K-12 School and College Projects ~ Community Events ~ Family Reunions ~ Gift to Your Family ~ Your Legacy ~ Just for Fun An Internet Guide HOW TO FIND YOUR FAMILY HISTORY & CULTURAL ROOTS (April 2004 edition) by Dr. Andy Anderson Wells Fargo Chief Historian
[email protected] For generations, members of your family have sent you the historical equivalent of a message in a bottle. They launched them from every prairie schooner, riverboat and stagecoach ride across America, from every farm, ranch, small town, and big city in America, and from every corner of the world with every immigrant’s voyage to America. Every day now, these messages, in the form of historical documents and records, are coming ashore from the vast ocean of information we call the Internet. Ask your family members – parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, cousins, in-laws, outlaws – and family friends to join you in finding them. It’s a great family project that spans time and distance, and often brings relatives closer together with a sense of reunion. In the blink of an eye, the Internet makes it possible to do much of the searching from your own home. It’s also an adventure with many surprises that’ll be part of your legacy – your own message in a bottle – to future generations of your family. STEP 1 – Start with just one name – yours, an ancestor’s, or a family surname Go online to Google, www.google.com, or Yahoo!, www.yahoo.com, and type a single name, or a family name, in the SEARCH box (like this: “Patrick O’Reagan” or “O’Reagan family” – using quotation marks helps narrow the results).