How to Trace Your Origins Without Paying Too Much for It
Between shows like Finding Your Roots on PBS and the proliferation of companies like 23andMe, conversations about genealogy and family history have become mainstream and even trendy. While not everyone wants to spit into a test tube and potentially sign their physical details , tracking your ancestors is hardly a new technology trend—genealogy has been a mainstream field of study for a very long time. Rest assured, you can learn a lot about your origins without sacrificing your saliva.
I’m not a genealogist, but through some research I was able to find some amazing family histories and artifacts online and in the US National Archives. I found my photojournalist father’s old work, including Trump’s prophetic courtroom photos and Andy Warhol’s nightlife shots. Newspaper reviews revealed references to my step-grandmother’s aunt, a “famous nun in Italy,” and a transatlantic plot twist: our family had immigrated from post-war Italy by ship via Ellis Island. They were among the last waves of people to do so, when Nonna and Nonno were long thought to have arrived by modern aircraft.
There are many reasons to trace your ancestry, whether it be simply out of curiosity, the search for truth, or even for practical reasons such as citizenship or legal issues. Here are some tips for tracking your ancestry, as well as valuable advice from experts.
Start with the obvious first
Serendipity led me to my father’s Getty image archive, but it could have just been Google. You’d be surprised how many people, myself included, don’t do basic research online about their family members. Of course, you won’t be able to get any amazing information just by searching for that family member’s name, but it’s always worth a try. Newspapers were the Internet of the past, and until the late 90s, people were published for all sorts of things—the good, the bad, the ugly, and the like.
To maximize your chances of finding something, think about additional phrases or keywords you can use to improve your search performance. If your father worked for the same company for 30 years, try looking up his name and that company. Was your mom Nurse of the Year in 1993? Check this out too. Many things, especially old, historical ones, can appear on the 10th page of the search. The Internet contains not only digitized records of weddings, births and funerals, but also store openings, political opinions and other noteworthy events that have been scanned online by blessed archivists.
Genealogy resources you can use in person or online.
Of course, you can also use many other non-Google resources.
Popular DNA companies don’t just analyze your DNA—they also collect large amounts of identifying data. Ancestry.com and MyHeritage.com store digital records from around the world, vast amounts of information, including records and cultural relics. While both their DNA services and long-term membership cost money, you can often try out the databases for free with a trial. However, if you’re looking for information but don’t want to (ultimately) shell out the money, there are plenty of options.
“Some naturalization records can be found on popular genealogy sites that are either free for everyone (such as FamilySearch.org ), free at most public libraries (such as AncestryInstitution.com and others), or through a paid subscription,” the spokesperson said The National Archives told me. NARA also pointed me to the Resources for Genealogists page on archives.gov and the Genealogist Society on History Hub as additional sources of information.
For people wanting to work with the Archives, they have research rooms open to the public with access to computers on site, and sometimes an archivist on duty who can help you directly. Speaking of archivists, this brings me to the next resource: libraries.
Working in journalism, I have nothing but love for librarians. I often learned interesting facts and historical stories from library staff, especially in New York. If you want to work with a librarian in the areas where your family lived, he or she can help you find references to your family or its businesses, properties, accolades, or tragedies.
If your family has traveled all over the globe, you don’t have to travel to start exploring the library. Politely email the library and ask if they have the time (or energy) to help you with your search. If you are not local to a particular library, institutional librarians, such as those who work at universities and government agencies, can help.
Dig a little deeper
This is the fun part: being your own detective. Once you have a few documents to work with, it’s time to start making connections to find even more.
“Finding the name mentioned is not enough,” a NARA spokesman said. “Many people can have the same name. Whether a name is mentioned in a newspaper article or some other record, a person’s identification is a combination of factors other than his name, such as geographic location, date of event, age, occupation, religion, relationship to other persons mentioned in the recording and so on. The key is to find as many records of the person as possible.”
Use clues from photographs—for example, a name on a sign outside a restaurant—stories your grandmother told you, snippets of memories, or anything else that can provide relevant information. All of this will help you learn even more things, and you’ll likely find answers to questions you never thought to ask.