Tapping Your Roots
Researching your roots to discover family members who played a role in determining who you are can be a fascinating journey but with so many sources of genealogical information available today it can be a bit overwhelming.
A good place to start is the Palisades Free Library, which offers three free research sites. Ancestry Plus is accessed on computers at the Library. Two others, Heritage Quest and Code3, are available on your home computer through the Library site. You will find them listed under “Online Research” midway down the green column on the left. Here are a few other places you might want to try:
National Archives. Headquartered in Washington D.C., its Northeast Region office is at 201 Varick Street, New York City. You’ll find ship passenger arrival lists, census records that started in 1790 and taken every ten years after, military service going back to the Revolutionary War, naturalization petitions and land records.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has one of the world’s largest collections of genealogical resources. Information is available through family history centers worldwide. The one closest to us is the New York Family History Center at 125 Columbus Ave, New York near Lincoln Center (212-799-2414). Their online site www.new.familysearch.org is free of charge.
There are also quite a few websites online. Most charge a monthly or yearly fee. Four of the top online sites are Ancestry.com and its partner sites Genealogy.com, Archives.com and WorldVitalRecordsReview.com.
Ready to get started? Go through family papers, talk to relatives, draw up a family tree with as much information as possible. To get a richer picture, try to place the people you discover in the context of history such as World War I and II, the Great Depression, the Irish potato famine etc. You are bound to turn up some colorful sorts you had no idea were part of your family tree. Happy hunting.