For the past 15 or more years, I have been tracing our family trees. After we became grandparents, I became even more determined to gather as much family history as I could so I could pass it on to our grandchildren. Now, with the passing of their great-grandmother, I’m so very glad I did.

As a young grandaughter, myself, it never occurred to me to ask my grandmother about her life beyond what she offered. I never knew her parents had together almost 24 siblings and now it is almost impossible to trace their descendants.

It has been an exciting trip through time and history. To find an ancestor long forgotten and place him or her within an historical time period brings so much more meaning to the past. My family tree discoveries had even helped our children connect to what they had been learning in their social studies classes.

With most of my blood relatives deceased, except for one second cousin, I have had to rely mostly on Internet sources. Each time I thought I had come up against a “brick wall”, I would take time off from my search…until the next summer when I was on vacation. Then I would pick up where I left off and to my surprise I would find another clue or fact or document leading me further into the past. (more…)

Searching for your ancestors? Researching your family tree? Be aware - you might open a Pandora’s box.

Ever since the movie Roots, family history and genealogy research have been very popular - just Google related terms and you’ll see the many resources that have sprouted online in the last decade! I’ve been researching our family trees for more than 10 years now.  Most of the 50 pages of data I’ve found  is from those resources on the net. I believe it is very important for grandparents to pass down the family history. It’s important for children to know their past to help them see their future.

I won’t go into all the details of my lineage, but I’ll share with you several interesting facts I came across…

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 Grandchild’s Family Tree Poem

I have a family.
I love them. Yes I do.
We belong together,
And I know they love me too!

The people in my family,
They belong to me.
And we are all part of
The same family tree!

Author unknown

Use this poem with Create Your Family Tree activity.

Grandparents and grandchildren, together, design and create a family tree using an Ancestry.com Free Trial to gather names and dates of those past to be added to those more recent. It’s fun to search together, then add pictures found in old family photo albums.

This activity creates a great opportunity for your grandchildren to literally attach a face to the names that have come before them….This craft activity can be done as part of your family story project….Read more

Related post:  Grandparents and Grandchildren Day, March 18 and look for coming posts for Grandparents Day held each September.

Grandparents and grandchildren, together, design and create a family tree with pictures of each member. This activity creates a great opportunity for your grandchildren to literally attach a face to the names of family members that have come before them. If you need some help searching for ancestors, try an Ancestry.com Free Trial where you can find many, many data bases.

While working on this project, grandparents have the opportunity to share stories about their children’s and their childhoods connecting them with bits of history along the way. Grandchildren have a chance to ask questions and relate their experiences, too. Such projects bring grandparents and grandchildren closer together. This craft activity with grandchildren can be included as part of the family story project. (Read

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