Have you ever wondered what family members you never knew existed? Most people only are aware of a few of their immediate family members, but unfortunately have no information at all about generations of their families that lived over one hundred years ago.
While this is not a problem for most people, if you are interested in genealogy, not knowing your roots can be a total nightmare if you are trying to assemble a complete family tree.
You see, when you do not know who your great, great grandparents were, then you miss out on a massive chunk of your family that you will have to do countless hours of research to find.
Sometimes that research pays off in spades and you are able to find nearly all of the family members that you never knew existed, but often the search is in vain and the people in your family that you so desperately wanted to find become lost in the waves of time.
If you are dedicated to find your long lost relatives but have no idea where to begin, then consider this as the resource for you.
Your first step on your quest to find your relatives should be to contact as many of your living relatives as you can.
You see, in most families, not all parties share all of their knowledge with everyone else, leading to a variety of information gaps that you will encounter on your quest to find relatives using genealogical history.
So, start by getting back in touch with your older relatives and go from there.
Older relatives such as great grandparents, grandparents and even great aunts and uncles will have a ton of valuable information about their parents and grandparents information that you need if you want to be able to find other people in the world that you are related to.
If they can provide you with photographs or mementos, then that is even better, as they will make it that much easier to trace your family’s history.
Once you have compiled all of the information that your relatives were able to give you about the older and deceased generations of your family, you should create a rough family tree from the knowledge that you gathered.
This will help you immensely as you try and piece together the puzzle that is your family history.
Now, you can take your knowledge and use some of the resources outlined in a previous article, or you can get in contact with a professional genealogist who will use the resources at her disposal to find the relatives that you are searching for.
Before you contact a genealogist though, do try and find as much information as you possibly can. It will make your family history much more memorable to you, and you will be able to save quite a bit of money.
In the end, when you feel you are completely out of leads and out of options and have no idea where to look next, then you should get in contact with a genealogy service to see what kind of information they can provide you with. a
