Discovering Ancestry with a Family Tree

As we wrap up our Mixed Heritage Celebration. I am so excited to share we’ve partnered with Ancestry! As you’ve seen we’ve been on a mission to gather as much information about our ancestry to provide our kids. We did DNA testing and we’ve been building our family trees. Ancestry has been a key point in our discoveries and this is why we are excited to share how we’ve partnered with them.

Have you started your Family Tree?

I recently asked on Instagram Stories “Have you started a family tree for your kids?” And I was shocked at the poll. I honestly expected a split vote but I’m now realizing this is not the case. 89% said no, they had not started a family tree. My hope is that now they will!

I still remember my mom sitting with my grandpa and his brothers to gather information about their immigration journey. This is when I realized I didn’t know so much I still didn’t know about my family. I had a hard time connecting the dots then that when I married Marcus I knew we’d need to gather this information for them because it would be even harder to gather this information.

But why is this important?

Well for us this is important because we need or kids to know where they came from who their family is and why they are where they are. It’s a piece that will forever connect them to places like California, New Jersey, Georgia, Mexico, and Africa! Places we hope one day they will visit and learn more about who their great-grandparents were and the heritage that has been passed down to them who are mixed-heritage. We’ve also connected with family we didn’t know, learned about illnesses that ran in the family and how both my grandparents served as part of the Bracero program.

So why Ancestry?

We used Ancestry for to start building our family trees. It’s been easy and an amazing experience to learn more about our family but we had to gather information to start to piece it together. Once we were able to gather some basics we add all the information to the website. It was amazing to see timelines for each individual come together and be able to add photos, records, facts, and so much more! Ancestry also has a great database of historical and public records to view. I was able to gather information from other I connected with on Ancestry thru our DNA results!

I found it easy to use a paper chart to gather my information first, especially when speaking to my parents. It’s a great way to gather specific information that will make building a family tree much easy to input later.

Ancestry provides amazing charts and research forms you can download.

Ruby’s Family Tree

Here is a close up of my immediate family tree. I’m still in search for so much information on my great great great grandparents. Luckily there are historical records added often. When you see the little green leaves it means there is more information or “hints” to add to our tree to get a more accurate timeline of a person. I have 30 connections on my family tree.

Marcus’ Family Tree

Marcus has an amazing family tree thanks to his mom. His mom has done such an amazing job at building her family tree and lucky for me I can learn and add to our tree. She has over 1227 connections with at least 5 generations of family. The oldest ancestor’s date of birth is approximately 1779! I can’t tell you how much of a gift this has been for our family. Our kids will be able to trace their ancestry much easier and learn where their dad’s family comes from.

Ready to connect the dots?

We want you to get a chance to build your family tree. If your family is mixed-heritage then you know how important this is and what a gift it can be for your kids and their future families.

Thanks to Ancestry one GUB reader will get an all-access membership to Ancestry.com and one Ancestry DNA kit!

Ancestry All Access Membership + Ancestry DNA Kit