#19: October is Family History Month: Valuable Resources and Tools for Embarking on Your Genealogy Journey

Ready to uncover the mysteries of your family tree? In this episode we commemorate Family History Month with a deep exploration of the tools and resources that can aid your personal journey into genealogy. We start with the century-old National Genealogical Society, a trusted leader in the field. We shed light on their mission, the free tools they offer, and what you stand to gain as a paid member. But we don't stop there - we also delve into other amazing resources, such as Family Search, GRIP, and even your local state genealogical society.

What's your family's story? I believe it deserves to live on - and in this episode, we discuss not just the how-to of researching, but also why it's so essential to share our findings. We highlight the importance of turning the powerful personal narratives of your family into lasting legacies. From free resources to crucial tips on writing and sharing your family's saga, this episode is a treasure trove of information for both seasoned genealogists and beginners. So, get ready to discover your roots, learn, and celebrate our rich, diverse, and shared heritage.

Find links to all resources here!

Transcript

Melissa: 0:01

Welcome to the Preserve your Past podcast, where we'll explore all things related to the creative process of writing your stories for future generations.

Melissa: 0:10

I'm your host, Melissa Ann Kitchen, author, teacher, speaker and coach. I believe that your personal history is a priceless gift for family, friends and generations to come, whether you consider yourself a writer or not. We are discussing the topics that help you with every step of the process, like how to mine for the juiciest story ideas or how to refine them into polished final drafts you'll be proud to share. Let's face it sure, your stories can be overwhelming, but I've got you covered. We all have a lifetime of memories to share, so why not save yours to pass along? Let me help you leave your lasting legacy. Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Preserve your Past podcast. If you are a regular listener, then you are here because you already probably have an interest in beginning a search for your family history. We talk a lot here about our family and personal stories, but these stories come from a long history, ancestors. I do often say start with you when I talk about beginning your stories, and whether that means starting with your parents, your grandparents, your great grandparents or your own stories. That's where I usually focus on preserving what you know, but there is also another layer to digging deeper that comes from researching our ancestors, and so today's episode is dedicated to October, which is Family History Month. So happy Family History Month, everybody. So today I'm going to be sharing some resources that I recommend to get started or become more proficient and organized while researching your past. So a very big piece of who we are is rooted in the stories and life experiences of those who come before us or came before us, and looking further at our family history helps us to learn more about ourselves. So I speak often about the idea of preserving the past and the future, and I even wrote a book to help you to do that, because I truly believe in not only preserving the past, but also sharing it as a way to build deeper relationships with our people that are in our present and in our future.

Melissa: 2:54

So here are some resources that I recommend if Family History is something you're interested in, wanting to know more about and get more talented in right, more experienced with. So I'm going to actually give you four resources right now and this isn't so much on necessarily documenting, because there are some tools that you can go into and do your family tree. This is going to be more on where kind of to get the information, so I will be sharing four resources that I think are really important with that. Again, there's lots and lots of places you can go to, and we will probably be doing more episodes on breaking down some of those resources that can help you with this process, but today we're going to be focusing on four. The first one is the National Genealogical Society. The next one is Family Search, the next one is GRIP and, finally, I'm going to talk about using your state genealogical society or your local chapter to be able to get more information. So we're going to talk about those four organizations, resources, and in each one I'm going to give you some information about who they are, what their purpose is, is their cost and what are some of the fun things or really informational strong tools that they offer. So I'm going to go through each of them and kind of give you a backstory, but also how you can use them. So let's get right in, and the first one I'm going to be discussing is the National Genealogical Society, or NGS. Now, if you go into the notes for this podcast, I'm going to be linking all of the resources, so the main pages that I discuss and even some of these subtopics and tools that I pull out from each of them, so you'll be able to get that either on the blog version of this podcast or in the show notes on the Preserve your Past podcast page Lots of peaks. So let's get started with the National Genealogical Society. So who they are and I'm going to read this right from the page because I think it gives you a nice idea of the history and some of the purpose behind them.

