Genealogy Project
This is an opportunity to investigate your own ethnic and cultural heritage and share it
with others in the school and community. As part of this; two things that will come up for
many families are the concepts of immigration and assimilation. Your task is to learn
more about your family and investigate its history. This can be challenging for many
people because it requires the investigator to “step outside” themselves and everything
they know as a member of that family - what may seem normal and ordinary to you may
very well seem interesting and different to others. Are there certain foods or recipes
you can share? Are there family traditions? Are there things your family does to
celebrate holidays? The answer to these questions will allow others to learn more
about your cultural identity.
There are two parts of this investigation. One is discovering and reporting your family
tree. The other is learning about the family traditions and culture through artifacts and
interviews.
Places to do your research:
Home Sources - Artifacts
Photographs, documents and artifacts often provide clues to family history. One option
is to research the history of one or two significant items in their homes or owned by
relatives that have a prominent place in their genealogy. It could be your grandfather's
passport, a wedding photograph or even a piece of furniture. Finding and documenting
clues from these artifacts is a great way to start conversations with other family
members. The oral traditions surrounding artifacts can add data to a family history.
Oral History and Interviews
Every family has an oral tradition. The stories might include adventures, places of
residence, family tragedies, work experience, migration stories, military service, and
interesting tales about family members. These tales are usually passed on from
generation to generation; there is often one family member who has all of the stories
remembered and they are a good place to start. Family reunions are also good places
to conduct interviews. By interviewing family members about their lives, you can learn
about your loved ones, the times in which they lived and also learn a little about
yourself. Another good place to start the conversation is to ask what your elder
relatives think about today’s modern conveniences that didn’t exist when they were your
age. If they didn’t exist, what did people do for fun?
The Internet:

https://familysearch.org/ - this group has been around since the 1890s but their
area of expertise is digitizing records. Started in Utah, they have collected and
digitized millions of family records from over 100 countries. Doesn’t require
account to look up people but creating an account will provide more access to
the treasure trove of documents.

Many family trees already exist. You might be amazed at how much other
people have done to recreate your family tree online. If it has been done,
chances are you or your parents are included. Family trees that were created
with a program are stored in gedcom files (.ged) so one way to do a search
would be to put in your surname and .ged in a google search (e.g. “cowit.ged”).

Treelines.com - requires email for registration. Allows you to add images and
stories to the family tree. This is a great resource for those who want to continue
the genealogy research or have it set up for their own future generations.

Family Village - http://members.ngsgenealogy.org/FV.htm - this is a facebook
game addition. It allows you to do research of family histories. This tool has
been called a good place for people interested in genealogy to access
government records.

Cemetary records - Billiongraves.com, Findagrave.com and Legacy.com are all
sites that help users find cemetary records. These can often be used to confirm
dates associated with ancestors and family members.

Digitized Newspapers - Start searching by state, then try the Library of Congress
— its Chronicling America website provides historical newspapers published from
1690 to the present.
o
http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/usstate/usatable.htm
o
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/

www.genealogy.com – a free sister website to ancestry.com. It contains
GenForum message boards, Family Tree Maker homepages, and the most
popular articles preserved in a read-only format

www.ancestry.com - the world's largest online family history resource home to
billions of historical records, millions of family trees and much more. It's also the
world's leading network of businesses dedicated to helping everyone discover,
preserve and share their family history. We have a subscription to this website
we will use at our meetings
Virtual Fairs – On October 28th we will join the National Archives for the 2014 This
will be a live broadcast via the Internet and we can ask genealogy experts questions
at the end of their talks.
FINAL PRODUCT
At the end of our journey we will host a genealogy fair. It will be similar to a science fair.
You will make a tri-fold board that showcases your family history and create a
scrapbook containing all of your pedigrees, documents, and pictures. You may also
bring some display pieces. Some examples of display pieces include food made from
family recipes, artifacts, and recorded interviews you can play for your audience. BE
CREATIVE!!!!