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.
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.