1. Discovering Our Family’s Immigrant History Building a Detailed Family Tree Kurt Schmel, Josh Polensky, Mike Hogan, and Meliza Reynoso

2. What Do You Know About Your Family History? Please take the next few minutes to fill out the Worksheet titled “My Family History”

3. What Were Our Answers? Who is/was an immigrant? Me:__________ Mom/Dad:__________ Grandparent(s):__________

4. What Were Our Answers? When did the immigrant(s) come here? Since 1985:__________ Between 1945 and 1985:__________ Between 1900 and 1945:__________ Before 1900:__________

5. Do We REALLY Know Our Family’s History? Do we know who all of the immigrants are in our family? What do we know about them ? How can we find out more ????????

6. Let’s Build a Family Tree We’ll start with a simple tree: Once we have that, we can add more details

7. We’ll Start With a Simple Tree:

12. Who Are the Immigrants?

13. What Details Can We Find ? When did our immigrant ancestors come to the United States? Where did they come from? Did they become Citizens? When? Where did they arrive? Where did they settle?

14. How Do We Find These Details? Talk to older relatives: –The oldest form of history is Oral History – those bits of information that are passed on by word of mouth Search through records in archives (and at home) –Immigration & Naturalization –Birth, Death, Marriage –Census Documents

15. Using These We Can Find: Born in Lodz, Poland, August 1, 1901 Oral History Some Details about Henry Schmel: Arrived in Philadelphia Sept. 4, 1912 traveling from Hamburg, Germany Archive Records: Historical Society of Philadelphia Declaration of Intent filed on August 31, 1937 Archive Records: National Archives Naturalized Citizen on September 28, 1938 Family Papers kept in a Trunk in a basement

16. So We Can Add More Detail:

17. The Project Now that you have the basic family tree, it is time to build a detailed version You will be provided with templates showing what kind of information you will try to find We will use some time in class to work together to find information, but you will do most research on your own

18. The Project In upcoming classes, we will spend some time discussing the sources outside of your family that you can use to find material