An Adult Grandson Is Interested In Genealogy - Now What?

Well, not here is a postscript just minutes after this article. My daughter called and her husband wants in on this too. How fun. Let's go get them Jeff!

For years I have thought I am truly my mothers son. I mean this in a surprising way. My mother was hooked on genealogy. She had four children. She was certain all of her work; her stories, her photos, and her research was written for posterity that could care less. None of us seemed the least bit interested. Now two of us are actually quite the genealogists and with the modern day tools have far surpassed mothers scope.

Now I thought I was truly my mothers son for the same reason; thinking who cares. My youngest daughter says she feels the spirit but her three active children have so much spirit she can barely keep up with them. My son, he's so busy with his business, where is the time to have the faintest interest. You know the drill. I count on it being like mothers children, some day, and the work done will be valuable to them.

And now comes along Damian with an interest.

I shouldn't be shocked should I? No the younger generation is well equipped. They are smart, fast on the computer, and are inclined to on line gaming. This far surpasses that sport.

So how do I help without overwhelming such a new interest? It has been a week since Damian suggested he would be interested in some ideas from me. So where would you begin?

Here are a few ideas that seem to make sense to me.
1- Go into family tree and connect all living parents or grandparents (I might want to help so it doesn't seem tedious) to those that are deceased.
2- Then print out a fan chart.
3- Pick out an ancestor that lived way back - go to puzilla.org and print that ancestors descendant chart.
4- Go back to family tree and select that ancestors descendancy view. I recently did this for the first time, following all of Elisha Warner Bingham and his descendants. This is actually quite a valuable and interesting format. In other words it's really cool. Immediately I could see a photo of his son's cabin, Erastus, who was my 3rd great grandfather. I clicked on his name and I see that there are 30 sources, 34 memories, and 8 discussions.

This type of result is what I hope we all find. A chance to benefit by the research of others to dig in and connect with our ancestors. I think it's time I end this article - I have a whole bunch of memories, sources, and discussions to study an a great great great grandfather and his family..

Oh, and then I would make sure he was aware of these search tools and sites.
1-The "Search Records" feature in Family Tree. I would explain how the family search database is.
2- FindaGrave.com
3- Ancestry.com
4- MyHertiage.com
5- FindmyPast.com
6- And the value of using Google.

I would also encourage him to explore the articles on this blog, even subscribe to other blogs I have listed.

Oh dear, have I overwhelmed him?