other language.

National Origins Act of 1921. Limited immigrants to 3% of their nationality living in the United States as of 1910 (which severely limited immigration from southern and eastern Europe).

National Origins Act of 1924. Limited to 2% of a nationality living in United States as of 1890; only 153,000 to be admitted each year (reduced to 150,000 in 1929); restricted Asian immigration.

Displaced Persons Act of 1948. Allowed World War II refugees to enter, as per restrictions of the 1924 National Origins Act.

One Line At A Time Research

Start your genealogical research with only one single line of a tree and get it right as far back as you can. For example, if your father's name is Mitchell, research grandfather Mitchell, great-grandfather Mitchell, great-great-grandfather Mitchell, great-great-great-grandfather Mitchell, and so forth. Do not start a search on grandfather Mitchell's wife's family until you have the entire Mitchell line complete. Sticking with one line only ensures that by the time you are done you will have the correct lineage. Then you can feel safe in starting to fill in all the other branches of your tree, again one line at a time.

Working Backwards

When you do genealogical research, you will always be working backwards, starting with yourself, then your parents, then your grandparents, then your great-grandparents, etc. This is the only correct and logical way to do genealogical research. NEVER do this any other way as it will always be a complete waste of time if you do. For example, just because great-grandfather McDougall came from a particular town where there are tons of MacDougalls dating back to the same common ancestor born in 1143, does not mean that you should start searching in 1143, or even in a more recent generation in 1651 or 1732. Families used to be very large. That ancient McDougall could have had eight children who survived to adulthood and had large families of their own, who in turn had their own big families.

Many such family trees are positively gigantic. For example, the family tree on my mother's side alone has 52,636 members dating back to the year 1420, the year my 12x great-grandfather arrived in Finland from Sweden. On the other hand, my Italian father's side of the family has only 191 members dating back to ca. 1640. The difference is owing to two factors: 1) far better and more thorough recordkeeping in Finland, and 2) hit-or-miss recordkeeping and poor storage combined with the ravages of war in Italy.

Documentation

The most important thing you have to do is obtain documents for every person you research. Documents come in many forms, and they are the most accurate means of documenting the life of your ancestor. Do not ever rely on uncited research done by others. Always get the original documents or copies of the originals. If you deal with a genealogist, they will normally provide you with the documents (which you pay them to do), but always verify that they are going to provide you with the documents before you have them do any research for you. For example, when I hired a genealogist in Italy do some additional research on my family, he scanned the church records and sent them to me.

There are numerous kinds of documents that can help you establish your ancestral connections and understand how your ancestors lived. These are only a few kinds of documents you can use to get such information:

birth records, including hospital records, if they exist

death records and church burial records

marriage and divorce records

military records, possibly from another country

deeds from title searches (which can be one of the greatest sources for family stories)

legal actions (sometimes found in the title search folder)

immigration and naturalization papers

census records (but beware as these can be highly inaccurate)

letters, diaries, other hand-written documents (translate them into English if necessary)

newspaper archives (articles and obituaries have more details in them)

publications of ethnic organizations (usually have even more detailed obituaries and other news)

local history libraries and public libraries with local history sections

Document Sources

Where do you go to obtain official documents? Usually the departments of vital statistics in your county or state if you're in the United States. In other countries, the agencies vary. But even in the United States, not all documents come from the same place. Fortunately, you can go online and look at your state's website for their archives and see who has what. In many cases, you'll find that some records are archived in one department while others from a different time period are located elsewhere. For example, naturalization certificates were issued by the Department of Labor, but later were issued by the Department of Justice. Here's what one of these looks like:

Handwriting

The biggest problem that most researchers have with documents, diaries, etc., is deciphering the handwriting. This gets especially difficult with the older documents that have letter forms that we're not used to reading. There are books on old handwriting that are helpful, but mostly you will have to be patient and try to figure it all out. Passenger lists and census records are particularly challenging since the writing is on forms and the person who does the writing does not always have neat penmanship. The following are two passenger lists (also called "ship manifests") from the early 1729 and 1856.

Dead Ends

It happens. You search, and search, and search, and you can't find any information about an ancestor. I had three dead end searches on my mother's side of the family. I had completely given up on ever finding the information on these three men. Then, one day out of the blue, I found out that one of the men I was researching did not use the same name as did his siblings. This was not unusual in the family, but not knowing the name was. Once I knew who I was looking for, I found out where he lived, who he married, the name of his son, and when and where he died, unfortunately quite young. I also found one of the other men by accident when I came across a letter from his son's wife to my father, while I was cleaning out my father's house. I was able to make contact with the son and the son's daughter who lived near me. But, the third man is still elusive. No one in the family, including his children, ever knew what happened to him. My niece visited the archives in New York City – his last known residence – and could find nothing on him. And so, he is probably going to remain a big question mark in the family history.

Spelling

Spelling in general in the United States did not even begin to become standardized until about 175 years ago, but it didn't apply that much to proper names. In any country, spellings for names can and do change over periods of time, especially over centuries. Alternate spellings may be adopted by certain branches of a family and not by others. Some languages may use certain letters interchangeably, such as a C and K, G and Y, or a V and W. It's for this reason that when looking for a name, you would do better to learn to pronounce it correctly as that may help you find any alternate spellings. And with alternate spellings, you may find more relatives, as a different spelling usually has little to do with whether or not you are related.

The following is a copy of my mother's birth certificate. Her name and those of her parents are misspelled:

For example, on my father's side of the family, relatives in one line spell their names Croseti, Crosetti, Crossetti, and Croscetti. Another line spells their names Martelli, Martello, and Martella. One of the names in my mother's line was spelled Stål, Stålas, Ståhl, or Stahl. It is pronounced "stall." When my grandfather came to America – under a completely different name – he changed his name from Stål to Steele, also spelled Steel and Still, and pronounced like "steel" as in the metal, which is what all of these names mean.

Names, Naming, and Name Changes

Contrary to popular belief, most names were not changed at Ellis Island by unscrupulous clerks. Many people simply wanted to be Americans and they "Americanized" their own names. Smythes, Smithsons, and Smetoviches became "Smiths." Some people took names that were altogether different, such as a Leventlow taking the name "Cooper" because that was his occupation, or a Mascagnini taking the name "Albertson" because his father's name was "Alberto."

People also came to this country with passport names that were different than the name they used in their homeland For example, if I didn't have my grandfather Stål's passport, I would probably never have found him on a passengers list. His passport name was Sandkulla, the name of the farm he lived on in Finland. And speaking of farm names, some people keep these names and others adopt other names. On my Swedish Finn side of the family, there is one family group that uses the farm name Bredbacka, the last name Berg, and the patrinomial last name Mattsson.

