Sources that helped me complete our Family Tree
| Handwritten trees and letters My very first sources of information for building
our Family Tree were given to me by various members of my family
about 20 years ago. I was given hand-written letters from several
older relatives with sketched trees (such as the example on the
right), a few
photocopies of birth certificates, etc.
I also received some good
trees and information from Bob Bowmaker in Australia who had done some
considerable research on the Bowmaker history in the past [I am in
the process of contacting him again to share what I have and obtain
any new information that he might have].
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The letters mentioned above are very useful, but should be
validated with birth/death certificates etc to ensure the
information is accurate. I would advise recording the certificate
code in your Family Tree program against the date (if your software
provides this option). It does take a fraction more time but saves
you a lot of re-work later on when you are wanting to determine
whether the information you have has been validated yet or not.
Website contacts
About 8 years ago I purchased the Family Tree
Maker program and entered all the information I had. A few years later
I published my tree on the Family Tree maker website, and began to receive
emails from very distant cousins etc who found themselves or their ancestors in
my tree.
In a few instances, they were able to provide me with several
further generations of my own ancestors from these contacts, and in one
fantastic lead I obtained extremely old photos and stories as well (on the
Simpson's Bayer branch). In exchange I gave them some information that they
didn't have.
One important thing to remember when exchanging information with
these contacts is to respect the privacy of those in your tree that are still
alive. Be very very careful who you provide such birth dates to (if in any doubt
at all, don't!). They will most likely have no intention of misusing this
information, but they may be less scrupulous about how they store or share this
information with others.
Interviews with Family members
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Family members hold the most precious information of
all - the photos and stories of their (and your) relatives. I wasn't
aware just how much could be available until I started work on
Brent's family tree a couple of years ago. From Brent's parents
and a couple of relatives living nearby I was able to borrow
hundreds of old photos (albums etc) and precious letters detailing
the interesting lives of some of their ancestors. Not only did the
old photos add much personality to their life stories, some of their
photos provided additional information as well. A good example of
this is an old photo album of Brent's grandmother - in it were
photos of a trip she made to Sydney, Australia...No-one was sure
when she had taken the trip, but we noticed she had taken a couple
of photos of the Sydney harbour bridge while it was being built.
After a short foray on the internet we were able to ascertain to
within a few weeks the actual date that she was there, based on the
specific stage that the bridge building was at! |
Once I'd done as much as I could with what they'd given me, I
went back to a few family members and interviewed them about their memories of
their relatives, and then put all the information together to create the life
stories. Some of these stories need some extra work, and this is my top priority
at this time. They were also able to identify unknown people in some of the old
photos, such as the one shown above left.
The most important thing is to get the information from your
relatives as soon as possible, even if you are not ready to put your
whole family tree together. Get the information while everyone is still around
(and retaining all their faculties etc!) because you never know when something
terrible may happen, either to that relative, or the photos, letters etc they
possess. Take it from personal experience - I have lost grandparents suddenly
before getting the chance to interview them, and photos stored by relatives are
believed to have been lost to bush fires, or carried away by other more distant
relatives and lost!
Genealogy Research
| It took me a little while to realise that there are
local Genealogy Societies that can help you trace back through New Zealand relatives quite easily, using microfiche to
obtain birth/death certificate reference numbers (you then use that
code to obtain a copy of that certificate from the Department of
Births, Deaths and Marriages. This was a big help on Brent's side. I was very lucky to find them and
use them when I did - only a few months after I've finished
obtaining all I could from them, the Dept of BDM put their fees up
astronomically for the service of providing the certificate copies,
saving us a LOT of money! My local genealogy society is located in
Marlborough Park Hall, Chartwell Ave, Glenfield. |
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| A distant
relative told me about the NSW Registry of BDM, who have an
excellent website which you can search online (limited range of years
available for privacy reasons). This is extremely easy to use and has helped me quite a bit filling some holes
in my
Australian ancestors trees. The address is
http://www.bdm.nsw.gov.au/
. Using this you can obtain birth. marriage and death years for free
and obtain the source code, but you need to pay AUD22.50 to receive
a copy of the certificate for confirmation and more detailed
information. |
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Elderly relatives recounting their life
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Finally, I must mention one source in particular which has
to date been the highlight of my family tree research.
A few years before he
died, Brent's great-grandmother's husband, Len Smith sat down and wrote down
several quite long letters where he recounted the highlights of his life
including how he met Brent's grandmother, met her children, details of their
wedding day (and night!) etc. He gave them to his daughter, Bubs, who later
let me
borrow them and transcribe their contents. Transcribing them took me quite some time but I thoroughly enjoyed it,
transferring his stories to print for his family to enjoy.
These pages can be viewed on my website. What a fantastic way to leave
your memory with the world you eventually leave behind - I only wish we
could encourage more of our relatives to do the same. |
Click here for a list of specific sources
of family information
