Friday, September 3, 2010

A Time Machine

Five generations, there you have the start of your family tree. Now place your notebook before you and imagine from this point onward you have a "time machine". On the first few pages you have the geneograms of you, your parents, your grandparents, and children. You have started on your great grandparents. Think now that as you look down at the graph pages yet to be completed, you have generations yet to come. Each page can be organized by dates or generational groups going back in time until you reach the beginning. You can actually place dates on the pages you already have, with the top page being the present date. Then starting with your great grandparents, you can "rough in" the expected dates of their lives going back in time. Twenty years can be used as a reproductive life span, with roughly three generations per 100 years. You then write dates on each page, along with family surnames, locations, and what you need to know. On each page write in large letters the maiden names of each wife so that you can follow parallel lines as the information become available. The major items that will become important are which state (or country) each generation belongs, into which county and city did they live most of their lives. What type of jobs did they have? What church did they attend? On and on it goes, but that is for ge-ne-al-o-gy 301.

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