Dig deep to be sure you know all the possible names your ancestors may have used during their lives. Remember that names changed frequently in the old days. People were not documented in large databases that connected them together in a single place. People could reinvent themselves as they moved from town to town, or as they hid to escape detection. They might also change their names for other reasons. Example: my great-grandparents, John and Rosa Bozzini, changed their last name spelling to Buzzini because another John and Rosa Bozzini were behind in paying the grocer, and it was preventing my grandmother from buying groceries at a time when grocery stores billed their customers.

Every country has a different system for naming people, and the farther back in time you go, the harder it is to trace someone, because they may not have had a last name at all. This is where the patrinomial naming system frequently appears. In that naming system, Carl, son of Johan, becomes Carl Johanson. Carl's son Lars becomes Lars Carlson, and Lars' son Anders becomes Anders Larsson. Confusing and a little difficult to trace, especially when you see how uninventive people used to be when they named their children.

Here are some examples of how people use names in various countries:

There are also variant spellings of names that are based on the origin of the name, changes in spelling or residence over time, or the literacy level of the family.

Here's an example of a man who was born in Hungary in 1942, was raised in Italy from the age of 4, and moved to the United States in 1968:

Rikárd Sándor Töröknagy: The last name is Hungarian meaning "great/large Turk," and his father was known to have been of Turkish descent.

Riccardo Sandro Torco. The first and middle names are simply Italianized, and the surname is a misspelling of "Turco," which is Italian for "Turk," although there is also an old Italian family named Torco, to whom he is not related.)

Richard "Rich" Torre. The first name is Americanized. The last name is Italian for "tower," which was probably an effort to do something different with the name Torco)

Here is another example. This man was born in Germany in 1838, moved to Sweden in 1859, and then moved to America in 1872:

Albrecht Schmitz. He was born in the Rhineland area of Germany. His father's name was Schmied. Both of those surnames mean "blacksmith," although neither he nor his father ever practiced that profession.

Albert Smed. He adopted the Swedish name equivalent of "blacksmith" when he moved to Sweden.

Al Smith. He adopted the English equivalent of "blacksmith" when he moved to America, but his tombstone in the family plot says "Albert Schmidt," and no one in the family knows why, since that is not how his name was spelled in Germany and he never used that name in America.

As in this last example, changing one's name to reflect a new life and acceptance of another country has led to some names being adopted that were similar to the birth name. This is usually a little easier when you have a name that is based on an occupation rather than city or farm names which pretty much limit a person to that name, unless it resembles a name in the new country that they can adopt as their own. Here's an example of names that represent the profession of a miller:

Most of the time, it is harder to find women than men. While some men do adopt their wives' names in some countries, it is far more common for women to take their husbands' names. As you can see from the following examples, marriages can greatly affect women's names, as can other types of name changes.

Enes L. Bozzini (1905-1915), Enes L. Buzzini (1915-1924), Enes L. Varni (1924-1930), Enes L. Columbo (1930-1932), Enes L. Davis (1933-1968)

Deborah Diane "Dee Dee" Weitz (1953-1977), Deborah "Dee Dee" Castro (1977-1988), Debbie Dietrickson 1988-1990), Debbie Grant (1990-2000), Dee Grant (2000-present)

Elizabeth "Liz" Cancina Hart (1948-1970), Elizabeth "Liz" Cancina Myers (1970-1973), Elizabeth "Liz" Harris (1973-1986), Liz Hart (1986-2010), Elizabeth "Liz" Hart-Graham (2010-present

And here is my own confusing progression of names:

Nancy Norleen Martelli (1951-1973), Nancy Norleen Little and Nancy Martelli Little (1973-1975), Nancy Martelli (1975-1990) and Nancy Sargeant (1984-1990), Joelle Steele and Joelle Sargeant (1990-1994); Joelle Steele (1994-present)

First names can also vary according to their county or origin and can additionally be altered through the use of nicknames, many of which we don't always recognize as such today. For example, the name "Nancy" is actually a nickname for "Ann." One thing to consider when you can't obtain a birth certificate for someone is that their name may be different on the birth certificate. For example, my Aunt Lillian didn't know that her birth certificate had the name Josephine on it until she went to apply for a passport when she was 54 and making her first trip to Finland. She then had to obtain an amended birth certificate with the name Lillian Eleanor on it. Another example was Geoffrey Harper. His grandson could find no birth certificate for Geoffrey. Apparently Geoffrey was born a Godfrey and didn't like the name and changed it, or else the birth certificate was incorrect. All other official documents show his name as Geoffrey. One last example was a woman named Jessica born September 14, 1869, whose birth certificate name was Jessamine and showed she was born on September 19, 1869.

Here are some examples of common first and last names and their variant spellings:

In general, it is always a very good idea to learn the various names that pertain to the countries of origin that you are researching. This will get you used to seeing them and pronouncing them, hopefully correctly!

Cities and Countries

Like names for people, the names of cities and countries change over time. So when you first start researching, try not to get too hung up on nationalities. The names of cities and countries are simply not that important. They are just for your convenience in researching, but countries change borders and their spellings or entire names are frequently changed when they do.

Pay attention to documents that say where an ancestor originated, as it may be only partially correct. For example, just because the immigration papers say that Grandpa came from Genoa doesn't mean he did. He could have come from some local hill town and sailed out of Genoa. Another example: my grandmother came to America on a Russian passport, not because she came from Russia, but because Finland was a Russian duchy at the time. And along these same lines, remember that just because your great-grandfather came from Poland doesn't mean the town he came from is still in Poland today. Poland used to be a gigantic country at one time, and now other countries surround the much smaller Poland. And, lastly, where someone is born is not necessarily where they lived. People have always traveled, some farther than others, and when they did, they often stayed in a place for a long while before moving on, so a child can be born en route. And that, is just a very brief explanation of why the names of places and nationalities are not important aside from researching.

Birth and Other Dates

Dates are always a struggle. Even when you can find a document it might not be dated, or the date could be unreadable, or the date could be incorrect. But you need those dates. They are what distinguishes two Catarina Valentis from each other in a family of Valentis who just can't seem to name enough of their female children Catarina.

When researching and looking at dates, you will have to be very careful not to mix up American and European styles of dating. In the United States, the month comes first, as in June 7, 1885 written 6/7/1885. But in Europe, the day comes first and would be written 7 June 1885 or 7/6/1885. This means that if you see the date 3/12/1894, it could be March 12, 1893 or December 3,1894 depending on whether it is an American or European style of date.

Also, when people copy down dates, they sometimes miscopy, either transposing dates or writing down an old-style 7 as a 4 or an old-fashioned 1 as a 7, or by misreading a handwritten "Jun" (June) that looks more like "Jan" (January). Write down the date as you find it, and put a big question mark next to it if you think it could be interpreted differently.

One of the most confusing dates is the birth date. Some cities and countries do not record birth dates for anyone, ever. Old birth and death records prior to about 1900 from outside of the United States are often found in the church – or not. In truth, the dates found in church records do not always record the birth date, but may instead record the christening or baptism date, which could have occurred anywhere from three to ten days after the birth, The same thing happens with death dates and burial dates.

