Let us all be Thankful for what we have.  Pray for those who don’t have what they need and strive to be a better person in the coming year.

As I joined my best friend and her mother for Thanksgiving dinner, I began to think back on how much things have changed.  Her family has grown so big that we had to have their family dinner 6 days early so everyone could attend.  As the children have grown up and started their own lives and families, the changes began.

I recall as a child growing up in Ohio.  All of the family came to our house for Sunday dinners and ALL holiday dinners.  My mom was what I considered the “matriarch” of our family.

She made all of the plans, did most of the cooking with the help of my aunts and my sisters who were older and had started their families already.  I was the youngest (13 years difference between me and my sister), so I was outside playing with my nieces and nephews and cousins.

It was so different back then.  Most families lived in the same town or very close by and kept in contact on a regular basis.  All 3 of my sisters still today live within a 25 mile radius of where we were born.

Now that Mom and Dad are gone, I live in Florida and some of my sister’s kids live in other states too, so there are no longer any family gatherings like we used to have.

I have cousins, great nieces and great nephews that I don’t even know their names.  I am beginning to realize just how sad that is.  The family unit is not like it used to be and I doubt that it ever will be again.

So today, Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, the day AFTER Thanksgiving, I finally will spend time with my daughter and my 2 grandchildren.  Her family is split up now too and the kids spent Thanksgiving day with their father and his family.

Everything is ALL messed up…

I would like to try and encourage everyone to bring their families back together.  If not physically possible, then at least open the lines of communication with the members of your family again.  Keep in touch. Let them know what you are doing. Find out about what they are doing.  Do your family research; find out about your ancestors.  If you are not interested, there will be someone in the family who WILL be interested in learning about where they came from, who did they get their blue, green or brown eyes from, hair color, mannerisms, traits, etc.?

Start your own journal or scrapbook those 100′s of pictures you have stashed away in a box.  Don’t just slap a picture on a page and scribble “Aunt Betty 1952.”  There may be times that is all the info you have but if you have more information, put it down.  Aunt Betty had a life, she is a part of your history.  She had good things and bad things happen to her in her life that may have had an affect on you in some way.  Take a few minutes to write down what you know about Aunt Betty, when the picture was taken, where it was taken and what the event was when the picture was taken.

For example:  Aunt Betty (Martin -include her maiden name if she is married) Campbell, taken August 15, 1952 at Grandma Eileen’s house on Red Robin Road in Anytown, State at a summer BBQ.  If anyone else is in the picture, add that information also.  A future family researcher will LOVE you for it.

Even for some reason you only have a picture like this of hamburgers being grilled; put it in a scrapbook and write what you know about what happened that day, good, bad, funny, embarrassing, it doesn’t matter just get it written down.

I am working on some videos to give you some easy and very simple ideas on scrapbooking pages with pictures of your family and even just “hamburgers.”

I hope that each and every one of you that have read this had a wonderful family gathering, a lot of great food and catching up with relatives you may have not seen for a while.

Please add your family names to the “Add Your Family Tree” section of this blog and see if you can make some contacts with lost relatives.

Free Genealogy Search: Discovering Your Family’s Ancestry

If you are interested about discovering about your family’s history like most people are, then you can hire a genealogist to do the search for you, however, there is a much cheaper way to start searching for your family’s history.  Free Genealogy web sites…

Although it will only offer limited results, it is a great way to start your search for your family’s history.  You will find a few websites that will offer free genealogy search. These free genealogy websites will only offer limited information but it will serve as a great start to find out about your family’s genealogy.

Free genealogy research websites will serve as stepping stones on your search, there may be times you will have to venture out to search public libraries for old newspapers and old public records that may contain the information you are looking for.  A large number of documents are now on the internet and more are being added every day.  Just remember, it’s like solving a puzzle.  Just because it’s there and looks like it will fit, it might not be the “right fit.”  There could be another whole branch of the family that is similar and not your branch at all.

Some of the best genealogy sites I have found, I have listed in the Research Links area of this blog.  I will be adding more as I go along.

Since free genealogy search websites don’t contain all the information you need, you can consider gathering what information you can and once you meet a dead end in your search, you can try joining the different discussion groups, chat rooms and mailing lists that are associated with the name and/or location you are interested in.  Always remember that the farther back in the past you try to go with your family tree, the harder it is to find documents and some information may or may not be correct due to many things.

Some documents have been lost to fire and floods.  Sometimes it’s hard to determine what is written from the handwriting of the individual.  Some people did not like giving information, so there may be blanks in your research or answers written down, like on a census form may have been a guess on someone’s behalf that was not there at the time.

Do the best you can and make sure you take and maintain notes on what you have or have not found.  Your next research session just may present something that was there all along and you just didn’t see from the time before.

Free genealogy search websites are there to give you a bit of push on your search for your ancestors.

Searching your family history is a fun activity. So, start uncovering your family’s mystery by searching for the preliminary information first in free genealogy search websites and make some contacts with long lost relatives.

Scrapbooking Your Family Tree