The Lawhead Brother’s Legacy Tour – Summary – Part 1
We are pleased to announce Part 1 to our summary of The Lawhead Brother’s Legacy Tour.
We are very pleased with the response by numerous of you that based on our experience you have decided to investigate your own ancestry and plan a trip to the country or countries of origin. The incredible sense of satisfaction and pride you will experience is worth every bit of the effort you put into the search. Kudos to my two brothers, Kimber and Brian, for the tremendous amount of research and leg work they did to make our journey “the trip of a lifetime.” I will always cherish the special memories we made together and standing side by side in front of the headstones of our ancestors.
The best way to start is to collect old photographs and any and all copies or original documents of marriage certificates, death certificates, ships manifests, census reports, letters from relatives, basically anything that has a date stamp and relevant information that will help you construct your family tree. Take the time to have a conversation with the oldest living relatives in your family, and take copious notes as they share their knowledge of what they remember from conversations with their siblings, parents, grandparents and great grandparents.
Effective use of the internet, especially www.ancestry.com , is absolutely the single best source of relevant information and the membership fee is definitely worth the price of admission. We recommend gathering as much “free” information as possible from all family members and public records before joining Ancestry.com so you can hit the ground running and maximize the monthly membership charge. Parish records from churches and census reports are great sources of information if you have some idea of the country, state, county and/or town where your ancestors were born, lived or died. One of the frustrations we experienced in tracing back our surname (Loughead, latter changed to Lawhead) was that as a result of the Irish Republican Army burning the Belfast city hall to the ground in 1921, all records were destroyed. We were fortunate enough to have a copy of a ship’s manifest when our ancestor’s sailed from Londonderry/Derry to America, but information on family prior to that is going to require further research. We will continue our search and hopefully one day the Lawhead Brothers can embark on the Legacy Tour Part Deux to the U.K. and Ireland. We’ll definitely take our wives on this trip, however, so they can enjoy the thrill of walking the very streets of cities where our ancestors walked. Cheers!
