Family History 123

Are you related to anyone famous?

iwamc — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 18:06:36 +0000

Many people have asked themselves if they’re related to someone famous, a famous celebrity, president, royalty, and others.

A new resource by Family History Quick Start now helps to answer that question with the launch of Are You Related to Someone Famous: The 7 Secrets to Discovering your Famous Relatives.

The eBook covers the steps you can use to find out if you’re related to famous individuals such as:

George Washington
Barack Obama
George W. Bush
Walt Disney
Thomas Edison
Mayflower Passengers
European Royalty

Many, many more celebrities and famous historical individuals could be a possible relative.

You can view the resource at: http://am-i-related-to-someone-famous.com

Mapping DNA

iwamc — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:34:53 +0000

Mapping DNA can have a couple of different meanings, one is the ability to trace out DNA and “Map” the heritage contained in the DNA. The other is making a map of the DNA. Ancestry.com now does both.

You can put your DNA info and those of family in your family tree.

For those who might not know their heritage, DNA search could really help. Of course privacy is a concern and measures are taken to protect the information, but you have to admit that science is giving us some pretty neat things in DNA Discovery.

Audio Tools for Family History

iwamc — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 05:22:17 +0000

There are a lot of Audio Tools available to help you with your family history.

Make a list of important events in your life (or the life of others if your interviewing), and take a minute or two and record with audio why the events are important. Nothing speaks like the past like…well, speaking from the past.

Generations to come will enjoy listening to their ancestors talk about their lives.

Technology Mapping Tools

iwamc — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 02:23:26 +0000

There are a number of free tools available to help you map your family history, literally map your history.

Below are a few tools that can help:

Google Earth – Google Earth can help you zoom in on the location where your ancestors lived. For more information, click here.
Google Maps – Google Maps can provide an easy to use platform to keep track of where your ancestors came from. For more information, click here.
Geni – Geni is a free family tree program that will also let you map out locations of ancestors. For more info on how to use Geni, click here.

Use one of the tools above to map out the locations across the world where your ancestors lived and have come from. It’s a lot of fun to take a look at the locations and “zoom in” to the street level to view satellite images of the cities where your ancestors came from.

So many resources, so little time

iwamc — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 04:23:04 +0000

Finding the right genealogy resource can be hard especially since there are so many out there. You might spend a lot of time on one site searching for records only to find that another site will actually help perform the searches for you and try to match records to ancestors you’ve submitted in your Gedcom file.

There are a few websites that are very helpful in helping you to find your ancestors and should be a staple to your research. Click here to see a compilation of top 10 genealogy websites.

Social Bookmarking Sites

iwamc — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 17:32:48 +0000

Social bookmarking sites can be a great resource for sharing what you post online. If you would like to better share the information you post online, make it easy for others to mark that your site or an article on your site is interesting and helpful.

But first, what are social bookmarking sites?

Remember, oh so long ago, when interesting and useful information was passed by word of mouth? Now on the Internet, it’s easy to pass along interesting things by “word of mouth” through the various bookmarking sites. You simply mark a website or article as interesting, and others that frequent the bookmarking site will take notice. If they like the page or site, they’ll also bookmark it or vote for it.

Example Bookmarking Sites

Here’s a few sites where visitors can find interesting information and websites ranked or voted high by others:

You can visit an example of what the shared pages look like by visiting the links below (listed in no particular order):

How to get people to mark your site as interesting?

First, have good content, and second, make it easy for them. Many sites will have links as the bottom of the page that let visitors add the site to Digg, StumbleUpon, etc.

You can add a simple button to your website by visiting http://addthis.com which, once you’ve pasted the code for the button on your page, let visitors mark your page as interesting in any number of social bookmarking sites.

You’ll want to add the “addthis” button into the footer (if you have one) of your website. The button will then automatically appear at the bottom of all your pages. You could also include it in your sidebar.

Family Superstitions?

iwamc — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 15:55:25 +0000

Family history and genealogy doesn’t always have to be serious and focus on names and dates. Finding out if your family heritage held superstitions is a fun family history exercise especially this time of year.

You can write down family “superstitions” that have been handed down through your family that you are aware of, but you can also research superstitions from around the world to record superstitions and traditions that your ancestors that came from different countries may have held.

Give it a try, and you might be surprised what you come up with.

Family History by Timeline

iwamc — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 22:02:05 +0000

We found a resource to help genealogy enthusiasts created a time line of events for themselves or for other family members. The resource is offered by OurStory (more can be read about it and a video demonstration of the family history time lines here).

We created a free account and found that you can create a time line with pictures and stories for free. To create multiple time lines under one account, you have to pay for a subscription, but the free account should work for most visitors.

You can embed an interactive time line in your website or blog. It’s pretty cool.

Family Websites

iwamc — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 21:16:36 +0000

I enjoy creating websites. It’s a great way to stay connected with family and friends. We’ve found a couple of resources that are free and easy to use:

The first two options are for blogs, but they’re very easy to use. MyFamily.com offers free websites that have different functionality and may appeal more to some people. For more on family websites, click here.

Web Cams

iwamc — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 21:14:04 +0000

A great little way to stay connected is with Web Cams. You can get a web cam at great prices today. Go get one (and make sure the family member or friend you have gets one too), and download the program called Skype. Add your friend to your Skype contact list, and you can talk over the Internet for free!