Easter: New avenues of research

Easter: New avenues of research

Happy Easter!

With Easter, we welcome Spring and the rebirth of new life. It’s a great time of year to do some spring cleaning and organize your genealogy research. It is also a great opportunity to try new things and venture down new avenues of genealogy research.

Here are some tips for taking your family history research in new directions:

1) Do some spring cleaning around the house, and look for old photos and documents. You never know what surprises lurk in your own home – what you will find in your own attic, basement, garage or in an unlabeled box at the back of a closet. Encourage family members to do the same, and to share their findings on your MyHeritage family site.

2) Use the new Audio Recordings feature in the mobile app to record your relatives’ stories. You may receive new tidbits of information, providing new clues. The best part is that the recordings will automatically be stored on your family site. Create recordings about individuals in the tree from any old notes that you may have and from your memories of other individuals.

3) Obtain maps of ancestral locations. Find your ancestors’ villages, towns, cities on historical maps and get copies of those maps. Mark those of interest and note adjacent towns. Branches may have lived in nearby towns, so learn the names of localities which might appear as you search databases. Check for towns in a 20-to-30-mile radius from your known ancestral location. In the old days, that distance was considered a one-day trip by wagon. People went to other villages or towns for holidays, weddings or funerals. While there, they may have met future spouses or discovered business opportunities. It pays to cast a wider net.

4) Share your research. Update your family site on MyHeritage with your newly discovered names, documents and photos. Do you know of new relatives that should be invited to your family site to collaborate on your research? As more and more people become interested in family history, relatives may have – independent of your research – unearthed relevant images and documents. Contact family members and ask if they’ve found anything new.

5) New records are added daily to MyHeritage SuperSearch™, so keep checking! The researcher’s mantra should be: If information isn’t found today, check for it tomorrow, next week, next month or next year. If the last time you checked was six months ago, it’s time to run another search on all those loose ends! Try Search Connect™, a unique innovation that allows you to connect with other MyHeritage members searching for the same ancestors and people. Collaboration through Search Connect™ can open new doors, and provide exciting discoveries about your family history.

We wish you and your families a Happy Easter and many new and fruitful directions for your family history research!