October's glorious days are my favorite month of the year. Like all the months of the year, it is filled with days to celebrate many things, from Celebrate Pasta to World Singing Day! It's Breast Cancer Awareness Month and ADHD Month to recognize our need to be aware of our health.
October
is Family History Month, a time to celebrate our heritage and document the people who came before us. Family history is my jam, and I get a thrill at the discoveries I make and those to come.
Today, you no longer have to drive across the country scouring courthouses and other
institutions to dig through musty old records. The internet is alive with
genealogy websites to help you find your family roots. I'm not getting
compensated for this, but I highly recommend Ancestry.com and Newspapers.com
for those interested in starting your family history
search. Once you build a family tree on Ancesty.com, you will begin a journey like no other.
The
brick-and-mortar historical and genealogy societies, museums, and libraries in
your area offer structured help for genealogists searching for their family
stories. Visit your local society, which usually sells county history books that may help you discover where your people lived. Libraries and
bookstores offer great genealogy books and magazines to help you.
I have visited all the area institutions and gleaned what I could from their resources. Now, it's easiest to get online and look at what documents are offered there.
There are lots of ways to keep your family history. From paper versions written in 30-ring binders to online family trees, you might want to record your loved ones talking about their life experiences! To keep the recordings with their voices is a treasure for you and your children to hear Grandma's and Grandpa's voices.
It’s easy to set up your family tree with genealogy software or popular websites dedicated to the subject. As mentioned above, I recommend using Ancestry.com to start your family tree. It has optional subscriptions with a small price tag, but when you get started, Ancestry will lead you to find many records, documents, and family for your family tree. Ancestry has professional researchers who can do some of the more complex research, or if you have met a brick wall in your research, they can guide you to helpful information.
Newspapers.com
is my other go-to resource for finding not only family information but general
historical information as well. I love spending time in their incredible online
archives. The bits and pieces of my family's lives are sprinkled throughout
time and detailed by the local newspapers.
October is a fun-filled month, and the days are usually warm, so you can get outdoors and hurry inside when the crispy fall night creeps in. So much is going on with school back in session with fall sports, autumn activities and festivals, and the ushering-in of the holidays. Fall is the perfect time to grab your camera and get those pictures of your family living life. Take advantage of walking, go to fall festivals, and snap beautiful photos of autumn fruits, veggies, and decorations. Many festivals offer historical programs that provide scenarios for pioneer days and Civil War era reenactments. Enjoy the sights, sounds, smells, and people dressed in period costumes in a beautiful fall setting.
Get outdoors, view the Full Hunter's Moon, and listen to the crickets singing the last songs of the year. And snap colorful photos of your family that will be treasured for years. Remember to label your snapshots with complete information identifying who, what, when, where, and sometimes how and why.
With the blazing colors of autumn right around the corner, remember those harvest gatherings, elementary school parties, hayrides, the cute scarecrows, fall garden splendor, and pumpkin patch outings. October is an excellent month to start researching your family history or continue with what you’ve already accomplished. What a fun time to be indoors and outdoors. Capture your family history this fall. Happy October!
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