Sunday, March 20, 2011

One Great Family Genealogy Knowledge After Another

It is possible for one person in a family to feel like they are the only one. They might be the only one who is tone deaf when everybody else loves music. They might be the only religious one in a family that loves to sin. That one might feel like he or she has nothing in common with any of their relatives. But One Great Family coupons genealogy discovery can change everything.

Not so long ago genealogy was a very expensive undertaking that required more free time than most people had available, but not anymore with use of best genealogy software. It often required travel to distant parts of the globe. Normal people with normal lives didn't even attempt to trace ancestors further back than their grandparents.

Nowadays, thanks to the internet and other modern technology, genealogy is a game everyone can play. People are finding that their own families are every bit as exciting as families of famous people. In fact some people are discovering that their families are families of famous people.

It usually starts harmlessly enough with somebody asking a question about a grandparent or the relationship between two people in an old photograph. Sometimes it starts when the oldest living relation dies and younger relatives start looking through boxes of old letters and pictures of unidentified but vaguely familiar looking people. Cousins who have not spoken to each other in decades might start asking about birth certificates, marriage licenses and military service records.

At this point, relatives who haven't seen each other in years will start communicating. In many cases, the only reason that they never talked to each other is that they thought they had nothing in common. This is especially true if one is a tone-deaf archaeologist and the other is a musician who never goes to bed before sunrise.

When cousins get together, they might discover they have their father wrote letters to each other. Jim might discover that Ed has a box of letters Jim's father wrote while he was stationed overseas. It may contain stories and information that Dads don't share with their kids but do share with their brothers.

Once the cousins have discovered they share a common interest in their parents' lives, they are going to want to know more about their grandparents. That will probably mean contacting more cousins and finding out what they know and what documents their branch of the family has preserved. Thanks to the internet, it will be easy to Echat or Skype with several cousins at the same time in different cities and even on different continents.

Questions will arise. There will be blank spaces to fill in with names and dates. Documents must be copied, distributed and organized. Not satisfied with what they can lay hands on, the seekers will start exploring websites.

Relatives who used to think they had nothing in common might start planning trips together to distant cemeteries, churches and museums with use of family genealogy software. They might discover a great grandmother who died of a disease she caught while studying ancient tombs in Egypt. They might discover that a grandfather who worked as a coal miner had a beautiful voice until he succumbed to the black lung disease. Suddenly neither cousin is an only. Both are part of One Great Family genealogy adventure.

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