With census records, you are dealing with a lot of different people writing down information from people of all different ethnicities. Errors abound. For example, on the 1910 census for San Francisco, my grandmother and her twin sister's ages are shown as 14. Since they were born in 1905, that is clearly an error, probably due to the fact that their parents didn't speak much English at the time, and it is unlikely that the census taker spoke Italian.

Searching the Internet

The Internet is a great place to search after you have obtained all of the documents you can find on your ancestors. You will probably be able to find even more information online that you can also download. But you must verify everything you find, because errors abound on the World Wide Web. Anyone can put up a website about their family's genealogy, but not everyone is a scrupulous researcher, and you do not want to accept everything you see as fact.

For some websites, such as ancestry.com, you must be prepared to pay a membership fee, unless your local library provides you with free access. The downside to these sites is that they may not have anything at all about your family. I have never found a single thing on ancestry.com, genealogy.com, roots.web, or any other genealogy website that has any of my family members in it. To find out whether your family is there, you can go to the library and use their computers to access free the websites with which they have memberships. If you find there is a lot of information, you may want to invest in your own membership so that you can research in the comfort of your own home.

Genealogical websites often have forums where you can search the postings in the forums for your family name, as they often contain a lot of information that is not yet posted anywhere else on the Web and may, in fact, never be posted on the Web. These are searches in progress where someone has a lot of family data and is trying to piece it all together so that they can link it up to the right tree. Their data may help you, or yours might help them.

General Internet searches can also be done using search engines such as google.com, bing.com, yahoo.com, or any others that you find as you go along in the search process. These can take you to some very interesting places that may have information about your family members. But first you need to learn how to search for your ancestors. It is important to learn to limit or expand your searches by using first and last names or by using a last name and a town name, or by using the names of the husband and wife together, for example:

search for: "John Albert Smith"(looking for all John Albert Smiths)

search for: "John Smith"(looking for all John Smiths)

search for: "John Smith" Mill Creek, Missouri (John Smith in Mill Creek)

search for: "Smith, Missouri"(looking for Smiths in Missouri)

search for: "John and Elvira Smith"(using his wife's name too)

search for: "Elvira Jolene Madison" (using his wife's maiden name to find John)

search for: "Elvira Smith" Missouri (using his wife's name to find John)

search for: "John Smith" 1848 (using his birth year)

search for: "John Smith" September 4, 1848 (using his birth date)

search for: "John Smith" December 13, 1907 (using his death date)

Notice that all of the names listed above are in quotes. Quotation marks make most search engines limit the search to only "John Albert Smith" and not John, Albert, or Smith, and any combination of those names.

Research Etiquette

One of the most important things a family genealogist should learn is good research etiquette. Good manners ensure cooperation from other family genealogists. Genealogy research, particularly on the Internet, is dependent on an ongoing exchange of free information. Many people have done extensive research on your tree, but maybe not on your particular line. They may have spent a lot of time and money in doing this, may have traveled to do it, may have purchased a ton of records from vital statistics and other agencies. So, when they share that valuable information with you, you need to be your most gracious and grateful self, and express that gratitude immediately.

Always thank anyone who responds to your request for help, even if they did not have the information you wanted. They still took the time to look through their files and then respond to you. Offer to exchange information with them about your line or about any other lines you may have come across in your search. Not everyone is searching all of the time for new information, but may welcome it. Respond with that information immediately.

Exchanging Family Information

You must always be willing to share your records and to continue to exchange information. That is how family genealogists work. If you do not participate in this kind of interchange, there is a good possibility that you will develop a reputation for being uncooperative, and it may prevent you from obtaining further information that is out there and already researched.

Always be courteous and prompt in responding to any and all enquiries about your own family. Be prepared to have long or ongoing E-mail or phone discussions with other genealogists that may last for weeks, months, or even years. All of these people know each other from working on their family trees. I knew at least a dozen other people searching my tree and we were in contact for years. When anyone got new information, such as a correction to an old line, or new births and deaths, we bulk E-mailed that information to everyone else. This kept our family trees constantly updated.

Premature Linkage

Another part of genealogical etiquette revolves around linking to existing trees prematurely, a.k.a. "in error." Unfortunately, this happens quite frequently by unwitting family genealogists who come across a piece of information that looks right but which they do not investigate thoroughly, instead making the assumption that they are related to a line of a family to which they are not truly related.

Premature linkage creates two serious problems: 1) you are preventing a legitimate descendant from linking to that tree and are forcing them to research further for no reason, and 2) you are creating misinformation that will then be spread to other family genealogists, as well as to anyone with whom they are in contact. With today's technology, this creates a worldwide error almost instantaneously, and one that is very difficult and time-consuming for everyone to correct.

No matter how much something appears to be correct, dig deeper. Verify everything with all the records and documents you can possibly lay your hands on. Question everything. Never take anything at face value. do not ever link to anyone's tree until you are 100% positive that you belong in it.

Chapter 2: Compiling Your Stories

This is the "fun" part of genealogy. It's the part where you really get to find out who's who and who did what and where and why and with whom, etc. You will really enjoy hearing all the stories about your family members. I guarantee it.

Ask friends and family members to tell their stories and memories of deceased family members. Some will be happy to write their story for you, which you can then edit for your final family history. I obtained many great stories this way. Letters and diaries are very revealing, as are newspaper articles that are written when someone is born, dies, is married, or does something noteworthy in their community. Also, see if any books have been written about your ancestors or that mention your ancestors.

Visiting a hall of records and doing a title search of a property that a family member once owned can reveal some very interesting stories in and of themselves. Such files often include records of any legal action taken by or against your family members, and in cases of a bankruptcy proceeding, you may even find lists of their assets, which should give you a better indication of what they owned and how they probably lived. Newspaper obituaries usually find their way into these files as well. I found the bulk of all the information I used in my family history of my mother's side in title records. The amount of information contained in a title file varies from one county to another, so how much is there depends on who is archiving information, what their criteria is for archiving, and how much information there is to archive.

People love to read how their ancestors lived. Remember that as you write. It may all sound boring to you now, but believe me, someday people will be amazed to learn that you listened to music on something called a CD or an iPod or that you still had television, or that your car actually ran on gasoline.

Collect and use as much information as you can. If any information you acquire doesn't quite fit, put it in an appendix. A few things you might want to include: family recipes, lists of who is buried where, former residence addresses, health problems, causes of death, name origins, maps of the old country, passenger ship lists, census pages, vital statistics documents, property deeds, pages from family Bibles, etc. There is no end to the kind of information you can use in compiling your history.

Before you begin to interview family members and family friends, it is important to have as much written documentation as possible on which to base your questions. This is the time to clean up all your research files and assemble everything so that you can go through it with the people you interview. Sometimes the written documentation is in error, and this is where you can possibly find that out and maybe at least get a lead to what the truth might be.

