Calabrisella Mia

Not too long ago, I started nurturing my family tree. That is, I began putting it all together, and building my family tree so that I could learn more about my heritage and in turn myself. I’ve enjoyed asking questions and finding out about those who I never had a chance to know. For example, many people say that I look like my great grandmother and that I am a lot like her in spirit. I never had the opportunity to know first hand but in discussions with my family I have learned something about her and that makes me feel more connected to her.

How do you go about starting a family tree?

Well, that’s pretty easy. Start with what you know, your immediate family, aunts, and uncles, etc. As the tree and branches grow, things may start to get a bit tricky. Your next stop could be to ask your relatives. I can only go back so far on my father’s side based on what I know, so I turned to my relatives to help me fill in some gaps and add some more names to my tree. If you want to go even further back then you have to search for birth, death, immigration records. However, this isn’t always easy. Sometimes records dating back generations have been destroyed, lost, or just plain hard to track. Don’t let that stop you, give it a try, you never know what you might find!

New Stories To Share

My personal family tree will never be complete. I want my tree to be full; the more “leaves” the better. I make a solid effort to make note of anything and everything – interesting stories, favourite sports teams, etc. For instance, while watching a Juventus game with my dad once, I out of the blue asked him what my nonno’s favourite soccer team was. I knew my dad was a Juventus fan from a very young age and wondered if he got that from his father but turns out my nonno was a Fiorentina fan. Probably irrelevant information for some, but for me personally I think these types of things help me to know my nonno that much more.

If you are interested in starting your family tree, I suggest a free downloadable program called “Family Tree Builder” from the My Heritage site. It is great because you can include all kinds of information about each individual family member. Everything you could possibly need to know or want to know about your family can be included in your tree. It’s solely up to you and what you want to get out of it! 🙂

Have you created a family tree? How many generations were you able to go back?

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