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Blended Families and Your Family Tree

When we think of genealogy and the family tree, we may think of a neatly organized chart with lines connecting parents to children and so forth. Many modern families’ kinship relations do not fit neatly within a standard pedigree chart, though. With divorces, remarriages, adoptions, and many other things, the definition of “family” depends largely upon who you ask. What, then, is a genealogist to do? Most genealogy software wants us to enter our data into the traditional categories and display them in the traditional ways. How do we adjust the concept of the family tree to include people to … Continue reading →

Bring Your Research To Life With A Geneaolgy Project

If you enjoy doing genealogy research but you wonder what kinds of things you can do with the information that you have diligently been digging up, you may want to put your research on hold for a bit and try doing a genealogy-related project. Creating a family tree to display in your home or give as a gift is a popular genealogy project, as are genealogy scrapbooks and written family histories. There are plenty of products that are available to help you get started on any of these three projects. There is a huge selection of beautiful family tree templates … Continue reading →

Documenting Your Ancestor’s Home

If you have been researching your genealogy for any amount of time, you have likely acquired a nice collection of pedigree charts, old letters, birth & death certificates, marriage licenses, baptism records, draft cards, and any other document that provides important genealogical information. You may also possess old photos of your ancestors and their families. However, you may not have considered documenting the home of your ancestors, and I am here to tell you that you should. Homes of our ancestors often hold deep sentimental value and memories for the people who once lived there. It could be that there … Continue reading →

Creating Your Pedigree Chart

A pedigree chart is a list that shows your parents, grandparents and great grandparents. You can expand the chart to show as many of your great grandparents as you can determine. You may find it difficult to list ancestors beyond your great grandparents. This depends on how much information you can obtain. Start with the information that your immediate family members have. Has someone in your family already completed a pedigree chart of their own? You may find that someone else in your immediate family has done the majority of the work that you were about to do. If you … Continue reading →

Genealogy Project Idea – Halloween Scrapbook

Since it is September, Halloween candy and merchandise have been creeping onto the shelves for weeks now. This time of year is a lot of fun, and it brings back a lot of great memories from my childhood. While I remember quite a bit about the fun things that I did on Halloween when I was small I can’t help but wonder about what my parents and my in-laws and other relatives did when they were younger. One of the great things about genealogy is that when you do genealogy as a hobby, you constantly get all of these fun … Continue reading →

Old Photographs and Holiday Memories

Each year during the holiday season, I learn a little bit more about my family. That is actually one of my favorite things about the holidays – seeing all of my family and getting to know them a little better each time I see them. While the information that I usually learn is not something that would appear on a pedigree chart, it is important information, nonetheless. I learn things about the relatives that I talk to, as well as those that are no longer alive. My aunts and uncles tell stories from their childhood, and they often take out … Continue reading →

Genealogy and the Classroom – Beyond the Family Tree

I remember my very first exercise in genealogy. I forget what grade I was in, but I remember that the assignment was to make a family tree. My mother helped me draw a pedigree chart on a boring piece of white paper. I am not sure where we got all of the information about my ancestors from, but we were able to fill out the chart and I handed it in. Even though I remember doing the assignment, it was not really a very memorable experience for me. In fact, it left me with the impression that genealogy is somewhat … Continue reading →

My First Genealogy Lesson

Today I learned that genealogy is one of the world’s most popular hobbies. According to Kimberly Powell, the instructor of the free genealogy course that I am taking, hundreds of millions of people around the world are actively engaged in some form of family research. That interesting tidbit of information was just the beginning of my first lesson in genealogy. As I read the rest of the lesson, I found an answer to a question that formed in my mind a few days ago. I had been wondering whether it will take me a very long time to make a … Continue reading →

Defining “Cousins”

One thing that has always confused me is how to determine relationships among cousins. I know my parent’s siblings’ children are my first cousins. That’s an easy one. But then you get into second cousins, first cousins, once removed, and second cousins, twice removed. I have always thought that my first cousin’s daughter was my second cousin, and that my mother’s first cousin’s son was my third cousin. Guess what? It turns out I was wrong. The relationships among cousins are based on a couple of factors: 1) First second, third, forth, etc. cousins are the number of generations there … Continue reading →

Religion in Genealogy Part 5: Buddhists

Buddhists are followers of a variety of practices and beliefs known as Buddhism. Whether Buddhism is a religion or philosophy is controversial. Some sources say that to be a religion, there must be a belief and worship of a supernatural entity, which Buddhists do not have. Other sources describe religion as an organization that practices beliefs based on a higher power or ultimate truth. Buddhism is based on the latter. Buddhism can be traced back to circa 563 to 460 BCE (or BC) in what is now called Nepal. Siddhartha Gautama, who is more commonly referred to as the Buddha, … Continue reading →