Summertime Research: Hints and tips

Summertime Research: Hints and tips

Long summer days are the perfect time for family gatherings and a great opportunity to ask questions of relatives to discover more about your family heritage.

Here are some hints and tips for furthering your family history research this summer:

1. Visit close family members. Encourage the younger generation to record relatives’ stories and anecdotes to learn about earlier generations and preserve those memories for future generations.

2. Plan a vacation to meet distant family members. Come prepared with questions about their branch of the family and use the MyHeritage Mobile App to fill in gaps in your family tree and to add photos while you’re on-the-go.

3. Take a family trip to ancestral towns. Visit important places from your ancestors’ stories, such as where they lived, where they went to school and more.

4. Visit historical museums. Learn about the historic period your ancestors lived in to provide perspective into their lives, and raise questions that you never thought of asking.

5. Sort through old family photos. Label and organize your photos with as much information as you have. Scanning and uploading them to your MyHeritage family site will keep them safe for generations to come.

6. Set yourself summertime goals and challenges. It may be one specific individual in your tree that you’d like to make progress on, or perhaps just reaching out to a lost branch of the family.

7. Summer is a perfect time for family reunions. Try to arrange one before school starts so the whole family can be involved. To plan the perfect family reunion, check out this blog post.

Do you have more tips? How do you plan to learn more about your family history this summer? Share your tips and ideas in the comments below.

Comments

The email address is kept private and will not be shown

  • STEPHEN PAUL SHAPIRO

    August 12, 2014

    I am pleased to learn of the inroads that My Heritage is making in the fields of Genealogy and Family Photos and photo recognition. Keep up your good works!

  • Judith Yacino Ramsay Culgin

    August 12, 2014

    I visited a town and state where I meet cousins that I haven’t seen in 50 years!! We have been keeping in touch and will visit with each other this fall. It was great!!!

  • Grace (Campbell)MacLeod &Clayton

    August 12, 2014

    it iss fun wonderful to find long lost cousins ect..

  • Margaret Garland

    August 13, 2014

    My cousins and our family were very close as I was growing up. Now that I am 80 yrs, I am so grateful for what little knowledge that I have, but wish I had so much more for our family history. Many years ago my father’s parents lived in Mississippi and were taught and accepted the Mormon religion, but when they left there and moved to Texas, they became Baptist. I guess I will never know what happened. It seems that history does indeed repeat itself.

  • Fred

    August 13, 2014

    one of the better sites.

  • Fred

    August 13, 2014

    Genealogy is a very interesting hobby.

  • Joann McCoy

    August 14, 2014

    I would like to know something about the William(father) and James McCoy(son) families from Chillicothe, Ohio.

  • Ina (Swart) Roux .

    August 14, 2014

    I am busy wirh my Mom and Dad’s Family Tree and was told about this site. Cannot wait to start it. O dear, if only I had more hours per day to work at it. Found so many many members of the family I did’nt even exist. What a site this is, WONDERFUL.

  • Alice Jones

    August 15, 2014

    I would like to do the DNA testing this year. I’m at a lost for finding information regarding my great grand father. There just isn’t enough information on him. He died in Mississippi, but he must have used a different name other than the one that I am told is his. Fagus Hunter.

  • Linda Kirby

    September 29, 2014

    I am leaving this week to visit the home of my ancestors in Devon, England. Looking forward to walking where they walked!

  • carol payne

    October 1, 2014

    I wanted to see where my great grandfather was born on visiting his village I went to the only pub for refreshment and to ask where his house was located, the landlady introduced me to a local historian who was absolutely brilliant, he gave me lots of info on my great grandfathers whole family and the location where his parents were buried enabling me to take pictures I am for ever grateful and so glad I made the trip,