Posts Tagged ‘Ancestry.com’
Today I gave two short presentations for my son’s 5th grade teacher. He teaches two groups of sciences classes. Today I talked about starting genealogy research. Their teacher, Mr. Blair, was very excited after the first presentation and wants to start researching his family! I even caught him looking at Ancestry.com while I gave the 2nd (repeated) presentation to the other science class. That is very exciting for me that he is interested.
The kids in both classes had many great questions about filling out their pedigree chart and family group sheet. They talked about family records they had at home, like a family Bible which contained names of the family members with births and deaths going back to the 1830s! That is a treasure! And the best part…..they all seemed very excited about doing the work.
The kids are now supposed to go home and through Thanksgiving break next week talk to family members and write down the information. There will be an assignment given after the break. I was even asked if I would come back and hear the results of the kids’ research. Of course I said yes!
And if any of the kids from the class are reading this blog – make sure you look at the records on Familysearch.org because those are free records.
Thank you Mr. Blair for giving me the opportunity to come speak today! It is exciting to see young people taking an interest in their family histories.
Related articles
- Kids Genealogy: Where To Begin (examiner.com)
- 2012 Conference Tracking Your Ancestors’ Footsteps (dupagecountygenealogicalsociety.wordpress.com)
- Follow Friday – Genealogy Lists and Message Boards (chicagofamilyhistory.wordpress.com)
If you follow me on Twitter @jencoffeelover, you may have seen my rant recently about those Ancestry.com leaves and people merging stuff into their trees. Let me explain.
My Holik ancestors came to Chicago from Senetin, Bohemia. They all came to Chicago and appear based on all the records I have found, to not have lived anywhere in between once they got off the ship. Their ship logs all indicated another member of the family as the person in the U.S. they were meeting. For pretty much all the kids that immigrated, Frantisek Holik, their father in Senetin or Anna Holik, their mother in Senetin, was listed as the closest relative in the old country.
I found a tree on Ancestry.com where a woman had merged all my Holik stuff into her tree for a Marie Holek. Names and birth years were close so it must be right? Right? Wrong! This researcher took my Marie Holik, sister to my great grandfather John, as hers. She merged in records for that Marie and my great great grandmother Marie Rataj Holik into her Marie.
I was reading some comments on being a professional genealogist and new genealogical researchers that my friend Caroline posted and was inspired to write a breaking it down series for kids. I want to not only teach you about documents and research but break things down so you learn techniques to look for clues and make better decisions about what to add to your family tree.
Subscribe to the blog so you get updates on breaking it down. I’m going to walk you through step by step all the reasons and documents showing why my Marie is not this other researcher’s Marie. Through the process you may discover something I did not.
Related articles
- May I Introduce You at Geneabloggers (chicagofamilyhistory.wordpress.com)
- Analyzing a Neighborhood (chicagofamilyhistory.wordpress.com)
