Family Mementoes Hold The Key To Your Ancestral Search
December 1st, 2008

Family mementoes can be a useful tool in your ancestral search. You can use just about anything that has been passed down from an earlier generation. One of the most common things to use is a family bible. Many family bibles have family names, children's names, family churches and a host of other information. Sometimes they also include information about marriages, births, divorces, and even deaths. Many people also include a family tree. Usually the family church is listed and you can use this information to get baptism certificates, marriage certificates, death certificates, and lots of other information. If you can get to the church, it would not hurt to ask around. You never know if someone may remember your family and give you some information about them.

Another good place to look is old photo albums. Many people label the backs of pictures or the bottom of Polaroid pictures. Most are not labeled and you will have to ask your parents, grandparents and other family members about the pictures. Pictures are the best thing to stir forgotten memories and help older people remember other people and events. You can learn about family members, family friends, family and non family events. You can usually find wedding pictures, birthday pictures, anniversary pictures, and a lot of other pictures that may prove useful.

Some people, especially those of a war generation save letters. If your parents or grandparents saved any of these letters, ask if they can see them. They usually will give them to you, and if you read them together, they will probably have stories to share about that time. It will serve two purposes: It will give you the information you need, as well as allow them to reminisce. You will both enjoy the time spent together. Reading through the letters should give you some information about family, events, places, names, and many other leads you can follow up on.

Talk to as many family members as possible, someone may have birth certificates and/or death certificates of family members. These will usually have parents and spouse information on it that can help guide you. These can usually be found at family churches, census bureau, older family members, etc

Gifts and jewelry passed down is also a good thing to check. Many things are engraved or have certificates of Authenticity. You can ask around your family, someone is bound to know about the ring you got from your mother or the watch you got from your grandfather. It never hurts to ask. Sometimes if you bring jewelry to a reputable jeweler, they can do some research and find the original owners and maybe a bit of history about the piece.

Sometimes your family will keep newspaper clipping of things that your family has accomplished or events that have happened in the past. Asking family members about these is another good way of stirring memories that can lead you to other family members. Just like photos, these can be a very powerful tool in getting the older family members to talk about the past



The many resources of a family can almost always deliver a wide collection of old photographs (sometimes unlabelled, but sometimes you can be lucky), newspaper cuttings, birth, marriage, and death certificates, and other mementoes. These help to stimulate interest and are useful things to take when talking to older people whose memories are not as good as they used to be and can often stirred by such memorable things.

Write everything down, remain skeptical about stories that the family is descended from King Charles, the Duke of Something, Baron Somebody, the guy that discovered this and that and is famous for this, or all of these people, and follow the leads that promise to point the way back to the unknown. Do not start with some famous person who had the same surname as yours back in the 15th century. The golden rule is to work backwards from the known to the unknown. The records of civil registration, the census returns of the 19th century, and church parish registers are the basic sources for the beginner. You may very well find that you are a direct descendant of Napoleon Bonaparte, but you can't just take Grandma's word for it

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