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[T1202]Tracing Your Family Tree

by Ann Stevens, Ann

Before starting to trace your ancestors, it is a good idea to talk to your parents and grandparents if they are still alive. You should ask them to tell you what they can remember about their early life and make sure you find out where and when they were born and married. Also ask them if they know this information for their parents and their siblings as well.

As things have changed such a lot in the last 50 to 100 years, you'll discover that their life would have been very different from your own. For instance most people who live in the rural areas will find that their grandparents didn't have things like T.V., computers and mobile phones which we take for granted now. I can even remember not having electricity and it was my job to spend half an hour each day pumping water from the overhead tank so we'd have water in the house! I also had to fill the kerosene fridge every Saturday and bring in the chips each day for our bath heater. We didn't have Supermarkets when then, but old fashioned grocery stores where us kids were able to buy sixpence worth of broken biscuits. We could buy lollies 'four for a penny' then too.

If you know where & when your grandparents were married, it is quite acceptable to start tracing your family tree by buying their Marriage Certificate. In Australia, it changes a lot, depending on where they married, as the records vary quite a lot between states.

One of the first things you should do when tracing your family is to join your local Family History Society as this way you can often use their records and there is usually somebody to show you the best way to go about your task. Some societies only have the records for their own area, but others have really good records for all the different states.

If you don't have a society in your area, or if they don't have the records you need; it is a good idea to check out your local library to see what they have to offer. A lot of libraries also keep copies of the Genealogical Research Directories which are issued every year. In these you can look up all the surnames that you are researching, and if you are lucky, you might find somebody else researching your surname in the same area. In the back of these books is an index where you can find the name and address of people researching your name, so you can swap information with them. In these days of computers, if they give their email address, you can check very quickly if they are indeed a distant relative.

As there are a lot of privacy laws, you have to be very careful that you don't advertise information of living people without their permission, which is another reason why it is a good idea to start with your grandparents.

Most Australian states have issued CD's and/or Microfiche with an index of Birth, Death & Marriage records, though some give more information than others. Also some of the CD's allow you to use an asterisk or a question mark to help you find the record you want. Birth records range from about 1905 to 1920 depending on which state you need, while some Marriage records go from 1937 up to 1949 and Death records can vary quite a lot with Victoria going up to 1985. Some states have extra years free on the Internet too.

Once you have found your Grandparents Marriage on a CD, your next step is to send for the Marriage Certificate which, hopefully, will give you the information you need to trace back another generation. Your Genealogical Society or Library can probably give you the address to contact to buy the certificate and probably the price, which varies from state to state.

This is enough information to help you get started, and I'm sure you'll get a real thrill when you end up finding out the names of your great-grandparents.!

There are many sources at your disposal if you want to find out about your family history and construct a family tree from the information that you find along the way. The techniques for tracing family genealogy backgrounds might take you to places that you never knew existed but are great places to find when you know what to look for.

The techniques for tracing family genealogy might start with the immediate family, and the eldest person in the family could lend a great deal to the trail that you are following. They might offer some interesting tidbits of information about births that occurred outside of marriage, or the death of a child that has no marker at the cemetery. This information can be placed in computer files, or kept in a ledger that is easy to transport to any location.

Many people are well aware of the techniques for tracing family genealogy histories through government portals. The Hall of Records is usually a place that is normally frequented by family members early in the process of tracing the family histories back several hundred years. The records contained at this facility are the birth and death certificates and government regulations require information from every person who requests access to those records.

This government regulation is one of the useful techniques for tracing family genealogy that is rarely known by people when they consult the Hall of Records for information about their families past. The person must provide a reason for requesting the information, and some are surprised to see the reason is to gain a copy of death certificate for a parent. That person might not be recognized in the family tree and should be investigated further.

These records will prove to be very helpful when family members are trying to discover whether the passing of a relative will mean that they are entitled to benefits that will help in their burial. Some family histories will entitle a family unit to inherit large sums of cash and any thief can assume the identity of another to squander the inheritance of someone who does not know that they are entitled to it.

Many people must use the records for their family history to establish their own identity if it has become involved in a case of identity theft. Many people are heavily burdened by the debts of another because their middle initial is slightly different. The credit bureaus will naturally assume that applications for credit are true and complete and will record it on the name of an individual based on that information.

The techniques for tracing family genealogy backgrounds might prove as more of a matter of protecting the family name than finding out the history behind the family name.

Article Source : Pg. 19

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