Alison Smith started looking into her family heritage and found some surprises.

By doing some genealogy research she found out that one of her relatives was a bit of a ruffian way back, and another surprise was the amazing amount of information which is now readily available online.

In days gone by you would have to write to get access to birth certificates, or copies of newspaper articles.  Now a couple of mouse clicks may get that information needed to find one's family heritage.

In this show Alison and Henry talk about her motivation for delving into the family background, how she went about it, and the resources she has found useful for locating information.

This is called “Geneology” and seems to be all the rage, all around the world, not just in Australia.

Alison talks about a couple of ways you can go about finding your family tree.  Some people want to find out about where their ancestors came from, and a little about their lives.  Others concentrate on just one or two family members, perhaps for the purpose of writing about them, or just for interest.  Both approaches can become equally addictive once you get in to the detective work.

In Any regard, delving into one's family heritage can be fun, and very informative as well.

Below are some of the resources mentioned in the podcast :

* The stories of older living relatives.

* Old photographs.

* Local libraries.

* Historical societies and genealogical societies.

* Cemeteries and gravestones.

* History books of the period to provide context to the search.

* The internet.

Two sites Alison finds helpful are:

* www.trove.nla.gov.au  is part of the National Library, has a massive archive of Australian newspapers.

* www.ancestry.com.au can connect you to information and people from all round the world.

Do you have resources we don't have listed here?  Leave us a comment below if you have other resources which would be useful for people starting the search.  It would be very helpful!

Special Thanks to:

* Angie Strehlow who helps us get great guests that help us with our retirement lifestyle while keeping everything on track…and helps with these show notes!

* Les Briney, my husband, and Danny Ozment of Emerald City Pro who edits the show and makes my guests and me sound terrific

* Henry Shapiro, host of Retired Excited that airs on Fridays

* YOU for telling your friends about the show, leaving comments below, and sharing episodes you really like on Facebook, and reviewing the show on iTunes

This post about retirement and Retirement Lifestyle first appeared on http://RockYourRetirement.com