How the world wide web aids me with my family tree research.
I just love how the world wide web helps me with my family history research. Apart from the obvious benefit of being able to use the various genealogical sites such as Ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com, The Genealogist, Genes Reunited, the Origins Network, to name but a few, the other great benefit of living in todays technologically linked world is that by publishing my own family tree research within my website www.nicholasthorne.com (to which this blog is linked) I have had the delight of being contacted by people who are either distantly related to me or who are able to fill in blanks in my own research!
I’ve had people who have researched a line way back into the misty pasts, contact me with fascinating documents showing links to Scottish and European Royalty. People who are more closely related as “cousins” several times removed and even people who, coming further up to date, are the present occupants of the building where, back in the 1970’s, my parent’s once had a boat built. I consider this latter information to fall into my own family history as it concerned a chapter in both my parent’s and my own life even if only 30 odd years have passed and in this time the boatyard has gone out of business and the yacht has been sold on twice.
It is all part of the exciting possibility to draw like minded people together that Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s invention provides. So I recommend that once you have some family history facts that you have checked, or if you have some questions that you need answering, a simple web presence will do wonders for you. It doesn’t mean that you will gain hundreds of contacts over night. But I’ve found that over time, however, I’ve had some interesting contacts that I would never have had otherwise.
I love the world wide web!