Family Tree

How To Start Tracing Your Family Tree
By Ann Stevens

Before starting to trace your ancestors, it is a good idea to talk to your parents and grandparents if they are still alive. You should ask them to tell you what they can remember about their early life and make sure you find out where and when they were born and married. Also ask them if they know this information for their parents and their siblings as well.

As things have changed such a lot in the last 50 to 100 years, you'll discover that their life would have been very different from your own. For instance most people who live in the rural areas will find that their grandparents didn't have things like T.V., computers and mobile phones which we take for granted now. I can even remember not having electricity and it was my job to spend half an hour each day pumping water from the overhead tank so we'd have water in the house! I also had to fill the kerosene fridge every Saturday and bring in the chips each day for our bath heater. We didn't have Supermarkets when then, but old fashioned grocery stores where us kids were able to buy sixpence worth of broken biscuits. We could buy lollies 'four for a penny' then too.

If you know where & when your grandparents were married, it is quite acceptable to start tracing your family tree by buying their Marriage Certificate. In Australia, it changes a lot, depending on where they married, as the records vary quite a lot between states.