Genealogy Archives - Paul Duxbury

How To Create A Genealogy Scrapbook

Have you been researching your family history and discovered quite a substantial amount thanks to your diligent online research and maybe even trips to the archive offices?

If you have then you might have a huge file of papers, documents, photos and other bits and pieces. So, what do you do with all of it? How do you organize it?

Well, how about being creative and making a beautiful, one of a kind, genealogy scrapbook that will not only protect these precious documents, but also display them in a stunning way for your entire family to marvel at.

Your genealogy scrapbook will definitely take center stage at all the family reunions!

Getting Started With Genealogy Scrapbooking

There are a number of excellent pre-made genealogy scrapbook pages that you can collect and combine to make a simple task of the scrapbook.

To get started you should make sure you get an ancestral history tree that you can fill in and stick photographs onto, as well as pages that offer spaces for writing short snippets of information about individuals in your family ancestry.

Using Free Genealogy Sites

If you are on the quest to find out more about your family’s history there are a number of online options that you have nowadays for digging into your genealogy. Certainly far more than when I started this fascinating hobby or “detective hunt” as I often refer to it more years ago than I care to remember!

You can use free genealogy search sites to help you source lot of information. You can find paid sites that offer certifications, records and much more, however, when you are searching for so many people in your family history, this can become very expensive.

Fortunately there are so many free sites that contain much the same information, and sometimes even more, so this is where you should begin your search.

Firstly we are going to take a look at the benefits of using the Free Genealogy Sites. Tthen we will take a look at some of the most popular sites which are really helpful.

How To Start Genealogy Research For Beginners

More people are now looking to start genealogy research thanks to the success of television shows as well as certain websites such as Ancestry in the US and Ancestry in the UK spending a lot on marketing in order to get their name out into the public domain.

There are a number of reasons as to why somebody may wish to start researching their family tree with the most common ones being that they wish to learn about themselves and where they come from, they love puzzles as a hobby and your family tree is quite a personal puzzle, for posterity to pass on to future generations, or to try to learn about a particular family story that has been passed down the generations.

However, having a reason to start it is only one part because you also need to know how to do your research and the tips that follow may prove to be rather useful for a number of people.

Begin With What You Know

This may seem obvious, but you are always best to start off by writing down all of the information that either you know personally or details that you can get from other living relatives.

This is going to give you a base to work from and it is surprising how many people you will be able to add to your family tree in next to no time, but of course unless you are 100% certain about various dates it is best to always check them out during your research as one small mistake can send you down the wrong road entirely.

Spend time looking for those family photographs that are in not only your house, but with other relatives and get copies, check for a personal diary or certificates related to an individual and use all of this to grow the roots of your tree.

Born Into Slavery

A reflection on discovering that one of my ancestors was Born into Slavery.

As my connections will be aware I am very keen on tracing my Family History. I have always been fascinated by the twists and turns that the journey of exploration can take us on and these last few days have certainly seen things take an unexpected turn!

Some years ago I took a DNA Test which gave me some insights into my genealogy many of which were what I had expected. However, I have always been intrigued by the reference to West Africa in my DNA although I hadn’t especially pursued it.