Most families have them; the historian who likes to delve through the archives and find out all about their family from decades ago.
Once upon a time the task was nigh-on-impossible and may have taken years to complete. In fact, you may have even had to wander around the globe trying to piece together information.
Fortunately, this isn’t necessarily the case anymore. The power of technology means that the process has undoubtedly been accelerated, although you still need to know where to look to ensure that your search is fruitful.
This is the reason today’s guide has been put together. We will now take a look at some of the best resources for your family tree, to ensure that you can put it together in a breeze.
Use a specialist people search service
Arguably the best resource for you is a specialist people search service. As the name suggests, this is effectively a search engine for finding individuals. It’s the most powerful resource you can find and will relay to you an array of information that you can use to make contact with the person.
It’s much more powerful than social networks, which we will come onto shortly, and can supercharge your quest to finish your family tree.
Using social media
As we have just alluded to, another good way of finding people is social media. Considering the fact that this is such a prominent part of people’s lives now, we’re going to assume that many of you have tried this anyway.
It could be said that Facebook is the easiest way to achieve this, and simply searching for a name and even the city that you think they might live in should bring up several relevant results. If you know other details, such as their school, you can search for this alongside their name and this can filter down the results substantially.
Of course, all of this can only occur if the person in question is actually on Facebook or the platform of your choice. This is the reason the people search service tends to be more efficient; as it doesn’t matter whether the person is an avid social network user or not.
Don’t underestimate the power of official records
We have so far focussed on some of the more “modern” approaches in putting together your family tree. This next one is something of a classic, but it has been proven to work.
In short, official records are there to be taken advantage of. Depending on the area of the world you live in, you will probably have access to archives. These archives can contain everything from birth certificates to death certificates – both of which can give you a massive helping hand in finding what you need. Most of these archives are based in city libraries, so this might be one of your first ports of call as you bid to make the first steps in your family tree journey.
