The history of our families is a fascinating thing. Sometimes, we find ancestors who did amazing things and also found out that we have relatives who live in exotic places we didn't even know about. In this post, I'll look at ways I would use to discover my family background. I will talk about methods ranging from asking relatives to genetic sampling.
Where Do I Start?
The first point I would start at is asking relatives. This way, I feel like you bond with family members more as well as finding out about ancestors. If you use websites to find ancestors, you may discover that your relative fought in a certain war, etcetera, but you will lose the story behind that person. Your relative may know about these stories and will probably be happy to share them with you.
There are also companies which will find out your family tree for you. I would collect some surnames, etcetera, from family members and then take them to these companies to have a more in-depth review of their lives.
Lastly, genetic sampling sites are great to uncover where you come from. The downsides to genetic sampling are that they can be a bit harsh on the wallet. In addition to that, they only tell you vague areas of the world you are from like 'Northern European', 'West African' and so on.
Useful Websites
Personally, I would use Ancestry. Ancestry is a great website to use to search billions of records across the internet for your ancestors. You can stumble upon so many documents to do with people who you are related to, but have never met. However, for the premium searching feature. You will need to spend around £70/$99.
Ancestry also has genetic sampling, but this will also set you back £79/$99.
If you are simply interested in genetic sampling, I would recommend 23AndMe. You will give a saliva sample, and within 6-8 weeks, you'll get your results. However, as I said before, it is expensive and quite vague. They will charge you the same as Ancestry, £79/$99.
