This article is sponsored by Ancestry.com
Ancestry.com is a unique service that connects people with their past through the world’s largest database of historical records. Ancestry.com thrives by helping people learn fun and exciting facts about their family’s origins.
One thing I have always loved to do is sit around and listen to stories of my grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts and uncles about their lives when they were kids and the family that went on before us that I was never able to met. My great-grandma (aka Nana) would tell stories, but when I’d ask for details she wasn’t one for sharing -or maybe she didn’t know. But as I get older and some of my family has passed away I find myself wondering more about where I came from – and I was never really sure where to start.
When I was given the opportunity to review Ancestry.com I was so excited to see where my family came from.
*My Grandpa Roger Rouse on his Uncle Bill’s shoulders
I decided to go back to find my origins and see how and when we came to America. I decided to start with my Dad’s side of the family and see where my maiden name ‘Rouse’ came from. I was surprised how easily I was able to find generations of grandparents, aunts & uncles and in about an hour I traced back our family as far back as 1670 where a great x9 Grandpa was born in Zweibrücken, Zweibrucken, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany!! I also found out that our name was originally Rausch – not Rouse! When my family came over from Germany into Virginia they changed the spelling of our last name. How amazing is that to find out?!
I plan to find out more about what they did for a living – see if I can find more photos, and also look into my Mom’s side of the family. My kids were so excited to find out where we came from and especially to know about the way our name was changed.
Are you interested to know where you come from??! Check out ancestry.com and start your free trial today!
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I keep seeing commercials for this, but all of the generations in my family older than my grandparents came from Europe, so I always thought it would be too hard to track them down.
I love ancestry dot com, but I find that I get MORE out of my central library and it's geneaology room. Ancestry is a great place to start before you need to dig up proof. I'm actually related to Shakespeare on my mother's side.
My grandfather did some intensive searching to figure out our family tree. I can't recall how far back he went, but it was a fairly detailed process. My mom has somewhat taken over since he passed. I love that this site could potentially make the search easier!
My brother used ancestry.com to go WAY back into our family history. It's a great site and love everything that he has found.
my dad used ancestry.com forever. i am going to start researching my scottish side... the new outlander show has inspired me LOL
This sounds like such a neat service. If I had any idea who my ancestors were, I would totally do this!
my father's family has been doing this for years. We've recently found many distant relatives
Ancestry.com is such a cool website. I love that we live in an age where our family tree is just behind our computer screen.
It's so cool to see your grandfather when he was a boy. I've got to give ancestry.com a shot. It's super cool.
I want to look up my family history. I just haven't got started on it yet.