Here are just a few of the kinds of documents and information you should have in your files before you conduct your interviews:

birth dates

baptismal dates

marriage dates

death dates

burial dates

titles and deeds

photographs

scrapbooks

diaries

passports

citizenship papers

drivers licenses

social security

military records

school records

medical docs

letters and cards

family Bibles

Contact family members you know, family members you don't know, and friends of family members. Have a list of questions for all of them and see who knows what. Sometimes they will lead you in the right direction; sometimes they won't. When they do have information, it can be really wonderful. I contacted a woman to whom I am not related, and she came through with a ton of information about my grandmother and even sent me some old snapshots of my grandparents from the 1920s and 1930s.

Conducting An Interview

There are different ways to interview people. Whenever possible, an in-person interview is best. With some seniors, you may need more than one meeting, often for as little as an hour at a time, if they tire easily. But, it isn't always possible to do an in-person interview. In that case, a phone interview may work, or you may be able to send an E-mail with a list of questions in it. Some people may not have E-mail and so you may need to mail them a letter the old-fashioned way.

Get a good tape recorder with either a built-in condenser microphone or a separate, hand-held mike. If you don't have a digital recorder, at least get good quality tapes. But a digital recorder is best as it will allow you to share the interview with other people. It can be great to hear the voice of an ancestor. I had a taped interview with my late aunt converted to an MP3 file, and it is wonderful to hear her voice again. Test your recorder before you do the interview to make sure it is working properly – and that you know how to operate it!

If you think the person you are interviewing might have photographs, you should probably ask about this in advance of the interview so that they have time to locate them. If you want copies of those photos, you should bring a hand-held scanner with you.

Compile a list of questions you need to ask, and then ask various optional questions, such as those at the end of this chapter. Organize your questions into chronological order and/or in order of subject matter. The importance of organizing the interviews will become very apparent when you get to the point where you are actually using the interviews to write the histories.

Take any documents you have with you, and verify their accuracy before you begin asking questions. For example, if you only have four birth certificates and know that your grandmother may have had more children who did not survive, ask her, or ask your mother, or ask whoever you are interviewing who might know anything about this.

Set up the interview about a week in advance and for a specific date and time that is convenient for them. This is especially important if you are visiting someone in an assisted living or convalescent hospital setting where they have a semi-structured meal time. When you arrive, make sure the person is comfortable and that they are ready to talk. Ask seniors how they are and maybe ask some questions about how their family is doing, etc., before you just jump into the interview. In other words, make them feel at ease.

Never walk into an interview unprepared or make an extremely open-ended request such as, "Tell me your story." This is especially important when you are interviewing someone who is elderly or whose memory wanders. They may have a lot to tell, but it may not come out in any order that you can follow. Remember, you have to write this all up later. So start by being as organized as you can from the very start.

Interview Questions

The following are some of the kinds of questions you might want to use in your interviews. Note also that these same questions can be used to trigger your own memories when you are compiling your memoirs or family history from your own personal knowledge.

Some people might not want to reveal everything, and so don't be surprised if they just shrug and ignore a question altogether. Other people might really want to go into some detail on a particular topic. The responses you get will depend on the individual and will probably vary greatly. Feel free to expand on any of these questions when you ask them. Only you will know what information you already have and what you still need to learn.

These questions will help you in tracing your ancestry, will provide you with information about those ancestors, and will help you uncover a wealth of anecdotal information about your ancestors – information that will make them come alive.

Ancestry

What were the names of your parents (grandparents, great-grandparents, etc.)?

When and where were they born?

When did they come to America?

Who came first to America?

How did they finance their trip?

What port did they come through?

What ship(s) did they travel on?

Were they married here or in the Old Country?

How long were they married?

Were either of them married previously?

What was their marriage like?

What did they do for a living?

Where did they live?

What kind of house or apartment did they live in?

Did they own their own house?

What are the addresses where they lived?

What was their health like?

How many children did they have?

What were their children's names?

When were their children born and when did they die?

What religion did your parents practice?

What was the level of education of your parents?

Where did they go to school?

What kinds of jobs did they have?

Did they have money or did they struggle a lot?

What stories do you remember about them?

What were their personalities like?

What kinds of hobbies or interests did they have?

Childhood and Teen Years

When and where were you born?

Where did you live as a child?

What did you look like?

What are the addresses of the places you lived?

What was the weather like where you lived?

What were the towns like where you lived?

What was your relationship like with your parents?

Did you live near other relatives?

What was your relationship like with other relatives?

How was your family different from others?

What foods did you grow up eating?

What were your favorite foods?

What did you like to do when you were a child, a teenager?

Did you have any pets?

What kinds of hobbies or interests did you have?

Did you have private instruction outside of public school?

Where did you go to elementary school? High school?

What were your favorite subjects in school?

What kind of a student were you?

Did you have any favorite teachers?

What kinds of school activities did you participate in?

Who were your friends in elementary school? High school?

What was your neighborhood like?

Who were your neighbors?

When did you learn to drive?

Who taught you to drive?

What kind of car did you learn in?

When did you get your first car?

When did you start dating? Who was your first date?

Did you have a steady girlfriend/boyfriend?

What did you like to do for fun?

Where did your family go on vacations?

What was your health like as a child? A teenager?

What was your daily life like as a child or teenager?

What kinds of rules did your family have?

Were you a problem child? Smoking? Drinking? Drugs? Cutting class?

What are some of the things that happened to you when you were young?

What was the most important things that happened to you when you were young?

What was the worst thing that happened when you were young?

What did you dream about doing when you got out of high school?

Who were your childhood heroes and role models?

What did you like best about your childhood?

Was your childhood a happy one or a not so happy one, and why?

What is your happiest memory of your childhood years?

Adult Years

Did you go to college or a trade school? Where?

How was your education paid for?

What did you study? How did you decide what to study?

What kind of a student were you?

What was your first job?

What other jobs did you have?

What jobs did you like the most? The least? Why?

What was your financial condition like over the years?

Where did you live first when you moved away from home?

Did you live with a roommate(s)? Alone?

What was it like to be away from your parents for the first time?

Who else did you live with after moving away from your parents?

Did you have a car? What kind of car was it?

Did you have any girlfriends/boyfriends?

Who were your closest friends?

What things did you like to do with your friends?

What was your relationship like with your parents as an adult?

What kinds of hobbies or interests did you have as an adult?

What kinds of goals and dreams did you pursue, or not pursue?

Where did you travel as an adult?

Who did you travel with?

When and how did you meet your spouse?

What first attracted you to him/her?

What was your courtship like?

When did you decide to get married?

What was your wedding like?

Where did you go for your honeymoon?

Where did you live as newlyweds?

When did you have your first child?

What was it like becoming a parent for the first time?

How did you perceive your role as a parent?

Did you enjoy being a parent?

Do you feel you were a good parent, a bad one, so-so?

What parenting mistakes did you make?

How did you correct those mistakes?

What dreams did you have for your children?

How did you help your children realize their dreams?

