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Find My Ancestors: Your Family History Search Surprising Secrets Revealed?When we say family, most of us usually mean our immediate family. Yet, as I recently discovered, your family history is just as much a part of who you are as those living relatives.Surprisingly, once I began to trace my family tree, I found I had distant relatives that were in the United States long before my family arrived. Oddly enough, I feel a strange connection to them as well. It is amazing how quickly the concept of your family history can change once you begin searching for your ancestors. Honestly, I did not think I would be able to find my ancestors or much about them. Other than a vague remembrance of my great grandparents, I had nothing to go on. Like most people, the stories I was told growing up became a little sketchy with the passage of time. Clearly, it was going to take the help of genealogy websites to separate the fact from the fiction. In the beginning, that is what interest me the most – getting the real story. Not knowing how to find my ancestors or where to start my ancestry search, I began online at the popularly advertised Ancestry.com genealogy website. There was a free 2 week trial that I signed up for. Obviously, I was not going to find all of my ancesters in two weeks, even if I had lots of spare time to devote to the search. After the two week trial period, the website charged around $20.00 per month to continue my family history searches. The cost was certainly worth it for me. I did not expect to find my ancestors for free. However, I found much cheaper family tree books and software. Ancestry.com is not the only genealogy resource to consider when tracing your roots. For me, it was kind of like a scavenger hunt and I looked at different genealogy books, websites, microfilm and even church records to put the pieces together. Certainly, it would be easier and faster to hire someone to do the research for me, but it is kind of fun doing it myself. Studying your family history can be fun as well as deeply meaningful. It was pretty amazing to learn that I was related to a famous Civil War general. It would have been even better if I learned that I was descended from Robert E. Lee or Ulysses S. Grant, but you can't change your family history. In researching your family history, you sometimes come across things that seem too remarkable to be true. Your family history is something about which you should feel proud. I had always thought that I was exclusively of Italian ancestry and knew a lot about my culture. However, in searching my family history, I came across a German-American and French-American to whom I am related. It was truly fascinating to find. I would suggest to anyone interested in learning your family history to go online and research it, or speak to some of your older relatives who may know a little bit more about your lineage than you do. It is really amazing to see how your family came to live where it does and who you are descended from. It is something you will want to pass on to your children. Finally, when you do your family history search, be prepared to find some things you may have never known. Some interesting things may just be revealed.
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