How to Find Your Family Roots and Write Your Family History: Second Edition - Softcover

Latham, William; Higgins, Cindy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1891661124 ISBN 13: 9781891661129

Publisher: Santa Monica Press, 2004

Synopsis

Have you ever wondered if one of your ancestors was a famous person? A president, or even a king or a queen? If you've shown a flair for painting or writing, maybe you've fantasized that you inherited your talent from an ancestor with a a name like Michelangelo or Shakespeare. Now you can create a priceless inheritance for future generations and satisfy your own curiosity!

In How To Find Your Family Roots and Write Your Family History, William Latham and Cindy Higgins show you how to trace your family history in a simple, easy, and inexpensive manner. This revised version of the best-selling How To Find Your Family Roots has been updated to include the latest internet resources and expanded to offer step-by-step instructions on how to write your family history in a way that is as entertaining and exciting as a historical novel! You'll discover:

How to interview family members
Where to look for family relics and treasures
How to utilize the latest Internet resources
What to ask librarians
Where to obtain church recrds
How to research vital records
How to use government resources
How to search for your ancestors in foreign countries
A country-by-country list of sources
A state-by-state list of sources
How to organize your research material
How to incorporate history and storytelling into your writing
How to design and print your family history
How to share your family history with relatives

About this title

About the Author

As a boy in the 1st Grade, we had a creative writing assignment. I first wrote Marna then, but she didn't have a name yet. It was about a boy name Jay who discovers a magical girl with butterfly wings as they fly around together. By the time I finished reading my story to the class, half the girls had drawn pictures of the magic girl. I wish I saved those pictures.As an adult, decades later, I was on a dive trip to Bonaire. It was the first time I used my Passport. I was with my wife and her parents. The resort had Monarch Butterflies flying about freely. This is where I got my new inspiration and started writing Marna right then and there. You can say, "Bonaire is the birthplace of Marna." Then I read it to my best friend's step daughter, she was 12 at the time. If you guessed already, she loved it. Then I self the book for a couple years.Then one day my father-in-law, Jim Swanson, became ill all of a sudden. When we visited him at the hospital, we got the devastating news. He was dying of a very painful cancer. It was in his liver and bones. As we stayed by his bedside, I began writing the sequel to Marna, as a way to cope with the stress. Sadly, Jim died before I can even finish the first act. As I progressed the sequel, I read it piece by piece to my test reader. She loved the sequel's first act. Then tragedy struck as her mom became diagnosed with breast cancer. I felt I needed to finish my sequel no matter what.My best friend is more like my brother, so in my heart I adopted his step daughter as my unofficial niece. This made me feel kin to the uncle who wrote "Alice in Wonderland" for his niece. If things turned for the worst, I hope my words might sooth her pain. I finish my book before the year ended, and finished reading it to her. She loved it so much she said, "This needs to be a movie!"I realized, since I finished the sequel, I needed to copyright the first book. After copyrighting, less than two weeks later, I get a call from Dorrance Publishing. I saw it as a sign, this was meant to be. I signed the deal, and have been working hard to promote my book, so my stories can bring happiness to more kids like her, plus I want to finish the project before my niece grows up.

Edition details

• Publisher: Santa Monica Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1891661124
• ISBN 13: 9781891661129
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 288