Did you see any family traits in your children?

What did you like to do together as a family?

What are your fondest memories of your children?

How did you discipline your children?

How did you praise your children?

What was different between your upbringing and your children's?

What was the most important thing you wanted your children to learn from you?

What were your greatest concerns regarding your adult children and their lives?

What are the things that you admire about each of your children?

What did you learn from your children?

Where did you live, addresses and cities?

When did you buy your (first) house?

What is the most important thing you learned from being married?

What was the hardest thing about being married?

What did you love most about your spouse?

If you were widowed, describe that experience?

If you later remarried, how did that relationship come about?

If you divorced, what was that like?

If you then remarried, how did that all enfold?

What was your second spouse like?

What was your second marriage like?

Did you ever have stepchildren? Adopted children? Foster kids?

How did you feel about your stepchildren? Adopted children? Foster children?

If you are a grandparent, describe how you felt when your first grandchild was born.

What was your role in the life of your grandchildren?

What did you teach your grandchildren?

What did you learn from your grandchildren?

Were you ever in the military? What branch of the service?

Did you fight in a war(s)?

What was life in the military like, especially during wartime?

What rank did you earn? Any medals or honors?

Were you ever injured or seriously ill as an adult?

Do you know of any family diseases or tendencies towards certain diseases?

What type of religious beliefs have you embraced in your life?

Do you feel those beliefs have served you well?

Did you ever have doubts about your chosen faith?

What were your biggest fears in life?

Did you do volunteer work or belong to any clubs?

What kinds of volunteer work did you do?

In what ways have you changed as a person from childhood to adult to senior citizen?

What are some of the life lessons you learned as an adult?

What kinds of crises or struggles did you face as an adult?

What did you learn from living through those crises and struggles?

What changes in your life affected you the most?

How did the death of your parents affect you?

If you could live your life again, what would you do differently?

Do you have any regrets about anything in your life?

What changes did you see in the world during your life?

What technology evolved that changed the world as you knew it?

How did those changes affect you in your life?

What do you want your kids, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc., to know about you?

What do you most want them to remember you for?

What kind of person are you today?

What dreams and goals do you still hope to fulfill in your life?

What is the hardest thing about growing older?

What is the biggest challenge in being a senior citizen?

What is the best thing about growing older?

When did you retire, or did you retire?

How do you most like to spend your days?

What is most important to you in life now?

What are your most prized possessions?

What is your favorite thing to reminisce about?

What things in your life have given you the most inspiration?

How do you feel about your world and the world at large?

What do you predict will happen in the world in the years to come?

What would you still most like to see or experience?

For what are you most grateful today?

Your Memoirs

Your personal history should not read like a work of fiction. So, like the rest of your family history, your personal history should be thoroughly researched and fact-checked. You might find it helpful to use the same questionnaire above to trigger your own memories. Then fill in any missing facts and check the facts you've already included. You'll find that a lot of statistics, such as dates for things you did and places you visited can be found online with a little digging.

Chapter 3: Writing Your Family History

All the statistical information you have acquired tells a story, but it may not be very interesting to read that "John Peterson married Jane Carlyle in Cook County, Iowa and their children were Harriet, Robert, Stanley, Mary, Elizabeth, and George. George Peterson married Mathilda Gregory and their children were Marcus, Robert, Thomas, John, George, Eliza, and Susannah. Marcus moved to Alturas County, California in 1856 and married Eleanor McCarthy, and their children were ..." That is very, very boring.

The information you obtained in your interviews will provide the real interesting part of your ancestry, the part that makes all those names come alive, makes them real people. But, you cannot expect an interview to be transcribed and be intelligible or usable "as is." You will have to edit it, add punctuation, and break down run-on sentences into shorter sentences. People talk very differently than they write.

Organizing Your History

When I first started to write my family history, I started to write it like a novel in chronological order. It didn't work. Way too many people – many with the same name – and far too many stories about each. What I found worked better was to write a general background about where my family came from and where they came to live in America. Then I wrote individual profiles for each ancestor by generation, letting other people who knew them tell stories about them, when such information was available. This made my history a lot more interesting. My ancestors, most of whom I had never met, came alive on the page. They took on dimension and became "real" to me.

In general, writing a family history in chronological order can be very hard to do. It is a lot easier to write individual stories, and they are also easier for the reader to follow. With memoirs, the chronological order works much better. But, everyone's personal history and their family history will be a little bit different, which is what will dictate how the information is presented. Some histories will be based on the places the people lived and the people they knew, and other histories may be more personality-based. Some histories may be genealogies only, with just a spattering of anecdotes along the way. Other histories, like mine, will be a little of all of the above.

Story Memories

Everyone has a story or two that they remember about their parents or some other ancestor. I solicited stories from all my cousins about their parents and our grandparents, etc., and I put those stories at the end of each ancestor's history, stating the name of the person telling the story, their birth/death dates, and their relationship to the ancestor, and then their stories right after that. In this way, whoever reads the stories will know who told them and what their relationship was to their ancestor. Here are a couple examples:

Janet Linder (10-24-1966 to -- ), daughter of Beverly Wallis. My mother was always sewing something. She loved to make pillow shams just as much as she liked making doll clothes for me or new clothes for herself. When I was little, she always made clothes for me or she re-fashioned something that she bought at the store ...

Dean Paul Sanders (02-18-1918 to --), friend and neighbor of Lionel "Lee" Wallis. My wife and I had the farm across the road from Lee's. He was a kind and honest man. He was a hard worker and was always there to help when anyone needed anything. So was Evelyn. Lee once got a bunch of our neighbors together and they all plowed for me when I had a broken leg. During the depression, he fed the tramps and gave them little jobs to do ...

Memoirs

One thing that is important to do is to write your own story first. Many people think that their lives are not important enough to write about, but they are. Your children and their children and all of your descendents who follow will want to know who you were. Dig deep. Look into everything about yourself and put it down on paper. Leave no potential question unanswered. I can tell you for a fact that from having written two family histories and from editing about 30 of them and then from teaching classes in family history for more than 25 years, most people are extremely interested in the most mundane aspects of their ancestors' lives, and they are always disappointed and left wondering when they can't find the answers to their questions about why a particular ancestor did what they did.

In a family history or memoir, you should feel comfortable including the good, the bad, and the ugly about yourself and everyone else. No person has a perfect life, no person is perfect, and everyone has mistakes and regrets of some kind about their life. Your descendents will learn from your honesty. You should also include any tidbits of information that come your way, including recipes, name origins, copies of deeds or other documents, copies of family Bible pages, health histories, and entire letters or diaries, or excerpts from same. And if you are editing someone else's writing, do not change the facts and do not alter the writer's style. Just make it more readable and leave the rest alone.

When you write your family history or memoir, do not write about your children other than as background to your own stories. When your children are at least 50 years old and have lived a full life, then it's time for them to write their own stories.