Melissa: 5:26

The NGS is more than a century old. The National Genealogical Society was organized in Washington DC in 1903. Ngs has a long history of leading the way in genealogy and produced some remarkable achievements. It was the first National Genealogical Organization. The Society published the first National Genealogical Journal, the NGSQ, and co-created the Board for Certification. Twelve of the original BCG Board for Certification board members were current or former NGS officers or NGSQ contributors. That's the journal. Ngs lays new trails, establishing itself over the years as a leader in genealogical education, with conferences, seminars and workshops, research towards books, magazines and journal. The Society introduced a claimed NGS home study course in American Genealogy in 1981 and now offers cloud-based online courses in American Genealogy and special subject matter courses developed by leading experts in the field. Gentech, a division of NGS, also helped to facilitate a bridge between genealogy and technology and is known for the GenTech genealogical data model, which is of use in software developers who write genealogy software. And the NGS book loan collection is the largest free lending library of its kind. Among the 20,000 books available for research, many in the collection may be borrowed by lending through ILL, including a wide range of family histories, state, country and local histories, abstracts of records of cemeteries, churches, courts, deeds, marriages, wills and other probate records.

Melissa: 7:21

Their mission statement states quote Our mission is to inspire, connect and lead the family history community. We foster collaboration and best practices in advocacy, education, preservation and research. We enable people, cultures and organizations to discover the past and create a lasting legacy. Now, that's a lot, and it's a perfect place to start if you want to really delve deeper into your family history. For family history month and further, because they do offer so many resources. They offer a lot of learning opportunities. They offer online courses and books, magazines, blogs, social media, research tips. There's so much. There's conferences.

Melissa: 8:13

So this was one of the reasons why I wanted to share this as a big, all-encompassing resource. So that's an explanation of the who right, the who they are. They do have many free resources and I will be sharing specifically about their family history month resources on their web page and also there is a paid membership option. So if you do go in and want to register to have a membership, that's where you can get more of some of the other more deeper resources. It also offers you opportunities to more of the conferences and some of those live streaming lectures and things like that. So it is a really there's an amazing community that can discuss things and support you as you do your research. So I really recommend you go check out their website. They do have something for every level of experience. So in my resources I'm going to be sharing their family history month resources, but also a great like where can you start resource. So that is what they are all about. Again, the fund resource they have is their family history month resource. That I will put the link again for you, but it gives you some ideas with some free PDFs on recording family memories and stories, how to scan and label your family photos, sharing the joy of finding who we are and some different activities that you can do with your family that are specifically made for family history month. So I definitely recommend you go to that page and check out what you can do with your family to get started doing some of those fun things.

Melissa: 10:12

The next resource that I'm going to be sharing is Family Search. Now, family Search is a free resource. They are a part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, providing Family Search free of charge to everyone, regardless of your tradition, culture or religious affiliation. So, while they are associated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, they provide resources to millions of people around the world, regardless of whether you're associated with the church. But they are helping discover heritage and connect with family members, and their mission is to help people to discover their family history through the website, mobile apps and in-person help. There are history centers over 5,000 local history centers. I will be linking their website. So one of the big pieces of the resources that I love is they do have a family tree resource that is free. It's the world's largest online family tree resource, so it links you to other family trees so, as you're doing your research, you're able to link into other information that's already been added by your family or ancestor information and, again, this is a free tool. So, while there are other resources that do this and some of those tools are excellent tools, this is a free option that lets you use a free family tree template to be able to kind of fan out and do all your chart views, a timeline and some other tools with hints and research help.

Melissa: 12:01

I found a really great Family History Activities page, also with some in-home and online activities designed for the whole family. I think that is a perfect way to go in and celebrate, go onto that site and find some things that you can use to celebrate with your family. These include some activities about where am I from? All about me, learning about yourself and your family. Do you have any famous relatives? Compare a face to a relative's faces, see who you most resemble. So there are some really neat activities that kind of walk you through, even connecting to your heritage through pictures, stories and in-home activities. So I will link that family search resources for those fun family activities in the show notes also. Again, that's another free resource and it does have quite a bit of information and lots of places you can get into and discover.

Melissa: 13:12

The next organization, number three, that I'm going to be recommending you check out is really for people who want to get some more education on some of the topics. This site, or actually organization, is the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh and its initials are G-I sorry, g-r-i-p GRIP. The GRIP Institute is now actually subsidiary of NGS, the first organization that I talked about. They have now been, they're now affiliated with the National Genealogical Society, which is actually going to be really great for both organizations, as they have been a really strong trailblazer in training and education for helping people learn about doing their research, and so they will be a big piece of the education for NGS. They do have training that ranges from new people to the topic or some more advanced topics. They usually have summer institutes, the actual registration beginning in February, but they do have summer institutes that are week long. They could be virtual.

