Happy Father’s Day to everyone! On Sunday, June 19 we honor fathers everywhere, including of course the ones that are part of your family tree.

My dad was a family history enthusiast. He wasn’t a professional or studied researcher, but he collected a wide variety of photos, documents, and stories and passed them on to me and my siblings. These resources have made it much easier for me to visualize and understand the fathers, mothers, and children in my family tree. My dad was also an enumerator for the 1950 U.S. Census in Southern California. Being fluent in both Spanish and English, he worked in predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods to capture information that is now being indexed for quick and easy access.

Finding Out More about Fathers

You can learn more about the fathers in your family tree using helpful resources in The Family History Guide. Here are a few suggestions:

• Gathering Memories—In Project 2: Memories, Goal 2 (Gather Memories from Others) you’ll learn about ways you can find photos, documents, and stories from immediate and extended family members and others. Also helpful is Goal 8 (Add Stories), which helps you connect with stories written about your ancestors.
• Doing Interviews—Capturing memories from living relatives is one of the most essential family history activities you can do, to ensure vital information is preserved and not lost. If your own father is still alive, consider doing one or more family history interviews with him. Or, you can interview uncles, grandparents, cousins, etc. to capture their memories. See Goal 3 (Interview Living Relatives) in Project 2: Memories for sample questions to ask and interviewing tips.
• Taking a DNA Test—A DNA test can be a great way to open doors for family history discovery. A Y-DNA test focuses on your paternal ancestry. For more information on DNA testing, see Goal 1 in Project 8: DNA and then check out relevant Goals in the Ancestry, MyHeritage, or Findmypast DNA Projects.