Family History and Family History Research?

Family history records are inevitably the root of your research. Once you have gathered all the available information you can from your family, you are armed with the information you need to find the next link in your ancestry.
With billions of records at your disposal and new family history sources being added all the time, arcalife provides you with the Family History tools to refine, narrow record searches and verify your research with other family members, match with content in Family Trees and ensure an accurate representation of your Family History.

A key skill in researching your family history is learning to read and interpret old document and certificates, with a little concentration and practice though this is easy enough to pick up. There are quite a number of good family history books that are focused on the subject of old letters, words and styles of writing. On thing to remember is that when the record keepers of the past wrote their documents, they weren’t doing this with us in mind. In short they weren’t trying to make it easy... or hard to read these family history artefacts. The more important the family history document the more fancy the writing is, which often means it less legible. When you are searching for family history records you’ll often find incomplete information or the same surname will be spelt several different ways, so its always worth trying a few variations in your family history search to ensure you haven’t missed anything. In general if you are struggling to read a word or determine a letter you should look at the rest of the document for close variations and use this as a key to decrypt the meaning of the letter or word. Context is also a helpful indicator.

This is where having a good family history records viewer is really important. The arcalife viewer allows you to focus and zoom on areas of interest within certificates, print and store the orginal Family History source certificates and access the indexed material via the media and family history archives within the site.

It may seem cheeky to ask a relative to share their research, but they are family after all. If you find someone who is willing to share this can really save you a lot of time and frustration . The likelihood is that you will still want to verify the quality of the family history research data that you are given, but you will avoid many pitfalls and dead ends during your investigations. There is no harm in asking, and the worst that can happen is that they say no.

A key part of successful gathering and mapping family history, is organizing you research. We recommend keeping your work in progress documents and certificates on paper, and when each family history item is verified uploading this to your arcalife family history account. This allows you to collaborate with other family members or family history researchers and ensures a clear division between what is complete and what is still being worked on.

As you gather your family history information you will undoubtedly make notes, annotate and comment on different aspects of your research. We recommend that you do this for each family member or ancestor, then as you transfer you verified family history data over, you can also add your comments and notes. These are an important part of the legacy that you leave helping future family member understand why you made the decisions you did about your family history research. Staying organised will help you to avoid detail overload and ultimately from missing key parts of your ancestry.

As a winner in the storage and sharing category of Family Tree magazine awards, arcalife will help you organise all your family history records, certificates, old photographs, letters and other family history memorabilia into an accessible, safe and durable family history legacy to be enjoyed by your family today and in future generations to come.