GETTING STARTED WITH FAMILY HISTORY RESEARCH So you want to find out about your relatives? A good way to start is to talk to older relatives.  Why not encourage grandparents, uncles and aunts, even cousins to reminisce about their youth and what they remember being told about the family. Start collecting material about your family - including birth, marriage and death certificates, photographs, diaries and letters. All of these will help you build up a picture of your relatives. Be patient with older relatives and you may need to speak to them several times to jog their memories. Get them to show you their photograph albums, letters and family Bibles and it will trigger reminiscences. But remember that memories can be faulty, so double-check all dates and names. Be very careful about recording all the information you get, and its source. A family history takes genealogy one step further. Compiling a family history involves combining genealogical data with the unique story of a family's journey through time. To begin a family history, start within your own home and work from the known to the unknown. On separate index cards, write detailed notes for each immediate family member, working backwards from yourself and your siblings to your parents, grandparents, and so forth. If necessary, enlist the help of relatives and family friends. Your notes should include: Full names--first, middle, last. Include maiden names of married females. Dates and locations of birth, marraige and death Occupations. Military service Religious affiliations Education. Source documentation is crucial to legitimate research. Keep copies and records of all documents which verify your information in writing. Vital information can include birth/marriage/death certificates   WHAT IS GENEALOGY Genealogy is the study of a family's lineage. It is often used to trace family trees, or simply find a specifice person in a family's past. Genealogy is solely about who is in a family and who they are related to. This is not like the more general study of family history, which might involve tracking the dates of birth and death, occupations etc held by family members. Genealogy can also play an important role in helping reunite families that have been torn apart by some larger circumstance. In the many decades after World War II, for example, genealogists had helped in assisting people displaced by the war to rediscover their families who remained in Europe. Famines and social situations may also cause such diaspora, and genealogy may help people rediscover this lost history. Many Irish families, use genealogical records to help rediscover family that has been separated for two or three generations, since their families emigrated from Ireland. Also the popular Alex Haley's Book Roots, which was also made into a successful television series, increased the interest of the  African American population in using genealogy to trace their own family roots.