How to find your ancestor? Drawing up a family tree

2024 Author: Priscilla Miln | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 00:21

Quite often, families have different questions about both their relatives (distant and nearest) and ancestors. This usually happens when grandparents begin to reminisce about their childhood, how and where they grew up, what kind of relatives they knew. Based on these stories, you can try to make a family tree of your family, because thanks to this activity, it is quite possible to learn a lot about relatives. How to find your ancestor? Let's try to figure it out together.

What are searches for?

Every year more and more people are interested in their roots. The science of one's own ancestors attracts a huge number of people who are not indifferent to their ancestry. Some of them try to find their ancestors for the usual material purpose - either to get rich, or to go to their newfound relatives abroad, or because of the usual prestige, because their grandparents were once famous or belonged to a higher caste. Others begin the search with a simple human goal - theyI really want to know my family.

How to find your ancestors?

In any case, this search is worthy of respect. But not everyone who decided to start this work knows how to find their ancestors in the archives. Where to apply? What do you need to know? How much is it? And this is not a complete list of questions that arise in the minds of people who wish to get to know their ancestors.

How to find your ancestor? Here, of the two possible ways, you can choose the most appropriate for each situation. The first option is less expensive - this is an independent search. If the second option is chosen - with the involvement of professionals, it must be taken into account in advance that this service is paid and not very cheap. But the result of the work will be more accurate than in the first case, and faster.

Oh, those good soldiers

Practically in every family there is a person (or even more than one) who gave his strength in the name of the Great Victory of the 45th. Unfortunately, not all descendants of glorious soldiers and officers know a lot of information about their grandparents. How to find your ancestor who fought? And here various services will come to the rescue, thanks to which you can find out some details of their biography, their life, their feat. One of them is the project of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, which systematizes credentials and documents about soldiers who died in World War II and subsequent conflicts - obd-memorial.ru. There is also a regional youth organization, the Trizna search association, which searches for missing soldiers. With their helpthe problem of how to find your ancestor becomes not so difficult.

And it's very good that such services exist. After all, the phrase “no one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten”, known to everyone since childhood, turns out to be very correct, having received a new breath. Everyone who fought on the side of the Soviet Union in difficult years deserves to be not only known, but also remembered. So that the descendants keep this good memory in their hearts for many years.

Instructions for use. Start started

To start compiling a family tree, you can ask your older relatives about what they can remember from the history of their family. Moreover, it is recommended to find out not only names, patronymics, surnames and dates of birth - generally accepted information. When compiling the tree, you can also indicate other information that can only be found - interesting episodic moments from the biography of relatives, their place of residence, study, work, awarding honorary signs, orders and medals, perhaps even some hobbies. Thanks to this additional information, an ordinary tree can easily turn into a small encyclopedia of the history of one particular family.

Where did your last name come from?

No less interesting will be information about the history of the origin of the surname. To get at least minimal data, you can use a dictionary of surnames - both taken from the library and purchased at a bookstore. If the name is quite common, even in such a small reference book, brief information about the origin, time andthe place of his appearance is quite there. In addition, the class affiliation of the surname is also really detectable.

In the same way, you can find data on the social status of the owner of the surname. As an example, we can take surnames that end in “-sky” or “-tsky” and are based on a Greek or Latin word, the name of a theologian or scientist, a holiday or a sacrament that is directly related to the church. The genealogy of the surname in this case will show that, most likely, one of the ancestors of the interested person was a student of the theological seminary, within the walls of which he received a new surname. This applies, for example, to the variant that arose from the name of the Transfiguration holiday - Transfiguration. On the other hand, if the surname is shortened by several letters, but its remaining part is consonant with the generic name of a well-known noble family, it is possible that its bearer is a descendant of some aristocrat. Like Elizabeth Temkina, who was the illegitimate daughter of Grigory Potemkin and, according to rumors, the Empress herself. So searching for people by last name can give a lot of not only useful, but also fascinating information.

Determine the types of pedigrees

There are two main types of pedigrees - ascending and descending. The first begins to be built from, so to speak, the applicant, from the one who begins to draw up his family tree. Then everything moves on to information about relatives - parents, grandparents and so on.

At the head of the second version of the pedigree is the oldest founder that could be found. And alreadyafter all his descendants are mentioned, including the applicant. Here it is possible to look at the whole family, at what distant relatives were doing.

Types of pedigrees can be viewed a little differently:

1. Male ascendant - it includes only males. It looks like a regular line. Thanks to this pedigree, you can even determine your connection with some historical figure or even a famous person of yesteryear.

2. Male descending - you need to choose the head of the clan and stretch the chain from him to the youngest man in this clan.

3. Ascending mixed - both men and women are indicated. Relatives are listed in geometric progression - first 2, then 4, 8, 16, 32 and so on.

4. Descending mixed - relatives of both sexes are also indicated. Such a pedigree contains several surnames and genera.

This compilation of a family tree is easy to do. It is important to stock up on time and patience.

Looking for last name

How to search for people by last name if there is information that they moved to live abroad?

To begin with, it should be clarified whether the applicant really has relatives abroad, what are their last names, when exactly did they go abroad, what is their marital status, do they have children and where exactly did they move. If their country of residence is unknown, you can start searching with the most popular - Israel, USA and Canada.

Archive of last nameswill always provide invaluable assistance, because it is there, without even expecting it, that you can find useful information for yourself. To search in other countries, it would be good to know a foreign language. Also try to find relatives using worldwide search engines or social networks.

Search using archives

To at least try to find your relatives, you should go to the archive. There are a great many surnames, behind each of which there are human destinies, so there is hope that this method will be effective.

First you need to find out what the search period is and go to the registry office archive. And already there - to submit a request to search for the information necessary for the customer or to come in person. Do not forget that not only registry offices have archives, but also, for example, in medical and educational institutions.

Another direction of search is the All-Russian Book of Memory, because it stores the data of the inhabitants of the entire collapsed Union. This book contains a very large database of citizens who participated in hostilities during the Great Patriotic War. The names of all people were grouped according to the places of conscription. It is possible to get information about the merits - life and combat, from here, you can even find out where the person they are looking for is buried. Important and very necessary information for many people is foundas much as 750 volumes.

Doing it all ourselves

To understand how to find your ancestor, and as accurately as possible to recreate the family tree, you should go through several stages. Collect all the information, talk with parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. Scan photos that have been saved. It would be a good idea to prepare a description of each of the family members. It is helpful to look at several genealogical sites. Or you can turn to professionals.

We need to figure out how to make a tree correctly: genetic diseases and characteristics, hobbies, habits, relationships between relatives - all this is important.

It is necessary to decide what type of tree will be chosen - descending or ascending. It would also be nice to choose a program for compiling a family tree. It's very simple, because there are a lot of them. Then put photos, links between relatives and the necessary designations into this program. As you search, add new information.

Now you can print the prepared tree on a large sheet or, for example, make a book. A copy can be brought to relatives, who will also supplement the materials with information. Thus, the family tree will expand.