Researching European Family Trees

Researching European Family Trees

Researching European Family Trees

For many Americans researching their family tree tracing the line overseas becomes difficult because the trail goes cold quickly. Once you've exhausted all the well-known genealogy websites, it's time to search out lesser known but useful sites. Fortunately there are a number of websites dedicated to tracing your European family tree.

One of our first stops should be the passenger logs for immigrants. This will help you figure out the port from which your ancestors sailed. Go to Ellis Island.org to start your search of New York Passenger lists, but consider that they may have landed elsewhere too.

If you know the name of the town that they were born in, then you are ahead and should begin your research by learning as much as you can about the history, customs and events that shaped the people of the region. This will help guide your research because you will begin to know where to look for your relatives.

If you are English speaking and you know that your relatives came from somewhere in the British Isles, then you have a head start over others because (for the most part) you won't encounter a language barrier. Why do I say, "for the most part"? Well, handwriting styles and common usage words change a lot over time, so even in an English speaking country, you may run into difficulties but that's a topic for another day.

There are some very good websites that you should check out if you are searching for your British relatives. One of the best is: http://www.genuki.org.uk There you will find records from England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, The Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. They offer some tools will help assist you in tracing your family tree. These include their mailing list, surname lists, and family history societies. Find My Past is another great British site that offers a lot of information.

When language becomes a barrier to your research, you'll want to make use of some good translator website. Yahoo's Babelfish and Paralink both offer good translators. Needing to translate your records will slow you down a bit, but it isn't an impossible task. We're luck to live in times when technology helps us overcome these language barriers!

If you have Jewish roots, there is a website that you should check out. JewishGen offers thousands of databases, photos and research tools for those with Jewish ancestry. Specialty sites exist for the Scandinavian, Russian, French and Italians as well.

Whatever you find, I hope you will consider posting it online. Other genealogists benefit from the transcriptions of those that went before them. If you've gone very far in your search, you very likely have benefited from the transcriptions of other generous genealogists just like you who were gracious enough to share their information. This is never truer than when there is a language barrier.

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