Family History Project

I totally enjoy working on family history projects. This is a hobby that started some 30 years ago. With technology and more information than ever before at our fingertips it makes family history projects more interesting as well as exciting.

A family history project involves looking up the history of the family members through census, land, vital and military records (and any other records that may be available to me). I can trace many ancestors back to the 1770’s and America’s beginnings. Sometimes copies of original documents await me, and sometimes there is great difficulty in locating a document I know should be there.

Recently I worked on a family history project for a friend and here is what I found:

Copies of original documents

Census records

From which I created a family tree

and a family history.

What does it cost to do a family history project? Well, it really depends on how much family I find (how many pages I print out). I use a moderately priced genealogy program (costs less than many computer games). Next I spend time accessing subscription genealogy websites, as well as numerous other historical, city and county websites. Once I begin finding the family members I add historical documents that I’ve retrieved to their family history file in my genealogy program. Usually within a month I have some of the family members traced back to their immigration to the United States.

Documents I normally find are military and pension documents, census documents, at times immigration and travel documents. Sometimes there are news clippings, birth, death, and marriage documents, photographs of homes, graveyard headstones, and copies of city directories (precursor to the phone book).

When I have made copies of all the documents, which can be costly in printer ink at times, I like to place all of it together in a notebook, with all sheets in page protectors. I make a digital file of the family history (a CD) and place it into the notebook. A picture of the family tree is put on the front of the notebook and then I hand my gift over to the family.

I’ve now done about 8 or 9 of these projects and I really enjoy it. It’s sort of like scrapbooking! I’ve decided to put it out here to the rest of you. If you live in the United States and would like a notebook with your family history, you can contact me mdetwilr at yahoo.com. I’m not a licensed or certificated genealogist. However, experience has taught me how and where to find family members, and what information is available and important (along with their sources). If you contact me I’ll work on your family for a moderate fee (remember printer ink, paper, notebook sheet protectors, and subscription to the genealogy websites all cost).

Thanks for listening ~

Michelle