WHY PUT YOUR FAMILY TREE ONLINE

Over the years of doing genealogy research, I have met different types of genealogists. Some are willing to share their information while others are not. At all times, we want to respectful of both views.

That being said, I am always grateful to those who are willing to share. Because of this, unknown distant relatives have been located. We have come to know one another, documents have been accessed which I have been unable to locate before. I have even met people who are willing to help translate where needed. The best benefit of all is getting to know others.

When doing this type of work, this world becomes very small. There are many places online to put your information. Of course, you can put it online at paid sites such as Ancestry.com, but there are also free sites as well.

One of my favorite places is Tribal pages and I have included a link to my page on their site to show some things that can be done. Of course, you can upgrade to a paying site, but I have not found this necessary.

There are other sites as well, such as Rootsweb, My Heritage, etc. If you need information as to where else a family tree can be posted, feel free to contact me.

If you are looking for an additional site I would strongly recommend www.familysearch.org as they now have an option for personal family trees as well as community trees.

A LABOR OF LOVE

During the 1990's there were a lot of changes for our family.  My sister got married, my father and mother both passed away.  I received a kidney transplant;

When my mother passed away six weeks right before Christmas, I decided to write a short biography of my mothers life for my sisters for Christmas as a gift.

This short project turned into a full-blown history which took about ten years to write.  It extended to her siblings, parents, some cousins, etc.  I gathered newspaper articles, birth and death certificates as well as baptismal and marriage records.

Also were included pictures with descriptions of who the people were in the pictures and where the pictures were taken.  Using a genealogy program, I also added notes about their lives that could be formated into a book.

I took it to the copy shop where I saw Brad.  Brad runs the copy shop, is a chef and his wife has family from Greece.  This always seems to come up in our conversations.  He loves all things Greek. He offered to copy the book for me and you would have thought it was his family!  It was good for me to see a non-family member so excited about such a project.  I just hope family members who see this after I am no longer around will enjoy the work.  But the greatest satisfaction comes from knowing that this will help preserve memories of the Spetsas (AKA Thymaras) family for a long time to come.

It was amazing to me to see how deep your love for these people deepens as you preserve their history.  A copy of this writing has been placed in the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah.  The title of the work is "From Greece to North America-a history of the Spetsas-Thymaras family."