SOUTH AFRICAN FLEMMER FAMILY SITE
Many
people express an interest in learning more about their families and their history
but don't know where to start. These notes may help them and, hopefully, encourage
some of the family to begin their research.
The single most valuable resource
for any genealogical research is people, especially older people. They have a
vast reservoir of knowledge, accumulated over the years. Some of it may not be
completely accurate, but it will give good pointers as to where to find more precise
data. Regrettably, only too often this resource is not tapped in time and the
information is lost when they pass on.
So, the first step in any project
is to contact the oldest people in the family first and persuade them to start
talking, or better still, for them to write down what they know. It is usually
not too difficult to get them talking, although stopping them may be more of a
problem! Ideally if a tape recorder can be used, discussions can be much more
free flowing and all the information analysed afterwards, with very little lost.
These chats will often point the way to other material. Younger family members
should not be ignored, but it is usually best to start with the oldest.
The
key information that should be collected is the full names of ancestors and siblings
and descendants, as well as their 'known' names if these differ. Many families
have nicknames; many people do not like their given name and use others. And be
aware of the duplication of names in families, especially between generations.
Try to find place and dates of birth, marriage and death as this will make it
easier to get confirmation of these key events.
Many people, especially
in our family, move a fair deal throughout their lives, so try to establish where
family members have lived, what schools and universities they went to, where they
worked and who for. So many records are becoming available on the Internet now
that it is becoming easier to trace people, but knowing where to start is important.
This kind of information is also important to put some meat on the bones of the
research, to get some kind of feeling for what kind of people our family and ancestors
were; why they did what they did.For
anyone interested in Genealogy and South African families in particular, Francois
Greef has drawn up an index
which may be useful.
It
may also be an idea to contact Steve Herbert or Fay Lea - their e-mail addresses
are below - to see if they have any information for you. Steve tends to keep information
on the Flemmer line only at the moment, but Fay has a deal of family related data.
Once
you have started gathering information, it is important to start recording it
and keeping track of it. There is good software for this, Family Tree Maker being
one of the better ones. It is a very versatile program and allows you to link
the ancillary information about any entry as well as providing space for you to
note which facts have been verified and how. This can be important because some
sources of information are more accurate than others.
You will also be
able to have your information loaded onto this site. We would like to expand the
site to include information on other branches of the family, because it would
be very useful for other researchers to have a centralised information base. So
any information collected and collated should be forwarded to
Steve
and Fay are the researchers and would be particularly interested in family tree
data, old photographs and such information, while Terry is responsible for getting
the information onto the web site.
For an example of how this might be
developed is shown using the basic information that Anthea (Woolridge) Herbert
has about her paternal family go to Family Index below.
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