An introduction to genealogy
If any of you are interested in pursuing you family history I am more than willing to help get you started.
As you are aware genealogy is simply another name for family history. We all have one. Most of us will find ordinary everyday people for the most part but if you go far enough back in time you will mostly likely related to most of the famous people of the middle ages. The reason for this is three fold.
One the number of ancestors one is related to doubles with each generation.
2 parents 4 Gp 8ggp 16gggp 32ggggp 64gggggp 128 ggggggp and on and on
If we go back to my 25th GGF, Saher IV de Quincy for example, I would, in theory, be descendant of
67,108,864 people…Yes that is 67 million.
While this number is accurate when we multiply each generation by 2 it does not take in the fact that people related to each other marry. What I mean by that is cousins marring cousins as well as other relations marring. Given enough time they will likely not even know they are related. Genealogist call this pedigree collapse. Most of us know maybe our second cousins. But would be hard-pressed to name any cousin further down the line. I read somewhere that we are all each other’s 50th cousin at the most.
If you are just getting started on your family history it will be some time before you run into any of you medieval ancestors although the internet makes that a lot easier that it would have been 20-30 years ago.
It is estimated that a generation is about 20-25 years. If I go backward on my Gallagher line for 250 years or so that bring me to my 4th GGF Hugh Gallaher born in 1765. This would be 7 generations back. Hugh was my first Gallaher to come to British North America. So far we do not know where in Ireland he was from but the Gallaher stronghold is and has always been County Donegal in the northwest part of Ireland. DNA may help locate cousins that still live there or elsewhere for that matter. In addition to Hugh other ancestors, mostly of English or Scottish ancestry came, in the 1650’s on.
While I have found many interesting people in my family tree, including knights, I am still looking for the pirate and his buried treasure. ARRRRRRRRR
If you think that the task of creating a family history is donating It can be but it is also possible to go back
A long long way. The is a national society of Saints and Sinners and one of their saints for which people can trace their lineage is
“… St. Gregory “the Illuminator,” Bishop of Leontius, is an interesting personage if for no other reason than the period in which he lived: c257-c331. If you descend from Eleanor of Castile, first wife of King Edward I of England, for instance, you are able to take your ancestry backward to a saint who lived nearly two millennia ago!”
While I have not traced my line back to St. Gregory I can as Eleanor of Castile is my 22nd Great-grand mother.
Getting started
If you go online you can download just about any genealogical form you will ever need.
http://www.familytreemagazine.com/info/basicformsThe first thing you should do is get copies of a pedigree chart and a family group chart. These are the two most basic forms and will be used for each generation and or family group.
The pedigree form has a place where you list yourself as number 1, your father as number 2 and you mother as number 3. From this point on all males in your tree will be EVEN numbered and females ODD numbered. The family group sheet is just that. It records the information on the father and mother of a group and their children in order of birth.
Once you have filled out the forms with the information you know you will need to talk to as many relatives as possible. I would start with your parents, GP, uncles/aunts, older cousins. There are genealogy forms that you can use for these interviews. You can also us a tape recorder or whatever has replaced it. You can also bring some pedigree and family group sheets along to the next family together or mail them to as many relative as you think will fill them out.
One thing you should keep in the back of your mind. There may be a deep dark family secret that older members of the family may not want discussed.
In fact I have heard of people interested in their family history tell me they were discouraged to pursue it for unspecified reasons.
When filling out forms you will need to decide how you want to write dates. This is also true if you use a computer program. If you write 11 10 19xx is that November 10th or could it be October 11th.
That is why I write my dates as 10 October 19xx.
(BTW FTM the most popular computer program is coming out with a new version and is on sale at Ancestry.com. This program can link tree on Ancestry and the FTM tree on your computer so changes you make will appear in both.)
No I don’t get a commission.
If anyone needs help getting started just ask.
http://www.genealogy.com/getting_started.htmlThis is a link to the top 101 site on the internet.
http://www.familytreemagazine.com/article/101-best-websites-2010-best-big-genealogy-sites