How to Take Your Family History Search to the Next Level
Photographs and documents can only do so much
I never met my great-grandparents. I don’t even have pictures of all of them. I can visit their graves, get copies of their marriage and death certificates, read about their hometowns, but that doesn’t really tell me who they were as people. I don’t know what people liked about them, or even if they were liked at all.
I’ve been researching my family history for about 30 years now, and I’d pretty much given up on knowing much more about my ancestors, until recently. I’ve spent countless hours, and dare I say dollars, on researching via Ancestry.
When I first started, much of the information that Ancestry provides for a fairly hefty fee was being shared online for nothing. Every so often, they come up with some new material I haven’t had access to before, so I still check in from time to time. The DNA aspect is particularly intriguing.
Interestingly, the biggest breakthroughs I’ve had in recent years have been via old school methods. Finding someone to talk to who knows something you don’t can unlock doors that record searching never can. One of my Polish relatives, I didn’t know I had, contacted me and cleared up a mystery that had puzzled me all my life: why didn’t my grandfather tell anybody…
