Larimer County Genealogical Society is pleased to offer genealogy research for students (grades K-12) creating a family history paper and Girl Scouts wanting to obtain their heritage fun badge. Our society recommends the following steps, special classes, genealogy videos, and webpages to learn how to find your ancestors.
Educators and Girl Scout Leaders: This webpage includes many resources for you to use for your students or Girl Scout troop. If you have any questions or want to learn more, please contact our president, Larry Doyle at email: [email protected].
Mother & Daughter on Computer Researching Genealogy
Research Steps:
To learn about your ancestry and family history, we suggest you start by creating a family tree. A family tree is a graphic representation or chart of your family starting with yourself, your siblings, your parents, grandparents, great grandparents and so on! A family tree can be a chart that contains the names of your family lines, birth, marriage if appropriate, or other info pertaining to that relative. The family tree pedigree chart below shows how family members are connected to each other and their relationship.
Family Tree Chart
Four Generation Family Pedigree Chart
Before you start researching your family tree, you will need follow your school’s requirements on what they want for your English class paper or your Girl Scout heritage badge program.
One important step to remember in your genealogy research is NOT to jump generations, even if you are given an ancestor’s name in the 1800s or 1900s to research. You could be led down the wrong path as many genealogists have discovered in researching their genealogy. That is why there are many wrong family trees on the Internet as researchers have tried to jump to several generations, only to find out they have located the wrong ancestor with the same name.
Another important step to remember is to cite your sources for each ancestor to verify that you have found the correct ancestor during your research. The popular genealogy databases give you the option to add the source records for each ancestor you add to your family tree. Genealogy software does the same thing on including source records for each ancestor. For the paper method, you will need to manually add the source record, which includes what the record is, where you found the record, and the contents.
Besides the family chart, you may be required to add some family history for each relative for your English class paper. So it will be important to collect as much family history info on your relatives.
Asking the Right Questions
Start with asking your parents about their personal information on when and where they were born, who their parents were with the same info and so on. Be sure to get some family history background on your parents or grandparents that may be required by your school or girl scout heritage badge program. Asking the right questions will be key to having a successful family history paper. Download the article below on “Family History Questions to Ask Your Relatives.”
Daughter Asking Mom Genealogy Questions
Download Article on “Family History Questions to Ask Your Relatives”
Privacy Concerns
Another important step is keeping the privacy of your living relatives to yourself and not in your family trees on the Internet. Most Internet trees protect your privacy, but beware of other Internet trees may not! The reason is to protect yourself and others who are still living as there are Internet hackers who love to use your private information such as names, birth dates, social security numbers, and locations for use to their financial benefit.
Recording Your Genealogy Research
There are three methods to record your family tree information on paper, in genealogy software, or on the Internet using one of the genealogy databases, if you have access to a computer and the Internet. Most students start with the paper method and you can either download a family tree chart here or download a family predigree chart here and print it. As your tree grows with adding more ancestors, it may be best to create an Internet family tree or chart on one of the three major genealogy databases mentioned in the next paragraph.
You may be lucky enough that someone in your family including your cousins may have already created a family tree that you can reference for your family tree project. There are several genealogy websites such as Ancestry.com, Family Search Website & My Heritage Website that includes many family trees on their websites.
You can create an account for free to create your family tree with these three popular genealogy websites. You can also visit your local library in Fort Collins or Loveland or any city or town, who has one or more genealogy websites available on their library websites using their free library card. Another source for viewing these three websites is the FamilySearch Centers in many major cities. For a listing of the local FamilySearch Centers, please visit the Family Search website.
Researching Genealogy Records
The next step is to search for genealogy records related to your ancestors. There are many different types of genealogy records such as birth, marriage, death (vital statistics) records, census records, cemetery records, military records, passenger records, land records, directories, newspapers, yearbooks, and bible records, either from your own family or from your relatives. You can visit the three genealogy databases mentioned above to find these records for your earlier ancestors. Birth, marriage, & death records have a wealth of information to help you create your family tree.
Blank-Baby-Birth-Certificates
We recommend researching census records that started in 1790 and is currently available to 1950. Census records are protected for privacy reasons for 72 years, so the 1960 census records won’t be released until 2032. The 1850 to 1950 Census records includes the name of the household, relatives or others names living there, age, what state or country born, and other info.
School Districts: Ancestry.com has a free program for school districts which allows free use of their databases for K-12 students. Please visit Ancestry Classroom Program to learn more!
Free Genealogy Seminars for Students and Girl Scouts
If your school or Girl Scout organization would like a free half-day genealogy seminar in Larimer County, please contact our president, Larry Doyle at email: [email protected]. We can offer a half-day class on the different genealogy records by our qualified instructors, then help the students or Girl Scouts with their genealogy and family history. We can also offer customized classes for your school too.
Genealogy Quest Videos
Our society produced 16 videos for our local cable TV channel in 2011 & 2012. which you can review below to learn about the many different types of genealogy records to research your ancestors. Each video discusses each record type and where to find those records. Each presenter also gave an interesting family history story about their ancestor. Each video lasts between 25 to 30 minutes. Click on the underlined links to view each video. Users can expand the screen by selecting the four arrow icon in the lower right section of the video.
Episode 1 – Genealogy Overview
Episode 2 – Family History Centers
Episode 3 – Genealogy Websites
Episode 9 – Wills & Probate Records
Episode 10 – Passenger Records
Episode 11 – Technology for Genealogists
Episode 13: BMD & Church Records
Episode 14: Newspapers & Obituaries
Episode 16 – Collateral Relatives
Episode 17: Writing your Family History
Visit our many webpages below to see all the different genealogy records you can research and where to find these records in Larimer County.
Society Webpages:
Federal & State Census Records
Other Genealogy Resource Websites
Link to another website for kids: Genealogy for Kids
National Archives Genealogy for Kids Webpage
There are many more genealogy records available on a worldwide basis at the major genealogy databases listed in our free genealogy websites summary. Download Our Free Genealogy Website Resources Summary.
If your parents are interested in genealogy, tell them to visit our website too! We offer many free classes, study groups, and monthly programs. Students and Girl Scouts are welcome too! Many of our monthly events are on Zoom! Having a membership provides you to over 100 videos of our past classes, study groups, and monthly programs! Visit our Membership Benefits Webpage to learn more!
Thank you for visiting our website!