Melissa: 14:36

There are some in person, and some of the topic examples that are kind of really cool and exciting are advanced DNA evidence, digging deeper the records, tools and skills. Another one was Genealogical Organization increase your productivity. Another one that I saw was Mastering the Art of Genealogical Documentation. These topics, you can see, would be a great way to build on your already knowledge of collecting your ancestry, of writing your stories, but they could only help If we could learn more about increasing our productivity or being able to do better at our documentation or genealogical documentation. That could only help our stories. That is why I highly recommend them. There is a cost for the classes. They do have scholarships that they offer, but they also have some smaller evening discussion sessions. As they're doing those. Check them out for either big learning topics or even some of those evening lectures that they do throughout that time.

Melissa: 15:48

Finally, the fourth resource that I would recommend you become involved in. If you are going to be celebrating your Family History Month by learning more about genealogical tools and tips that you can take into your research and building up those skills, I suggest you look into your local and state genealogical associations. That depends on which state you are listening from. In Massachusetts we have the Massachusetts Society of Genealogists, msog. That is the main organization in mass. There are other local chapters that are branched off from the MSOG. This is an organization that I have become involved with. You'll see me doing some speaking some of the local organizations and some of the state ones. I'm going to talk about who they are and why I think they're a really great organization, or for any of the state ones for you to become involved in to build your next steps of becoming stronger at the genealogy and Family History part of that. The mission and purpose for the MSOG is to promote and encourage Massachusetts genealogical research at all levels beginner, amateur and professional. They have a lot of resources and education that is actually open to the public, whether or not you are a member. There are some really cool little free resources also that I'm going to show you in a moment. The paid membership does offer more education and resources like webinars, live events and book clubs.

Melissa: 17:32

One of the main reasons I love the idea of using a local or a state genealogical association is, first, for being able to come together for a community of like-minded people. I was able to go to my New England genealogical conference in May and meet lots of different like-minded people that we're just as enthusiastic about family stories as I was. Now some of them have very different Experiences with what they do in the genealogical realm. Some have much more training than I do and the research methods or even some of the historical perspective when you're doing your research, but I love that I have these people now as my go-to community and we can come together and nerd out at some of the family history things. It was really one of my big ahas with business podcast and speaking career because I was able to really reach out and talk to people that had similar interests who could give me feedback and really just kind of boost my knowledge that the topic that I was speaking to was Exciting and interesting to other people. So that community of like-minded people is a main reason I chose to participate with them.

Melissa: 19:00

But there is also the idea of all of the resources and research Support that you can get when you belong to your local association, because that brings you into a lot of different ways of being able to access information within your state archives and things like that. So there are people with a lot of information and resources and links in those organizations that can help you find the information you need when you are researching your genealogy and your family. One of the fun tools because I talked about how I was going to say who what the cost was. So there is a cost to membership. It's 25 for individual in Massachusetts at 39 for a couple, so I'm sure it's very similar in other states. It depends on the state you go to.

Melissa: 19:50

But one of the things I did like is there was some resources that were available even if you were not a membership. One is they do have monthly talks, and many of the local organizations have this also, where some will be open to non-members and some are members only. They also, on the mass one, have some downloadable genealogy forms that will help you organize your information. One that I'm going to include a link to is a checklist of resource ideas when you're doing your research In the US, so I thought that was cool. There are some other ones that organize information, but again, this is a way to take it from just your stories into a little more in-depth, beeping up that research of your genealogy and putting together that information in a little bit more official way, and it's the backbone that we want to hang those stories that we've been working on onto right. So those were the four resources that I wanted to share so that you have somewhere to go to be able to kind of celebrate and Learn more in honor of family history months. I shared about the National Genealogical Society, family search, grip, and then your local and state genealogical society.

Melissa: 21:19

I hope that you Take advantage of some of these free resources or dive deeper into exploring more of the parts of Genealogy and ancestry that excite you and really dive into that research piece of it if that's something you're interested in. I think, again, these are great tools to be able to link in with the stories that we're writing. Don't forget, you can go to the Podcast comm for all of those show notes, as well as Melissa and kitchen comm for the blog that goes along with this podcast and any upcoming events. And, as always, here's to writing your powerful personal stories. Wasn't that a fun episode? I enjoyed our conversation so much and if you would like to continue our conversation, be sure to follow this podcast and share with friends. This helped share the mission of preserving the past with stories. Want more tips, tools and inspiration? Head over to Melissa and kitchen comm and, as always, let's get writing your powerful personal stories.