Genealogy and family histories

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Genealogy

Save your family history for future generations.

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Today families move around so much that children often do not get to know their aunts, uncles & cousins. Even grandparents get lost in the shuffle of divorce. How on earth are your grandchildren going to understand their family background if you don't make an effort to get it written down for them?
There are a number of forms you can use to organize the various generations. It is best if you use one of these standard forms to put the names of your kin together with their birth dates, when & where they were born, who they married, when & where, and also the date and where they died if not still living. These forms assign a coded number to each person which makes it easy to see where they belong in your family tree. Then you can use that coded number along with the name to identify all those favorite family stories.
Almost every family has a "black sheep" they would like to disown any kinship to. Please include any that you know about for the sake of accuracy. Many a published genealogy & history book in the past has left out such kin folk and that makes a big problem trying to find out where those folks came from. Family bibles usually record their birth. Today, almost all babies are born in hospitals, at lease here in the USA. Go ahead & acknowledge their kinship, no matter how embarassing. A friend of mine was a judge, and very esteemed one at that. He used to say that there was always one of his family at that court, sometimes on the bench (judge) and other times in front of the bench (prisoner). It shows compassion, because none of us are perfect. Besides, it will add a bit of spice to your stories!
Don't be surprised to find out different spellings for the same names. It still happens, but is not very common now. It happened a lot many years ago when fewer people got as much education as folks do today. Also deeds and other legal papers were all written by hand before the days of typewriters (that was before computers) and often the handwriting was hard to read. Just in my county are deeds and tax records referring to Toms, Tooms, Tomms, Tomus, Tommus, Thoms, Thomus, and Thomas. Actually, there were only two families: Toms and Thomas who were neighbors. It is possible that neither family could read or write, so didn't know their names were mispelled. The records are a mess. You really have to be a detective to figure out such mysteries. It is like going on a treasure hunt sometimes!
If you have more money than time, you can hire someone to research your ancestors for you. You, yourself, or other living relatives can supply the cuurent information. Usually there is one person in your family group who likes doing all of this more than others...let that person be the "keeper of the records" and he or she can put the information given to him or her where it belongs in the history.
After you assemble all the information for your family history, or as much as you can find, it is possible with computers to assemble it, format it, and print it out just for yourselves. However, it is best to let it be formally published because some libraries will also be interested in it. If your family history is professionally formated and printed, it will be so much nicer, and more available to future generations...and something to be proud of! Your great-great-grandchildren won't have to fight over who gets the only copy their mom or dad got.

Now you already have your family history ready to be published. Great! It is time to get some professional advice about what to do next. Wish Book Press is one choice you should check out.