There are many things one can do to interest children and young adults in genealogy. What follows are some suggestions and ideas. They are by no means comprehensive and are intended to provoke brainstorming on the part of the reader. The activities should be geared towards the appropriate age, ability level, and interests of the child.

The ideas are not grouped according to any cognitive scheme. As with anything, some activities will work better with some children than others.

Cemeteries
Looking for tombstones can be a family activity. Children can copy tombstone information on to their own notepaper or even make a map, showing the respective locations of the stones. While plotting the location of each and every stone may be beyond their ability, a map showing the relative positions of family stones and enough landmarks to help find the stones again later may be a more workable project. If the child has a camera of their own, they may even want to take pictures. Old stones can topple and small children should not roam a cemetery unsupervised. Several years ago, in a cemetery not far from where I grew up, a child inadvertently toppled an old stone on himself and was killed.

Other Map Ideas
We all have ancestors who moved from one place to another. Using an age appropriate map, the child could mark where various events in the ancestor's life took place. Other activities could include determining the mileage between the various residences and how far the ancestor moved throughout their life.

If you know exactly where a certain ancestor lived, mark it on a map. If it is in the country, what towns are nearby? If you know where the family attended church, where was it in relation to their house? Where was the school in relation to their home? The same mapping could be done with other landmarks. The library, courthouse, historical or genealogical society may have county, township, or city maps to aid you in this process.

Estate Inventories
Inventories of an estate are a wonderful source for the genealogist. Take an estate inventory from an ancestor one or two hundred years in the past and find out what the items are and explain the more interesting ones. Older children can use reference materials and determine what the items are for themselves. There are wonderful, personalized history lessons to be had in these records.

Reading
Genealogy requires a lot of reading. While suggesting a child read a transcript of a court case is too much, there are records that are more appropriate. Biographies from old county histories and "mug books" are ideal. The locations could be mapped out or you could even ask the child questions based upon the biography.

Math Skills
Genealogists use numbers frequently. Taking a family in the 1850 census and approximating the individual's birth dates from their ages is an exercise in subtraction. How much older is the father than the mother (or vice versa)? Were all the children born in the same place?

Take a person listed in several censuses and have the child use the age listed in each census to determine the year of birth for that person. Are they all the same? Are they close? What would you guess the birth date is? Why?

Neighbors
Do you have census records that show your family's neighbors? Have the child look at the neighboring families. Do they all have small children? What are the occupations of the neighbors? How does the ancestral family compare to those living nearby? For censuses 1850 and after, birthplaces allow for comparisons with neighboring families. Is the family living in an immigrant neighborhood? Are there other families nearby from the same area?

Famous People
Do you have any CDs that have well-known people on them? There are several large databases commercially available that contain presidents and well-known figures. Statewide census CDs and census indexes are good examples. I have the 1850 Illinois census on CD-ROM. While he's not related, it only took me a few seconds to find Abraham Lincoln listed as an attorney with his family in Sangamon County, Illinois.

Who was president when a certain ancestor was born? Who was president when they died?

How Do You Spell It?
Have the child think of alternate spellings for a surname. It might be best to demonstrate this first, by misspelling a word based on different phonetic interpretations or "dialects." You might even want to keep the list the child makes for you own use. After all, not all 1850 census takers were highly educated.

Help You Research
Are there ways the child can assist you in your research? If they are old enough, they can look for individuals in the Social Security Death Index, the AIS Census indexes, or any of the hundreds of online databases available through the Internet. Of course, you will want to point your budding genealogist in the direction of offline sources. The advantage in using online sources with children is that if they get cranky or bored, other "patrons" are not bothered and you can always come back and do more research later.

Any Skeletons?
Decide first how to handle this issue. If one family has significant skeletons, it might be best to work on another family. Keep in mind the age of the child and their maturity level. Lengthy discussions of mothers dying in childbirth, young fathers dying, and children dying may leave the child with anxieties about their own parents and siblings. Criminal acts and other unsavory activities might be best used when the children are older. Of course, it does not necessarily hurt to mention the bad along with the good. Just be careful that the bad is not overemphasized.

Children love to learn and if appropriate activities are presented to them in a non-threatening fashion they frequently warm up to them. Math, social studies, and language readily avail themselves to genealogy in many ways. After all, adult genealogists need to read and use history and math in order to do research. If they don't, they should. And if you thought these ideas were just for kids, how about using some of them to create visual aides for your genealogy book?

Who is going to keep your genealogy materials when you are gone? It may be in the best interest of your family's history (and all the papers you have collected) to encourage younger family members to have an interest in their own history.

Copyright 1999, Michael John Neill.
Michael John Neill, is the Course I Coordinator at the Genealogical Institute of Mid America (GIMA) held annually in Springfield, Illinois, and is also on the faculty of Carl Sandburg College in Galesburg, Illinois. Michael is the Web columnist for the FGS FORUM and is on the editorial board of the Illinois State Genealogical Society Quarterly. He conducts seminars and lectures on a wide variety of genealogical and computer topics and contributes to several genealogical publications, including Ancestry and Genealogical Computing. You can e-mail him at: mneill@asc.csc.cc.il.us or visit his Web site at: http://www.rootdig.com/