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."

New competion for genealogy companies

A valuable resource is now coming online.  Google is starting to digitize records.  See Gus's blog for more details.http://gusmarsh.blogspot.com/2011/01/google-partners-with-yad-vashem-to.html

LOVE CONTACT FROM FAMILY

Bill Spetsas with cousins Matina and Peter Petropoulos.  Picture taken in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Today I had such a nice surprise!  I received a phone call from Peter who is married  to Matina.  Matina is my mothers first cousin.  I love to listen to their Greek accents!  And such good people, its nice to know we can be related to people with such good hearts.

They have helped me to learn more about my heritage, learning more about living as well as deceased family members.  We had a great talk.

Peter had asked me to help him find some of his relatives,  I love this!  It seems we always get the chance to help someone else regarding the most important thing in our lives.  That is family!

I've noticed that people who are bitten by the genealogy bug, are always willing to help one another in their search for family.

WHAT TO ADD TO A PERSONAL HISTORY

When working on the written history of my mothers family, I like to add additional items besides the genealogy.  People often have events in their lives that document things they accomplished or even items that others have provided in respect to them.

There was a family friend and neighbor who had never written a song before, but he woke feeling impressed to write this song about my mother.  So he got out of bed, sat down and wrote the song.  The original song was titled. "Athena's song" a very nice song, but I later learned  more details about the song.

He had felt impressed the write the song on the early morning of Nov 27, 1997.  He finished it about 11:45 a.m., My mother passed away at 11:50 that very same morning.  It also happened to be Thanksgiving Day which was always her favorite holiday.

I now keep the song in a frame hanging on my wall as a reminder of the good she did in her life and the people she influenced.

WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW

An important part of family history is to write about those family members who have been a part of your life.  This way you make your history personal and not just stats.  It also helps to keep their memory alive.

What got me to thinking about this is that today would have been my first born nieces birthday.  She was only 29 years old at the time she died.  She had suffered with many trials in her life including spine cancer.  When she was a child she spent much of her time living with us, sometimes weeks and months at a time.

While she was ill, I had asked her to write about her life which she did.
In this sweet letter she had told me "I wish you or Gran had been my mother."  How heart breaking for a child to have such a wish.  But the good thing was that she knew who to go to when she needed help and comfort.

Kathleen Athena had such a kind heart.  She was just a little princess, she would  hold up one corner of her dress as she would walk up the stairs.  As a toddler, my  mother told her, "Kathy, you are the grandest of all!"  She then gave  my mother Athena, the nick name of "Granner" which stuck and my mother was never known as Yia Yia or Grandma or any of those names of endearment.  Instead all of the grandchildren and great grandchildren referred to her as "Granner."  How precious memories are as we reflect upon them.

USE WHAT YOU HAVE

Each day I try to spend a little time working on my family's history.  Last night I began going through some old letters and cards.  I want to go through these items and decide which should be included in  my family's history.

It is amazing the information you can find from this old correspondence; but even better the great memories that come flooding back into your mind.

On one occasion I was going through some old letters that I had inherited after my mother passed away.  There was a letter dated 1946 from Greece.  It was from  my great aunt. What was great about this letter is that it described feelings of family members but it also had the families sir name.  My grandfather had changed his sir name when he immigrated, so we were never sure of the family name.  This letter gave us the information we needed to begin our research.

It helped so we  knew what family to look for as well as historical records.  My first visit to the Family History Library in Salt Lake, we found over 125 people who I was related to.  What an exciting day!  It was the beginning of a great experience!