Have you ever traced your family tree? Was it difficult?

Question:How did other family member feel about tracing the family tree?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: How did other family member feel about tracing the family tree?

I started mine over 15 yrs ago. My stepfather didn't want me to do it. He said the past is in the past so I didn't do his side. Don't want bad carma.

I always say a family tree is a work in progress, one bloom at a time. It's never finished. You're always adding to it.

I've gone back several generations. One family is probably 16 generations but I didn't do it a cousin did.

I started mine after my Mom died. My Dr was the one that wanted to know about medical history. Well it ended up saving my life. Because my Mom and her Mom died of the same thing it put me at very high risk. Then when they found a cyst the dr had no qualms at taking it out. In fact he insisted. So there are so many reasons why everyone should do their family tree and include the cause of death.

Hey Boo,

It just takes time. Not difficult, just involves lots of research.

Yes, I have. Parts of the research are easy and parts are difficult. Start by talking to older family members to get names; relationships; places of birth; dates of birth, marriage and death for everyone they can of. Then you can contact the local governments for places of birth or death to get birth and death certificates for your ancestors. There may be a fee. Other good resources are Rootsweb and Ancestry.com.

There is software that you can use to keep track of all the information you collect. The LDS church has free software you can download (you don't have to be Mormon).

Good luck!

I really enjoy it when I make a breakthrough or discover something new. It's fascinating to know how and where my ancestors lived, and I have an interest in local history anyway so I love trying to work out where they lived, as the city has changed a lot in the last 200 years.
Finding things like that my G-G Grandad died of Typhoid Fever aged 33 in 1886 in this very city really makes you think about how lucky we are today.
I'd say my Dad is probably more interested in his side than my Mum is in hers. My Mum takes a vague interest, but only really in her immediate family (parents and grandparents) she kind of loses interest when I go further back. I think because she finds it difficult to relate to.
I agree that everyone should take a interest, because every ancestor is a building block that makes up who we are today.

Yes. It isn't as difficult as college level physics or playing the piano, but it isn't like looking up something in one place on the Internet. I usually compare it to researching a high school history term paper.

Other family members either help or think we genealogists are odd ducks. Once in a while they ar egreatful. My nephew got one of those "Where is your family from?" assignments in 8th grade. I sent him a 4-page list tracing his ancestry back to Charlemagne, plus my usual warning about ancestors born before 1700, plus a list of his ancestors who had served in the Civil War.

I have attempted to trace it, but have met with either resistance or lack of knowledge. Some family members just don't care enough, or can't understand why I would want to trace it. My mothers family comes from Germany after WW2, and my husbands family is descended from Scottish and Irish, and I would love to try to find out when they came to America and where they orginated from.

I lucked into the fact that an older cousin of mine on my father's side has been at it on that line for 25 years. Needless to say, she has TONS of information on that line. My mother's side is not so easy. I have a great-aunt who has worked on one branch of it for about 25 years or so, but only the one branch, mostly. She published a book on that line. The rest of my mother's side is a little more difficult. However, nothing I have ever done in my life has been more complicated than tracing my husbands lines. No one in his family has ever done their genealogy, and none of the few handful of people still living are interested or even know anything. His parents are deceased, so we cannot ask them. I am basically having to do his line from scratch, starting with what he remembers of his parents and grandparents from when he was a little boy. Every little piece of the puzzle I have found on his line took great time and effort to locate.

It can be easy or difficult. Someone I knew walked into a Church in London and found his ancestors' details written on various old placques around the church walls. The parish records and records of the graveyard then gave even more information.They went back over 350 years.

Others spend years in research and just get back a couple of centuries.

I am still stuck at about 1830 on my own surname, after over 15 years of research!
Some family members helped, mainly on my mother's side, but when more research was done it just showed how inaccurate family memories and legends can be!
Years ago, tracing the Family Tree was something a lot of people always wanted to do "some day", but most did not! Recently, however the 'net has made the whole process a lot easier.
Many of my relatives were interested but they usually found the intricacies a bit hard to follow. I just wrote everything down and gave copies to sisters etc. and said "look after these, in years to come somebody in the family may be really pleased to see them"