Finding my Ancestors

I have an unusual last name which is Hungarian in origin, although my ancestors from the 19th century lived in the Baden region of what is now Germany. I knew that in the 1840s my Great-Grandfather, together with his elder sister and younger brother, moved from Baden to England. From what my Father had told me I knew my Great-Grandfather's first name, but I didn't know the names of his brother and sister. In 2017, I set out to find them. Knowing that that the Library had access to the Ancestry genealogy system, I visited my local library branch (Beaverbrook) and with help from the library staff I was soon searching through the Ancestry database. I easily found the name of the brother, plus the dates when my Great-Grandfather and his brother died, but the sister remained a mystery.

Thankfully the library again came to my rescue. Later in 2017, the Beaverbrook branch held an introductory session on genealogy, including using Ancestry. I eagerly signed-up and learned a lot, including the names of other genealogy websites which can often contain details not present in Ancestry. Armed with that information I not only found my Great-Grandfather's sister (the breakthrough was finding her Last Will and Testament), but have learned details about my ancestors in Baden dating back to the early 18th century. In all, I have identified my ancestral family as including eight generations in Baden dating from 1701-1911, two generations in Transvaal (now part of South Africa) from1896-1988 and four generations in England from 1843-2002.

There is always more to discover; that's one of the nice things about genealogy - the search never ends. But none of this would have happened without the facilities and programs offered by the Ottawa Pubic Library.

Friendly suggestion to OPL: Bring back the "Introduction to Genealogy" presentation - similar to the one given at the Beaverbrook branch in 2017.