Family History Projects

Canada’s 150th anniversary in 2017 is a great starting point for more than just local history projects. Family history projects can also be an interesting way to reflect about where you have come from and where you might go in the future. Much of the same advice is relevant for family history projects, but here are some ideas that might help you get started.

• Your most important resource is your family! Depending on how far back in your family history you would like to go, you may well have some older relatives who can help you out with information or provide anecdotes.
• To find some preliminary resources, get your relatives to look around and see what kinds of old photographs, newspaper clippings, letters, diaries or anything else they have that might be useful for your project.
• Take a look at what you have and decide what you would like to know about your family, and whether your resources answer those questions. Also think about who your audience is and what the best way to present your findings might be.
• If you are interested in the genealogy part of a family history project, there are a number of resources available. Lots of websites can help you piece together your ancestry. The Provincial Archives of Alberta also has lots of resources for investigating genealogy and a good listing of relevant websites to visit if your family is from Alberta. Library and Archives Canada has listings for other provinces in Canada, as well as other countries if you are interesting in pursuing your family’s origins before they immigrated to Canada.
• Other good places to check our your family history are your local newspapers. Newspapers often contain birth, death and marriage announcements, especially if your family came from a small town. These short notices can help you to figure out how different parts of your family link together and also provide dates for major life events. Sometimes you won’t be able to find much more than this about a particular family member if they didn’t leave many other records behind.
• There are a huge number of genealogy or family history resources available on the internet, as well as people who specialize in genealogical research. Contacting one of these professionals or checking out the website of a local genealogical society can be very helpful when you’re looking for specific information. Resources can turn up in some very unexpected places, and experts can help guide you there more directly.
• Next, decide how you would like to present your findings. You can be as creative as you want with this. You could create a family tree, a scrapbook album, a website, an art project or a book. It depends on what kind of information you have been able to find and who your audience is.