Alright, so, I wanted to figure out my family history, you know, like where we came from and all that. I started by digging through some old boxes at home. I found my grandpa’s old letters and some ancient photo albums.
Next, I thought, let’s see what the internet has. I signed up on websites like FamilySearch, it’s free, and you can find a lot of stuff. I started typing in names and dates from the documents I found.
It was a bit slow at first, I was just putting in names I knew, like my parents and grandparents. Then I found this cool feature where you can see other people’s family trees if they’re public. Sometimes, I’d find a name that matched someone in my tree, and boom, I could see a whole bunch more ancestors I never knew about.
- First, I gathered all the personal documents I could find at home.
- Then I checked out free genealogy websites.
- Typed in names, dates, whatever I had.
Going Deeper
After I got the hang of the basics, I started looking for more specific records. Birth certificates, marriage licenses, stuff like that. It’s kind of like being a detective, piecing together clues to build the bigger picture. Some websites have these records digitized, which is super helpful.
I even interviewed some of my older relatives. My grandma was a goldmine of information! She remembered names and stories from way back. I wrote everything down, dates, places, even little anecdotes about what these people were like.
It’s not just names and dates, it’s like, the stories of these people’s lives. One of my ancestors was a farmer in the midwest, another one immigrated from another country. It’s fascinating stuff.
Putting all this information together, I started building an actual family tree. There are programs and websites that help you visualize it, which is pretty cool. You start with yourself and your immediate family, and then you just keep adding branches as you find more ancestors.
It’s a Work in Progress
Honestly, this family tree thing is never really finished. There’s always more to find, more relatives to discover. But it’s a fun hobby. I feel way more connected to my family now, knowing all these stories and where we came from. Plus, it’s something I can pass down to my kids someday, which is awesome.
So yeah, that’s my journey into the world of genealogy. It’s been a wild ride, and I’m still learning, but it’s definitely worth it. And the most important thing is I finally made my rhodes family tree!
