Ancestry Poll Results Reveals the Pursuit of Family Genealogy

With Mother’s Day right around the corner, and Father’s Day shortly behind, I reflect on the messages that people have shared (through the many places this poll was posted).  Several people have had touching stories with great discoveries, while others have had heartache from tragic events that touched their ancestors’ lives.

All of us hobbyists are in pursuit of finding something about our family for various reasons.  Some people are just beginning their journey, while some have research experience, we are all still trying to find answers.

Two things to remember:  be patient with your research and document everything.  You might not get too far with one ancestor, and decide to go on to another, and one day you may what to start the research process again for that elusive relative.  Knowing what you have done in the past will save you from doing the same research all over again. 

For those of you just popping on by, we recently conducted a short poll to get feedback from genealogy hobbyists to see where people were with their pursuit in discovering something about their family history.  Based on the answers, over the next couple of postings, we will try to give some guidance to help people with finding documents and uncovering their family stories. In the meantime, below are the results.

Family Genealogy Poll Questions and Results:

What is your genealogy experience?

Do you know the names of your great grandparents? (including the maiden names of the 8 females)

How many PRIMARY sources do you have for people in your tree? (copies of original marriage, birth, or death certificates, last will and testaments, Social Security SS-5 applications, naturalization documents, or military applications)

Do you know where 10 or more of your ancestors are buried?

For your deceased ancestors do you have photographs of their tombstones?

We find it interesting that people have the same amount of tombstone photos as they do of the relatives in their tree.  In our experience, people tend to have less photos of tombstones. A tree with 200 people would need 20 tombstone photos, and a tree with 1,000 people would need 100.

What percentage of the people in your tree do you have a profile or family photograph for?

What time frame is hardest for you to find family documents?

What place is hardest for you to find documents?

If you could interview a deceased relative who would it be? (answer with the relationship)

Of the people who added comments about wanting family information, people were slightly more interested in their maternal side vs. their paternal side. But are more interested in interviewing men in their family.

Of the people to be interviewed, most people would like to talk to their great grandmothers.  They would have been born between 1860 - 1890.   The 3rd great grandfathers would have been born between 1820 - 1850.  These years fall directly in line with the question about, what is the most difficult time frame to find documents.

Finding Documents for your Ancestors

Research is time consuming and should be only attempted when you are alert, otherwise you might miss a detail that helps to uncover some family history.  If you are new to research, and need a guide to when birth, death, marriage divorce, taxation, probate, and wills were recorded, click on this link to find out those answers.