Family History - Past, Present & Future

There is nothing like investigating your Family History to put you in touch with your roots. Aside from collecting records and figuring out all the puzzles that your family’s past inevitably presents, there is a huge opportunity to involve your present family in the process of collecting, researching and securely storing their history for the benefit of future generations.
Whether you are a beginner or expert at Family History, arcalife.com is a great place to piece together all the different aspects to make your complete ancestry. With award winning tools, guides, resources and Family History records all in one place, you’ll have everything you need to make you family history come to life.

Arcalife.com helps you through each of the keys steps need in creating your complete ancestry. We advise that you start compiling your family history by making a list of all of the family members that you know about from the youngest to the oldest. Capture what you know about the history of each. This will give you an initial framework for your family history research.
Once you have done this first trawl of information you should document key family history information about each ancestor. For your current family members and recent ancestors you should try for a minimum of capturing First name and surname, their relationships to other family, key family history events, location and occupations, as well as any additional family history biographical information that you turn up. All together this will give a solid base for your Family History “journey”.

Involving you Family in the process of collecting the Family history is an excellent way of finding out what everyone knows. If they aren’t willing to get directly involved, they’ll usually tall to you about what they know of the Family and it’s history. The reality is that in the future you will have less access to family history information than you do today, so it is worth spending the time to record oral family history especially with older family members before they are gone.

It’s a good idea to come up with a structure for a family history interview so that you are always recording the same kinds of information and you don’t miss out important part of your family history that would be useful later on in your research. If you would rather shortcut that process, arcalife offers a facilitated and recorded family history interview to give you a jump- start.
At this point it’s you should decide on your family history research approach. This means thinking a bit about what you want from looking into your family history. Are you content with looking into the basics of you family line? or do you want to explore a richer side to family history that involves fleshing out family history information about each ancestor or family member?

Another important decision to make is which Line to start with. When you are starting out with your family history we recommend picking a side of the family that has interesting history, this will keep you engaged and interested. Another option if you have a less common surname on one side is to follow this side of the family tree, as this can allow you to make rapid progress. Usually the male side of your family history is easier to trace because male surnames have typically endured, being passed from father to son. If you have a lot of information about one side of the family then this could also be a good place to start tracing your history.

Once these decisions are made you can start to gather all of your documentation in one place, this includes certificates, documents, photographs, clippings and other family history memorabilia. Organising your information and documents well is the key to allowing you to spot gaps that will become lines of enquiry for your Family history search at a later date. We recommend that you use your family history life archives within arcalife to help you to organise your material. You can align family history information to each ancestor, making it easy to find and share if you are collaborating with family on collecting your history. Just scan and upload the information and invite family members to surely share family history document, materials and records. Good luck with building your family history and enjoy guaranteed endless rewards.