User:Mikesilva

My Research Experience

My earliest memory of family history was being a young boy and going with my grandmother and grandfather to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. They would use an old DOS based program to look up their ancestors. I remember the library being dusty, quite, dull, and full of old people. For the longest time this was what I thought family history was about and frankly wanted nothing to do with it.

I then met my wife who is a wonderful self-taught genealogist. She got me started with my family history and now I’m not sure who is more ravenous about finding information about our ancestors. I am grateful for getting me started with family history and her positive influence in my life. If it was not for her I would have waited until I was old like my grandparents and start then. What a waste of good research time!

I started with a little help: A birth certificate of my great grandfather (that my grandmother managed to get), death certificates for my great grandfather and grandmother, and a single sheet of paper with a couple of lines of notes. From there I have began to piece together my family history.

My Research Goals

Now that I have done research for a few years my goal is to share it with others in the hope that family members will collaborate with me.

My Research Tools

The following are things that I have found helpful with genealogy (posted in no particular order):

Blogs

• Genealogy Research Log - This is my research log. Whenever I do some research I post what I did to my blog. I have added information about places which I plan to transfer to WeRelate shortly.

Mailing Lists

• Silva - Ancestry.com Message Board – I am not a big fan of message boards but I am subscribed to this one.

Podcasts

• The Genealogy Guys Podcast – This was one of the first podcasts that I listened to. They provided a lot of good tips on how to do research and sources of information. They have helped me think of new places to go or techniques to use. I still listen to them today.
• DearMYRTLE's Family History Hour – This is the other podcast that I listened to when I was starting out too. She provided some help, although I didn’t care for her step by step description of how to navigate a website. It moved too slow for my tastes.
• Genealogy Gems Podcast – I have listened to this podcast for a while. The episodes are short and they give creative ideas that I like.

Websites

• Arquivo Regional da Madeira – My family came from the Madeira Islands. I use this site to search out documents, then I order the corresponding film from the Family History Library.

Software

• RootsMagic - This is my family history software of choice. I have tried out a variety of software products and this is the best package. You can get a demo here.
• GenSmarts - A cool program that gives research hints.
• PAFInsight - A very helpful program for merging information and cleaning up your tree. I have used it in the past.