For years I have been wondering about my ancestry. Researching our family’s roots and creating a family tree is something my Mom and I have been talking about doing for a while now. Somehow, we have never found the time to get started on it. Getting the opportunity to partner with Ancestry.com on the #surnameproject was the kick in the pants we both needed to get started discovering our ancestry and the meaning behind our family name.
That first night, after creating an account on Ancestry.com, was a real eye opener to our family history. Once you start discovering things about relatives, some you don’t even know you have, it quickly becomes addicting. My Mom stayed up that entire first night working on our family tree.
My Mom never knew her own father, so that is where we started. She has his name, but other than that we knew nothing about him or the rest of his family. Within 15 minutes of exploring on Ancestry.com we learned a lot, including that Mom had a half-sister that she didn’t know about. Sadly, her sister is now deceased but we are hoping to connect with some of her children. We also learned that one of my Great Grandfathers was a farmer in Texas and was once injured in a shoot-out.
Then we came across an image of another of my Great Grandfathers from my Grandmother’s side of the family. Mom and I both immediately noticed that my son is the spitting image of this man. It’s amazing how much they look alike. Luckily, one of my Mom’s distant cousins has already been on ancestry.com and has done a lot of the legwork for us, including some old family images that she has uploaded.
Ancestry.com has given us easy access to a variety of public records like my Grandfather’s World War II draft record. I am quite certain we would have never otherwise located these bits of history.
We have only just begun our family tree, but have already learned so much about our family. I look forward to expanding the branches of this tree to include my Father’s side of the family, and also my Son’s family from his Father’s side who immigrated to the U.S. from Italy.
What do you know about your last name? I am so grateful for Ancestry.com free trial I received and the chance to discover more about the origin of my family’s last name.
Ancestry is the world’s largest online resource for family history. Ancestry strives to fill the fundamental desire people have to understand who they are and where they came from. With a unique collection of billions of historical records, including handwritten historical documents and state and local government archives, Ancestry is the perfect place to learn fun and interesting facts about your family’s tree.
Thank you to Ancestry.com for sponsoring this project.
Congrats on your success with ancestry.com! I really want to try this and always enjoy reading about my family history and continue to learn more about my ancestors. A great read, thank you!
I am lucky that my parents have done my ancestry way way back. It is fun to look and see how, when, and where they lived.
I Love This Site I Used Found Some Of My Relatives In Italy!!
I wish it would have worked for me.. i just could not find anyone on either side..
That is so cool! I would LOVE to try it out!
I’ve always wanted to use Ancestry.com to trace back my families ancestries. I know it goes back to Spanish Royalty.
I used Ancestry.com a few years ago, but couldn’t find much at on my paternal side and nothing on my maternal side. I’d love to give it a try again.
I’ve used ancestry online to discovery family I’ve never known I had.
This is so neat! I would be up all night too. I’ve never tried it but it have always wanted to. I hope you can make some real life connections from all of your work.
I would love to do a little research into my family. I love how easy it is these days.
Beautiful old pictures! I used this site to help me research my family history. I found my grandfather’s signed WWI draft card! 🙂
I’m having so much fun digging into history. How wild that you have a shootout injury in your past!
I’ve tried this before and couldn’t really find anyone since most of my family aren’t from the US.
Those are some great pictures. I have been wanting to try that site out.
It would really nice to get to know our lineage through this site. I’ll try to see how accurate it is.
It’s great to know about my ancestors so I’m definitely trying out this web application (even in trial version). Funny how you’d learn that your family looks the same even across generations.
I’ve dabbled with Acenstry.com but couldn’t find much years ago. I wonder if I could now. It would be cool to see my history.
So cool to discover unusual things you’d not think of as being in your family history. I think this would be fun to do.
Great post! I love genealogy. I haven’t had the time to do too much research lately.
I think this is such an awesome website. I would love to look up my family history!
I think that it’s fun to learn about family history. Thanks for sharing.
my mom did this for our family and found out that we’re distant cousins to Amelia Aerhardt (spelling?)
My family tree has been researched and it’s amazing the information you can come up with. How crazy that you have a family member injured in a shoot out. I can’t believe this site has THAT specific information!
I’ve always thought about doing something like this. I don’ tknow my bio dad so it would be really hard
My dad uses Ansestory.com for all his research. He loves how easy it is to find all the great info on his family.
I have always wanted to learn more about my family’ history. COol that you were able to.
I’ve been doing genealogy for years now. I’m actually related to Shakespeare!
I love looking at old family photos. I’ve retraced some of my family history using Ancestry, it’s addicting, and fun! My mom didn’t know her father either, but she knew is name, but not sure of the spelling. That’s always hard when you don’t know the person you are looking for too well.
My parents have been using this website for years. It is a easy site to use. We have learned so much information.
I’ve spent some time perusing our family history. My grandad has traveled widely to find out more info about our family, to see actual birth/baptism/death records.
I loved using Ancestry.com when I had a membership. I ended up getting my mother a membership too.
I’m definitely going to be joining Ancestry.com. It’s amazing what you can learn about your family!
I like the way technology makes it possible for people to do so much ancestry research with this website. Once upon a time this type of work would have required travel all over the country and been quite expensive.
I love Ancestry.com. We’ve used it quite a bit. It’s so neat to learn about relatives you didn’t even know about.
I’ve always wondered if people have success with Ancestry.com, and after reading for story I see that they do! I just might have to try it myself, thanks for sharing!
How cool to find out more about your history! I need to check this out.
As a descendant from people who were famous I don’t have to do too much research but I love learning about my ancestors on my mom’s side. The nonviolent non-murdering side of my family. 🙂
I started using this site many years ago. Love all the info and leads.
We tried this a few years ago and it was really fun. I’d like to try it again now that I have a little more time on my hands.
My great uncle (grandmothers brother) has been doing my grandmother & grandfathers (as well as other family members) trees for quite some time. It’s pretty neat to see where everyone came from and how they got to certain countries and what they did.
I’d love to sign up. I think it would be so fun to try.
Wow, how neat to learn more about your grandfather’s WWII info! Such a neat website
My last name is very strongly Scottish, and is even traced back to royalty. I would love to trace my history with Ancestry.com
I love to learn about my family’s past. I have an account. I need to use it more.
I love the photo you came across of your great grandfather! My mom and I used this service a few years back to build a family tree. It was excellent and easy to use.
Ancestry is such an awesome resource. I can’t believe how great your and your mother’s experience with it was though! How awesome!
My dad has been using Ancestry.com and another site for years. He has gone back many generations so he knows all of that stuff but I don’t. I need to sit down and learn about my family one of these days
THat is sooo cool! I’ve been wanting to do this for forever! 14 day free trial deal is awesome!
It is fascinating to go back in time…to see where and who we came from. I recently learned that my grandfather originated from Portugal. 🙂
My cousin is really into finding out more about our family tree. She has used Ancestry.com and really loved it. She got a lot of information and said that it was so easy to use and navigate.
I’ve been interested in finding out about my family tree. I need to try this and see what I find!
How nice. I really need to do more research on my family.
Finding out your family tree would be so interesting. Ancestry.com seems like a great resource for this.
I wanted to do this so bad. My mom was just talking to me about Ancestry.com. I’m going to have check it out
I really enjoyed finding out about my family on Ancestry.com. Took me a long time to get anywhere because I just couldn’t figure it out but I got in eventually.
Family is everything and I feel it is very important to know where you come from. We don’t know much about my dad’s side since he was adopted at a very young age, so I would love to explore and create something special for him with the information I learn.