Avoiding Confusion

Just because you remember the people your subjects are talking about doesn't mean your children or grandchildren or anyone who comes after that will know who they are. Be sure you put in full names and birth and death dates next to a name when it first appears so that everyone will know who is being talked about. And if it is unclear later on in the story, define again who the person is. What I usually do is put a name that is not used in parenthesis, put nicknames in quotes, and put an Americanized name in brackets:

(Matts) Arvid (Forsbacka) Forström (07/21/1882-11/13/1917)

(Svea Wilhlemina) "Minnie" Forstrom (02/26/1906-04/02/1927)

Anders Joel Mattsson Stål [Joel Steele](07/13/1885-02/05/1954)

(Maria) Rosa (Bozzini) Buzzini (09/04/1874-08/15/1946)

Judit Jemina Pedersson [Judy Peterson] (03/11/1903-07/19/1996)

Artur Viking Carlsson (Smedjebacka) (11/11/1910-02/08/1999)

Angela de Mugetti-Parma [Angie Parma] (02/20/1898-04/22/1963)

Of all the things that took me the most time in writing my own two family histories it was making it clear who was being discussed, because so many of my ancestors had the same name. In fact, my mother translated a family history that was written by her great-uncle around 1905. In one part of that history, there are stories about Matts Bredbacka, his son Matts Bredbacka, and his son-in-law Matts Bredbacka. It was very confusing and it took me quite awhile to figure out who was being talked about. I've also come across this problem when editing someone else's family history where they have people with the same names, e.g., John Sr.'s son is John Jr., John Jr.'s wife Susan has the same name as John Sr.'s mother, etc.

Even if a relationship seems very clear, clarify it anyway. Refer to a person as someone's sister or aunt or brother-in-law, or whatever their relationship is. As we become further removed from the people we write about, it becomes harder for the reader to know who's who. None of the people are living, or by the time someone reads the history, those people are no longer living, and they will probably never have met them.

Editing & Proofing

Before you even think about photocopying or printing your family history or memoirs, make sure everything is as complete and as accurate as it can be. It is a rare story that does not benefit from some editing. And, whether you did it in a word processing software or a page layout software, be sure that it is grammatically correct, that all names are spelled correctly, that you have run spell-check, and that it has been proofed for errors by at least two other people besides yourself. You may think you caught all the typos, but as a professional writer and editor, I can assure you that you probably did not. But a fresh set of eyes probably will. Volunteer your most literate family members for the tasks of editing and proofing. You won't regret it.

Chapter 4: Determining Kinship

One of the things you might want to add to your family history is the relationships you have with the people you write about or who you interview. The following explains a little about how kinship is determined among family members. Your genealogical software may have a feature that will calculate kinship for you automatically.

Degrees of Cousins

The degree of a cousin (first, second, third, etc.) is determined by the same relationship any two people have to a common ancestor. For example, if you both have the same grandparents, you are first cousins (1C), also called "cousins-germain" (or cousins-german), or "full" cousins, and your cousins are genetically like half-siblings. If you have the same great-grandparents, you are second cousins (2C); same great-great grandparents, you are third cousins(3C), etc. If you have the same grandmother but different grandfathers, you are half-first cousins (1/2 C); same great-grandfather but different great-grandmothers, you are half-second cousins (1/2 2C).

Removals of Cousins

All of these relationships are further modified by their removals, which are the generational relationships you have to a particular descendant or ancestor of your cousin. With descendants, for example, the child of your first cousin is your first cousin once removed (1C1R), sometimes erroneously called your second cousin; the grandchild of your first cousin is your first cousin twice removed (1C2R); a child of your second cousin is your second cousin once removed (2C1R); the grandchild of your third cousin is your third cousin twice removed (3C2R), etc., the degree remaining the same and the removals increasing with each new generation.

Ancestral Cousins

With ancestors, the degrees and removals are a little more complicated because you're looking backwards, but they are basically the same. For example, the parent of your second cousin is your first cousin once removed (1C1R); the parent of your third cousin is your second cousin once removed (2C1R); the parent of your second cousin once removed is your first cousin twice removed (1C2R); the parent of your fourth cousin is your third cousin once removed (3C1R); the parent of your third cousin once removed is your second cousin twice removed (2C2R), the parent of your second cousin twice removed is your first cousin three times removed (1C3R), etc., with the degrees declining and the removals increasing as you go farther up the tree in ancestors. It's a lot easier to figure out a relationship if you have genealogical software or else you can try looking up a relationship using the Cousin Tree or the Kinship Chart in this ebook.

Despite all of these somewhat complicated designations, you are correct in simply calling a cousin a cousin without any further description to designate the way in which they are related to you. But technically, they are genetically different, and as such they are usually defined specifically for the purposes of determining heredity of a disease, suitability for marriage, inheritance of property, etc. In 21st century or modern genealogy, reference is usually made only to the definitions of the various first and second cousins, but there is no limit on the degree to which any two cousins may be related, or to the number of ways in which any two cousins may be related. And, trying to figure out how any two cousins are related, especially as they become more distantly related, is a task best left to a piece of software such as Family Tree Maker, which will print out a kinship report that explains every way in which you are related to everyone else in the family tree.

Kinship Chart

On the top row, find your relationship to the common ancestor. In the left column, find the other person's relationship to the common ancestor. Follow that row straight across and the other column straight down. The relationship is where the selected row and column meet.

CA = Common Ancestor

C = Child

GC = Grand Child

GGC = Great Grand Child

#GGC = # of "greats" (e.g., 2G GC = great-great grandchild)

#C = Degree of Cousin (e.g., 1C = first cousin, 2C = second cousin, etc.)

#R = Number of Removals (e.g., 1R=once removed, 2R = twice removed)

S = Sibling (brother/sister)

N = Niece/Nephew

GN = Great Niece/Nephew (grand niece/nephew)

GGN = Great Great Niece/Nephew (great grand niece/nephew)

#GGN = Number of "greats" (2G GN = great-great great niece/nephew)

Cousin Tree

This is merely another way of looking at relationships within your family. You'll probably need a kinship chart and this cousin tree to fully understand relationships when you first start trying to determine how you are related to people in your extended family tree.

Marriages Between Cousins

Marriage between cousins was not uncommon in the old days, and it is actually not that uncommon in modern times. Most of us have studied history, and yet we know little of how many people were actually related to each other. It just isn't taught in history classes, and yet it is important because it gives us a better idea of how nations and alliances between them were formed. Here is an example of how Henry VIII was related to his wives and how they were related to each other.

The upper classes and the nobility often married cousins. It was a way to keep wealth and power within the family, and to insure that alliances between nations were maintained. But people living in small communities also intermarried. It is not uncommon to find instances of intermarriages in your family tree. Marriages existed between cousins and also between uncle/niece or aunt/nephew. While we tend to think of an uncle/niece marriage as being one between a young girl and a much older man, women were having children well into their 40s, and so they were often having children and grandchildren at the same time, meaning those uncle/niece marriages were usually between people of the same age.

