As I have got older my interest in who my ancestors were and where I came from has become much more important to me. With very little tradition in the US I wondered if there were cultures in my family history that I would be able to identify with. In common with many Americans my ancestors were from many different countries but the majority were from the old world mostly Western Europe. Even my name is made up of a mixture of languages. It is little wonder then that I should be curious as where my roots are and who I really am. So I started out trying to build a genealogy tree or family tree as it is more often called.

I am glad to say that several of my relatives have a similar attraction to genealogy. My brother and an uncle and an aunt have been researching family history records and building our family tree for quite a number of years. Getting a head start thanks to all of their work I have been able much more easily to trace my direct lineage over many generations finding out where my family came from and how they endeed up in the United States. Going way back there was even a US President in my family tree although not in my direct line. Of course, this was not meant as bragging.

If you want to learn more about your ancestry, putting together a family tree is a great way to find out those answers. There are many publicly available records that can help you begin to build your family tree and many have been digitized and are accessible online. A very good place to begin is birth, death, and marriage records – you need to have atleast approximate dates and some names to be able to find anything. You may even consider using one of the many web sites out there that can help in building a family tree. Genealogy.com is a very popular site for this facility. It might surprise there is already someone else out there building your family tree for you.

Some more popular web sites include familytreemaker.com and ancestry.com. These sites are used by millions of people wishing to research and build their own family tree. They hold huge records databases which you can review and see whether your ancestors are listed. If you are fortunate you might even find an already compiled family tree with your name in it.

Learning who you are and where you came from can be an amazing gift. There are plenty of people who do not have any knowledge of their ancestors but would like to know but do not know the first thing about how to go about it. Knowing your personal history and where and how your ancestors can open your eyes to a whole new world you did not know existed. In this age of technology with the vast information sources available there is now no excuse for remaining in the dark. So make a start on your genealogy tree. You will not regret it.