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After many years, I am done with my family history and have it printed and bound. Besides sending it to the family, where would be a good place to send it?
Your local library, the nearest and/or state gen society and/or the state(s) where the lineage(s) are based, Allen County Public Library in Indiana... I'm sure there are others.
What about an electronic version? PDF or MS Word, for example? Print copies of things are growing obsolete since accessing them and searching them is so difficult. Some places may scan and convert a print copy into a PDF. They can even OCR in the process, but why force that?
How do you "finish" a family history? There are so many lines to investigate.
I thought the same thing when I saw the title of the thread lol!
I don't think I will be finished in my lifetime.
But I'm "getting" that the OP is finished with compiling a published family history.
For the OP, also consider donating to genealogy libraries. I'm almost finished with a book about my paternal family and am going to donate to the Allen County Public Library as well in Indiana as it is a Midwest genealogy library center.
How do you "finish" a family history? There are so many lines to investigate.
Some of us cannot go back beyond a great or greatgreat grandparent. Very few Jewish records exist in Eastern Europe anymore. Also, Jews in Europe did not have surnames until the 18th or 19th century. If so many of the old Jewish cemeteries had not been plowed under, it might have been possible to reconstruct a family before then based on the patronymic. ( In the Jewish patronymic system the first name is followed by either ben- or bat- ("son of" and "daughter of," respectively), and then the father's name). Some gravestones may also have mentioned a wife's or husband's name.
My tree was finished somewhere around 17 years ago... and I only added a few new grandchildren since then. I have my grandparents and all their siblings, and descendants thereof. My 4 grands were all immigrants. I also have their parents' names, and in one case the grandparents of one of my grandmothers -- which I recently found on one of the newer databases on JewishGen.
The fun part now is matching to DNA Relatives. I have found a few. There are others I should be able to connect with but THEY don't know their own family names and maiden names going beyond their own parents or grands.
BTW, most of the info I have was gathered by my mom, 2 aunts and an uncle. They actually, personally knew most of the people in the tree. I then found records on Censuses, Ship Manifests, etc. for the people important to me. I have a branch tree from a cousin I never met -- descendants of my grandmother's mother's family. I never met any of them but my Aunt knew a few of them.
Some of us cannot go back beyond a great or greatgreat grandparent. Very few Jewish records exist in Eastern Europe anymore.
So yeah. I'm pretty much done.
I guess you're not familiar with Jewishgen? With the fall of the Soviet Union, most of the archives have opened, and in some areas there's a wealth of information that's been translated and posted.
I too once though there were no records. Imagine my surprise when I found some exciting ones do exist! For several direct ancestors, I was able to go several generations further back.
I can see how someone would finish their genealogy. I have a line or two, we can't seem to get back beyond five or six greats. If we had a small, law abiding family, we would have even less info. Lol! We have one family that we know back twelve generations because of the uniqueness of their name. I have two different lines of 'Smiths'. I don't see that going anywhere beyond where I have it. I also have a Catholic line that has been traced back to Germany/Luxembourg. Supposedly, there is some royalty there that I assume could be traced back further.
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