Today, we know about recessive genes and some of the hereditary or genetic disorders that can occur if two people possess the same recessive genes and so, for the most part, marriage between such close relatives is pretty much a thing of the past. However, while the incidence of genetic diseases is high in children of interfamilial marriages, most of these unions more commonly resulted in children who were stillborn; less vigorous and therefore less likely to survive infancy or early childhood diseases; or suffered from ill health throughout their lives.

But in most cases, the common problems with married cousins were miscarriage, still birth, neonatal death, childhood mortality, and sterility, all of which can be problems of unrelated parents. As shown earlier in the kinship of Henry VIII many of his wives were his cousins, and were also cousins to each other. Anne Boleyn had two known miscarriages and one still birth. Catherine of Aragon had three stillbirths and two infants died. In my own family, my maternal grandparents were second cousins, and my grandmother had two miscarriages, one stillbirth, and two infant deaths.

The most common hereditary or genetic disorders in children born to cousins and other relatives include muscular dystrophy (a group of forty muscular and neuromuscular diseases that cause weakness and atrophy of the muscles), aniridia (a rare defect causing incomplete formation of the iris and therefore loss of vision), multiple polyposis of the colon (numerous malignant polyps in the colon in adults), and neurofibromatosis or Von Recklinhausen disease (a nervous system disorder that affects the development and growth of nerve cell tissues and results in tumors that grow on nerves and abnormalities of the skin and bones).

Multiple Relationships

One of the interesting but often very confusing things that happens when you have a family tree with so many marriages between cousins and other relatives, is that you become related to people in numerous ways through the various lines or branches of the family tree. You may have two female cousins who married their two male cousins in the early 18th century; your grandparents could be second cousins; your great aunt may have married her cousin who is also your grandfather's uncle. All of those occurred in my family. As a result of such interfamilial marriages, you will have multiple relationships in your family: your mother may also be your third cousin once removed (3C1R), as is my mother. Your grandparents may also be your 2C2R and 6C2R. Your own sibling or cousin may also be your 4C. A half-cousin may be a full 4C or a 6C1R. All of those occurred in my family too. And, like me, you could be your own 4C too!

Chapter 5: Publishing Your History

Once you have written your family history, you will probably want to assemble it into some useful book-type format so that everyone can have a copy. There are several ways that you can make your book. It can be written in Word and then photocopied and bound at your local photocopy place, which is usually the cheapest alternative with short histories. Some genealogical programs have built-in routines for creating a book that accesses the information you have entered into it.

If you have the time and the patience to typeset the book in a typesetting program such as InDesign or QuarkXPress, you will be able to get a much more attractive book, which you can photocopy and have bound. If you can't typeset it yourself, you can probably find someone to do it for a fee. The use of images – the more the better – makes any family history look better and makes it more useful, as well as more readable and interesting. But with more images, you won't get a good page look in Word and will therefore have to use a typesetting program or hire a professional typesetter, and that translates into a much higher cost per book.

Whether you write it in Word or typeset it, you can make it into a PDF that you can distribute to family members via E-mail. That puts the printing and binding of the book in their hands and they can additionally distribute it as a PDF or as a printed copy to their children and grandchildren. If you have a very large history with lots of images and many family members to whom you plan to distribute it, a PDF can also be used by itself, or you can send that PDF to a print-on-demand service (an online printing company) and have it printed and bound into a real book.

How big your book is in terms of dimensions and the number of pages is determined by how many images you have, because charts, maps, and photos usually require bigger dimensions (e.g., 8-1/2" x 11") so that the images can be made big enough to see the details and still leave room for text. If you don't have many images, or they are just small photos of people, the page dimensions can be considerably smaller (e.g., 5-1/2" x 8-1/2" or 6" x 9"). However, smaller pages require cutting, and that means you are paying for a larger piece of paper that is then cut down to size, but the book will probably look much better. In that case, you might want to go to the 5-1/2" x 8-1/2" page size as that will give you two pages from a single 8-1/2" x 11" sheet of paper, whereas you can only get one 6" x 9" page out of a single 8-1/2" x 11" sheet.

Photos & Illustrations

Histories are especially interesting when they are accompanied by images. Images can be photographs, photographs of painted portraits, maps, tree charts, historic documents, etc. Photographs can include people as well as their houses, their farms, their storefronts, etc., and they are always interesting and do wonders at making a history come alive. The same is true of original clippings from newspapers, photocopies of diary pages, receipts, deeds, etc.

You will probably be creating tree charts and scanning documents and maps. But you may have an album or two full of photos and your other family members will probably have photos you have never seen. Historical societies often have old photos that include houses, farms, and storefronts from the area where your family once lived. Someone in the family probably has a diary or a family Bible. Sometimes neighbors and friends who lived near your family have photos of your family and may not even know they have them.

It pays to ask around. It is amazing how many photographs you can amass with just a little effort. I managed to collect, scan, and photograph more than 1,000 from my family and friends of the family, some of whom E-mailed me images from Finland. I went to family reunions with a camera in pre-scanner days and duplicated photos from everyone's albums. I always offered to pay people to scan their images and send them to me, but most people just did it and asked that I send them a copy of the family history, which I did. Most of my relatives sent me original photos, which I scanned and then returned to them. Others scanned on their end and E-mailed the images to me. I didn't care what format they sent because I was just grateful to get these great old images.

Scanning

If you plan to print out your history, you should scan your photos into the computer and save them in TIF format at about 300 dpi resolution. Scan at higher resolution (600 dpi and up) if the image is under 4" x 6" in size. This allows you to enlarge the image so that the details are more visible.

Photographing Photographs

You will probably be able to scan almost anything, and scanning is preferable to trying to photograph another photograph. But if you don't have a scanner or a hand-scanner, you may have to take a photograph of another photograph. If the photograph is under glass, take the photo outside on an overcast/cloudy day and shoot without a flash. Try to avoid getting reflections of yourself and your surroundings as you do so. Holding the camera at a slight angle can help. If you are not good at holding the camera very still, use a tripod. You can sometimes get cheap ones at used camera stores, or you might know someone who will loan you one. If you are going to photograph houses, farms, or storefronts, do so during the early morning or late afternoon. Do not try to photograph them when the sun is right overhead as you will not get as good an image.

Identifying Faces in Photos

It may seem like you should know everyone in your family photos, but I had more than 150 photographs of people I had never seen before. It took me quite a long time to get them all identified, and I am a photo analyst specializing in biometric face recognition, so believe me when I say that misidentification of people in old photographs is very common. I have identified many people in old albums for my clients, and there is a real science behind this, and it is particularly important when you are identifying people who share a family resemblance.

Look very carefully at photographs. Scan them and put them up onscreen in a photo editing software like Photoshop so that you can see the details. See what's written on them or look for a photographer's logo that will tell you where the photo was taken. Try to get an idea of when a photo was taken based on clothing or who is in the photograph or where the photo was taken.

