The Tree After you have learned about your family from your family, it’s time to start attaching all those leaves to your family tree. For that we need a pedigree chart. While I firmly believe in keeping your family history on a computer, I think it helps to begin by filling in a paper pedigree
Now for the Fun Stuff! Over the past weeks we have seen why it’s important to know our family’s history. Now let’s look at how we get started. The answer may surprise you! Talk to Your Family The first place to turn when beginning your family history is … your family! We often don’t realize
The Past Becomes the Future Weve already talked about how learning about our family’s history can help us feel grounded and give us a sense of belonging to a larger family. But what about the future? We know it’s important to pass those stories on to our children, but how do we make those practices
The Forgotten Female History is full of blunders that hopefully turn into lessons. One of those is the lack of recognition women have been regarded through time. Even as late as the 1950s most women didn’t hold office, become business professionals, or otherwise engage in the business or political world. One that gets me was
Who’s Your Granddaddy? A sense of belonging is important for all of us, as can be seen in this previous post, but it’s especially important for children. As can be seen in this article in The Guardian, knowing their family history is beneficial for kids. Besides what scientists tell us, a child not knowing who
Gratitude Discovering family history, whether mine or a client’s, consistently makes me grateful for what I have. I am often amazed at what people two hundred years ago accomplished when they had so little. Ancestors who moved hundreds of miles to a new place with very few people, and not only survived, but raised a
Why Do We Do That? Long ago I heard a story about a family traditions that I’ve never forgotten. A mother and her young daughter were helping to prepare the family’s Thanksgiving meal. They were tasked with cooking the ham. The first thing the mother did was remove the ham from the package and remove
Healthy and Happy in 2025 Discovering your family history can tell you about your health history. Many of the resources we use when researching our family’s history can give us information about our ancestor’s health as well as our potential for developing certain diseases. DNA One of the best known is DNA testing. Many DNA
Your Mystery Awaits! Everyone loves a good mystery. The drama, the sense of adventure, exciting surprises, they get your heart pumping and make you feel alive! A review of Rotton Tomatoes best TV shows for 2025 show that at least half offer some form of intrigue or mystery. NCIS, one of my favorites, has been
Helping You Helps Me I know, it’s the opposite of the way they say it on TV, but for us, that’s the way it really works. One of the great things about researching your family’s history is that your constantly “paying it forward.” We don’t really think about it, but all those searches we do
