You may have heard colorful stories but how well do you know your family’s history, and do you know how to research both your inspiring and quirky relatives?
Researching your family history is like piecing together a puzzle because you’re personally affected. As you bring together the elements of your story then you have a clearer picture of how you fit into the family lineage. This is something you can pass along to your children and grandchildren so they strengthen their own family identities.
My grandmother, Albine Castagno,4 yeards old in 1910.
Where You’ll Store Your Family Research
Read on to know where you’ll organize all of the pieces in your family story:
- photos,
- handwritten letters,
- VHS tapes,
- home movies
- slide shows
- clippings from newspapers and other periodicals showing family milestones like graduations, obituaries, and job promotions
You can bring everything together into one safe, secure place by using the platform FOREVER®.
That’s right. Family research that pre-dates World War One can be stored together with the photos and videos you’ll take of your family this year and in the future.
I personally use FOREVER® to store all of my most meaningful memories like photos and videos taken on my smartphone to the many home movies my late grandfather loved to shoot many decades ago.
My main album, Travel Memories, has sub-albums or nested albums
I’ll share more about using FOREVER® in the next sections and I’ll even show you how it works on a virtual tour if you’d like to take one.
Scroll down to get my information on a virtual tour at the end of this post and sign up for 2 free GB of storage space so you can personally see how the platform works.
Also, we’ll be starting a 4-week series on Monday offered at 2 different times. Each session is only 15 minutes. Learn from the comfort of your home! For details and to register, click here.
How to Start Your Family Research
Outline your goals
What do you hope to get from researching your family history? Learn more about your parents’ relatives like their cousins? Or get to know more information about your grandparents?
Start with an initial goal in mind and you can always change it later.
Photo by Suzy Hazelwood, Pexels
Dig through your memory
Jot notes on what you remember about your parents or grandparents and other relations. What fun things did you do with them? What were their lives like growing up? Our seniors who are in their 80s and 90s may have attended a one-room schoolhouse.
How did they choose the house they lived in? What setbacks did they face and how did they overcome those obstacles?
Thinking through these topics will help you know other information you’ll want.
Use your photos, videos, home movies
Organize older family photos and other media files to spark your memory about the information you remember.
Here’s where you’ll enjoy the benefits of FOREVER®:
- Digitize all the files that were listed above
- Store them in your account
- Streaming options are available, so home movies taken in the 1950s can be played online today
- Turn your digital prints into photo books and other gifts
Storage is guaranteed to last for a lifetime, plus well into the next century and beyond.
Interview Relatives
Get first-person accounts, especially with older family members. Compile simple questions to get them talking and ask during family events or get together with them on your own.
Ask them about what’s meaningful like their faith, career, how they met their spouses, and other highlights they’d like to share.
Have them share their favorite photos or other memories with you.
Once you’ve gathered questions, you can take your family research to another level.
Expand Your Family Research
If you need documents and want to dig deeper than the information on hand, then there are plenty of free resources to guide you. Access immigration records and other documents like military service.
Begin with the many research tools with the National Archives and the History Hub where you can connect with various communities of interest like Military records, Native American records, and Women’s Rights among others.
In Canada, check the Canadian Historical Association and Heritage Research Tools.
Need information from Mexico? Start with Mexican Genealogy.com.
Need newspapers? Wikipedia.org has a comprehensive list.
Here’s a listing to historical societies with U.S. and international links.
Deepen Your Family Research using FOREVER®
Compiling my family’s history with research help
FOREVER® combines its one-of-a-kind memory-keeping service with the strength of professional genealogists who can either help you get started in your research or work their way through obstacles you may have encountered.
FOREVER®’s researchers may be able to go back a couple of generations farther than you were able to or locate family members you didn’t know about.
Safeguard Your Family Research—Permanently
FOREVER® is the best way I know to safeguard all of your memories in one place, including findings from your family research.
You own your storage account and have full control over the privacy settings and who has access to the albums you create.
Print photo books from your digital files and give them as gifts or “thinking of you” mementos.
I’d love to give you a tour and show you the features in action.
Schedule a Virtual Tour
In just 20 minutes, I’ll show you how FOREVER® works and you’ll come away with a terrific understanding of how this is a permanent storage solution.
Me and mom today
I recently gave a tour of how FOREVER® photo storage works and my guest was impressed:
“WOW! This blows my mind! I never before asked for a tour because I THOUGHT I already knew what it was. But I had NO IDEA how cool it is!”
Contact me via the form on my website or directly via my email:
melody@safeguardyourmemories.com
I also invite you to sign up for 2 free GB of storage space and try FOREVER® and click here to join us and learn about using FOREVER® on Mondays from the comfort of your home.
Your family’s story is unique and worth safeguarding for generations to come. No one else can live it or tell it like you can.