Don't assume you have identified someone positively until you have ruled out the possibility that it is a brother or father of that person who just looks similar. And, if you know that a person died at age 87 in 1864, then a photograph taken much later in or around 1895-1900 is not going to be that person. Seems obvious, but you'd be amazed how many people don't take the time to figure out when a photo was taken to rule out these kinds of misidentifications.

People often wore old-fashioned clothing for the era in which a photograph was taken. This is especially true with poor farmers. Also, people owned fewer articles of clothing in the days before ready-to-wear. Facial features change with age, but it is things like moles and scars that usually throw people off. A mole or scar can fade or appear over time, and they can show up in photos or not. But the two things that do not change are bone structure and the ears:

Ears. Ear patterns and the position of the ears on the head are still used to this day to identify people who do not have hands or who have had their fingers burned off or have suffered some other injury that obliterated their fingerprints. If ears are visible, that's the first place to look.

Bones. Bone structure is critical, and it's not something you can just measure with a ruler. What you want to see is the proportion of a feature compared to the proportions of that same feature in another photograph. For example, if the length of the nose on Face #1 makes up 28% of the total face length , and the length of the nose on Face #2 (who looks like they might be the same person as Face #1) makes up 35% of the total face length, then it's not the same person. You can do the same with the chin height, the forehead height, etc. – whatever is visible.

If you need more help with this, you can purchase my book, Face to Face: Analysis and Comparison of Facial Features to Authenticate Identities of People in Photographs. It's available at my website, www.manyhatspublications.com and can also be purchased on amazon.com. It's not available as an ebook as it is too heavily illustrated for that format (but maybe in the future ...).

CD/DVD Photos Collections

If you have a lot more photos than you can possibly use in your book, you might want to scan them all as low resolution (72 dpi) JPEG files and burn them onto a CD or DVD, possibly along with a PDF of your history so that all your family members can enjoy them for generations.

There are software programs that you can buy that will create nice looking albums, or you can just put the photos into folders with the name of the family or individual person's name on them. You can also find software programs that create slide shows, some which allow you to enter comments about the photograph so that you can call attention to certain details about the photos, such as "This is Mary and Irwin's wedding photo, and she is wearing the veil that her daughter Eileen and Eileen's daughter Michelle both wore when they got married."

Recommended Reading

While a lot of information is being made available on the Internet every day, you might still want to check out some of the following books:

Board for Certification of Genealogists, The BCG Genealogical Standards Manual

Carmack, Sharon Debartolo, Organizing Your Family History Search: Efficient and Effective Ways to Gather and Protect Your Genealogical Research

Carmack, Sharon Debartolo, A Genealogists Guide to Discovering Your Female Ancestors: Special Strategies for Uncovering Hard-To-Find Information About Your Female Lineage

Carmack, Sharon Debartolo, Your Guide to Cemetery Research

Case, Patricia Ann, How To Write Your Autobiography: Preserving Your Family Heritage

Colletta, John Philip, They Came In Ships: Finding Your Immigrant Ancestor's Arrival Record

Croom, Emily Anne, Unpuzzling Your Past: The Best-Selling Basic Guide to Genealogy

Croom, Emily Anne, The Sleuth Book for Genealogists: Strategies for More Successful Family History Research

Croom, Emily Anne, Genealogists Guide to Discovering Your African American Ancestors: How to Find and Record Your Unique Heritage

Doane, Gilbert H. and James R. Dell, Searching for Your Ancestors

Everton, George B., The Handbook for Genealogists: U.S.A.

Greenwood, Val D., The Researcher's Guide to American Genealogy

Hinckley, Kathleen W., Locating Lost Family Members and Friends: Modern Genealogical Research Techniques for Locating the People of Your Past and Present

Hone, E. Wade, Land and Property Research in the United States

Johnson, Richard, How to Locate Anyone Who Is or Has Been in the Military

Kemp, Thomas Jay, International Vital Records Handbook

Kirkham, E. Kay, How to Read the Handwriting and Records of Early America

Luebking, Sandra H. and Alice Eichholz, The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy

Meyerink, Kory L., Printer Sources: A Guide to Published Genealogical Records

Mills, Elizabeth Shown, Evidence! Citation and Analysis for the Family Historian

Neagles, James C., U.S. Military Records: A Guide to Federal and State Sources, Colonial America to the Present

Spence, Linda, Legacy: A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Personal History

Sperry, Kip, Reading Early American Handwriting

Steele, Joelle, Face to Face: Analysis and Comparison of Facial Features to Authenticate Identities of People in Photographs

Stevenson, Noel C., Genealogical Evidence: A Guide to the Standard of Proof Relating to Pedigrees, Ancestry, Heirship, and Family History

Thorndale, William and William Dollarhide, Map Guide to the U.S. Federal Censuses 1790-1920

Tillman, Norma Mott, How To Find Almost Anyone, Anywhere

U.S. National Archives & Records Administration, Guide to Genealogical Research in the National Archives

Other Books by Joelle Steele

Fiction & Poetry

Shades

The Rosary Bed: A Mariah King Mystery

Devil's Garden: A Mariah King Mystery

Perceptions, Passions, and Paradoxes: A Poetry Collection

Biometrics

Face To Face: Analysis And Comparison Of Facial Features To Authenticate Identities of People In Photographs

Cat Care

Cooking for Fluffy: Healthy Home-Made Feline Diets

Interior/Exterior Landscape

Plantscaper's Guide to Interior Landscape Maintenance

Guía Para Plantscapers: El Mantenimiento de Plantas Interiores

Interior Landscape Dictionary

The ABCs Of Indoor Palm Trees

The ABCs of Indoor Dracaenas and Other Related Foliage Plants

The ABCs Of Indoor Ferns

Soils & Nutrients for Indoor Plants

Indoor Watering Techniques

How To Start Your Own Interior Landscape Business

Get The Job & Make A Profit: Sales, Marketing, and Estimation Techniques for Horticultural Companies

How to Create a Successful Web Site for Your Horticultural Business

How to Market Your Horticultural Services

Human Resource Guide and Policy Manual for Horticultural Companies

Genealogy

An Illustrated History of the Steele, Furu, and Forström Families in Finland and America

A Brief History of the Buzzini, Crosetti, and Martelli Families in Italy and America

Grandma Helny's Old-Fashioned Swede-Finn Recipes

Astrology

Astrological Prediction Of Earthquakes and Seismic Data Collection

How to Select and Work With An Astrologer

How to Market Your Astrological Services

Small Business

The Small Business Webmaster

How to Market Your Small Business

Human Resource Guide and Policy Manual for Small Businesses

Writing

Unblocked: How to Expand Your Creativity by Overcoming and Preventing Creative Blocks

Living and Breathing: How to Make Your Characters Come Alive

About the Author

Joelle Steele is a writer, artist, and publisher. She was born and raised in California and currently makes her home in Washington state.