Who do you think you are? That was the name of a television show produced by Lisa Kudrow on NBC for like 2 or 3 seasons and it was one of my favorite shows to watch. Not because each week a different celebrity went on an adventure to learn more about their family history, but because it showcased Genealogy. I have studied Genealogy for 20+ years, however, I am still learning more each and every time I sit down and search for answers. I have kind of become the "family historian" and the one that other relatives come to when they have questions about our family history. It's intriguing and exciting to find the answers to your questions about your ancestors.
Is there a former president in your lineage? A famous athlete or actor? You never know! And you will be surprised at all the things you can find out with just a little bit of research.
I think just about everyone has heard about the website Ancestry.com - the world's leading membership based website that allows you to create your family tree then the website will search for documents and sources about the people in your tree so that you can start to learn more information about each person. They now have an iphone App for the main website where you can work on your family tree right from you phone or ipad. Now you can even link people on your Facebook page to entries on your family tree. I have also noticed that now they will allow you to search records for free, but in order to actually view the documents found you must either subscribe to a monthly subscription or purchase an individual document for 99 cents. It's by far my favorite research site, but there are others worth checking out.
Archives.com - For a yearly subscription of $39.95 you can search more than 40 million vital records and 110 million scanned newspaper pages dating back to 1753. As a subscriber, you can set up alerts to receive notifications when there has been a document match.
FamilySearch - I truthfully haven't had a chance to try out this site yet as I just learned about it the other day (even though appparently it has actually been online since at least 2011) From looking at the site, it appears to be very userfreiendly and I noticed that there is an option to create a free account.
Starting your family tree is not really all that hard, and truthfully, you don't even have to have any websites to get started. All you need is a piece of paper and a pencil. Start writing down the names and dates of birth of the family members that you already know. You, your siblings, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, etc. This is a great starting point.
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