Descended from apes? Adam or Eve? Let’s leave ’em debate forever and come get focused on our close neighbourhood.
I’ve been tracing my family roots for a while. I was first interested in doing so in primary school. Teacher informed me on the importance of knowing one’s own roots. The big picture. That days, as I remember, I drew some shapes and asked to my mom for information and binded the shapes writing names inside.
My second attempt was genoom.com. I helped them translate to Turkish as well. Learned much about my parental side and loaded it into the system that days. However genoom.com was not enough powerful to process my roots that, I didn’t like the performance.
Now I’m using ancestry.com which also helps you find your relatives around the globe giving hints. UI and UX is also much better than genoom.com. I use its manuel tree builder tool regularly, adding some family members for both my side and my wife’s side. The easier way of doing this is using the DNA kit. But I didn’t pay for that yet. I was always interested in buying a DNA kit from various providers such as National Geographic’s Genographic Project, 23andMe and Ancestry. Sure I will, but waiting for more accurate results.
It also allows you to invite other family members and let them add or alter information.
The hardest part of course is to go higher in the tree. As you can imagine, since older relatives are rare, it is pretty hard to gather information about them and their family elders. I asked to many people in both my and my wife’s families and got this in hand. But our descendents (children) will have much more information than we have now.
I have no idea, maybe one day DNA tests will get more democratised thus everyone will be able to make tests at home, so that there will be a system which may find old relatives from the archives automatically. Bu until then, this seems the best way to get a picture about your roots.
Adding images
I think, all facial photos should be taken at the same age. Say 25 if possible. Because it gets easier to recognize faces at that ages. In Ancestry this step is pretty hard compared to genoom.com. The image part is a bit tricky and not useful. But it is possible at least.
Precious memories: photos & documents
Once you see your tree growing, you comprehend the value of what you are trying to do. You store images, names, birth dates and other valuable information in a place where you can share, publish and keep forever. So why not to add scans of old documents as well? See below, a picture left from my grandfather Riza Nur Barutcu. He had arrived to Izmir from Rhodes.
In order to see all material related to family roots together in one place, it is super useful to upload those to Ancestry family tree database. As you know antique paper decays in time and get a part of history. The best way to keep them safe is to put each one in an isolated holder. But please gather them, scan them and put online. This is going to be really helpful for us, the online generation, to catch some clues on our brotherhood in a near future. We are all siblings descending from ancient eukaryote cells after all.
Data collection
I asked my relatives about my family history. I didn’t just try to get facts. Instead, asked for memories and stories. Having a conversation with a family member can actually yield better information than just trying to figure out who was where at an exact time.
I had asked my mom about my grandpa. I knew grandpa was born in Rhodes but mom enlightened me with more details about him. She said maybe we can find out more information about his family too.
We headed to Rhodes (a must see). The island closer to Turkey, but away from Greece (Belongs to Greece anyway). We used a flying boat which makes 60 km per hour maximum. It took one and a half hour. We were excited for tracing our roots abroad.
There wasn’t much over there except one elderly Mr. Nuri, who drew a family tree by hand and took notes on it about the Turkish existence in the island back in the days (1920–1940).
Addition: A friend of mine Kerim has wondered why my mom, me and my father have different surnames. Because my father was Iranian, just after he had Turkish citizenship he had a Turkish name naturally, later on I was born and they divorced. Thanks Kerim.
Roots bloody roots!
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