How to find your family history

To study the history of his family, you'll need information about their family, living and long dead. Start with those relatives who I know well. Record all the information about your parents, next of grandparents, and then ask those and others about the rest of the family. Further search for data on earlier generations.

First, start looking for information at home — in the family archives, letters, diaries, notebooks, newspaper clippings, photo albums, on the back of the photos. Pay attention to names, dates, place of residence, family ties. The study of these materials will cause you to take another look at the parents, grandmothers and grandfathers, will open the world of relationships and feelings, successes and failures.

For further information, interview relatives. From their memories, you can learn many interesting facts from the life of their ancestors, the motives and the time of moving, changing jobs, an attitude to religion, to obtain information about the financial situation, physical condition, appearance, habits, to get acquainted with family stories. Conversing with relatives, prepare a list of questions, which can easily direct the conversation without losing the thread of the conversation.

Use official documents, study found the house and discovered in the archives. The birth certificate you will find information such as the time and place of birth, surname, names, patronymics of parents. A marriage certificate contains information about the time and place of the marriage, birth dates of spouses, maiden names of the mother. The certificate of dissolution of marriage, date of divorce, place of registration, post-nuptial surnames of the spouses. From a death certificate you will learn the time, place and the cause. In the passport in addition to personal information about the person (name, date of birth, place of residence) contains information about his wife, children (their names and dates of birth). Here you have one or several photos of the owner, may be information about the blood group. Work book provides information on education, jobs and positions. Data on education, profession, awards, and titles of ancestors can contain certificates, certificates, certificates, certificate, diploma, award certificates. For men (and some women) universal document is a military ID that contains all this information including: the height, weight, head size and shoes.

Organize all the collected information. Group the material by topics in folders, authors, addressees, chronology. Secure in the form of a table or try to make a family tree. Of course, in some lines or boxes, you'll have empty seats. Send the partially completed table to your relatives with the request to fill in the gaps in known information.