Photo by Monique Schoenfeld, Town Crier
Margie Fink and Carol Phillips study their genealogy magazines. Those interested in looking up their family roots can try courses through the Los Altos-Mountain View Adult School.
Town Crier Staff Writer
For those in pursuit of their family histories, Los Altos has plenty of classes, research centers and experts to help them find their roots.
Researchers of all levels and ages can learn where to look for documents and how to sidestep roadblocks in Carol Harless' family history classes at the Los Altos-Mountain View Adult School.
Carol Phillips, who commutes from her Fremont home to Harless' weekly Los Altos class, said she has found relatives she "didn't know existed" through the class. Phillips said she joined the class to find her long-lost uncle.
Los Altos resident Janet Broadbent, who has worked at the Family History Center in Los Altos for eight years, said she sees about a 5-8 percent increase in genealogists using the center each year. She said about 300 people visit the research center a month, to look for information such as already-researched family histories or to order vital records from Salt Lake City.
As the descendant of a successful Native American translator who came to the colonies as a stowaway, Broadbent's interest in genealogy has been a lifelong passion.
"I'm hooked," Broadbent said. "You can find the most fascinating stories. It's so much fun to find how your family was a part of making history."
Los Altos Hills resident Jeanne Strong has helped residents piece together their histories for the past 50 years as a professional genealogist. She said genealogy has been popular for a long time, but attributes its recent popularity to the significant growth in available resources and to the introduction of the Internet. Strong said never-released records from the former Soviet Union are available for the first time, making many searches more feasible.
She said computers can save time by cutting down on phone calls and letter-writing. They also provide a variety of resources, including genealogy chatrooms and Websites of family histories.
Strong recommends that researchers start with themselves and work through their family backwards. She advised taking a look at birth records, obituaries, diaries, family traditions and "pay attention to family members' stories."
She said every researcher should expect to find "road- blocks galore." Even if vital records have been destroyed by fire or floods, Strong said researchers can sidestep the problem by looking for the information elsewhere.
Strong said family research is an "ongoing and slow process" that sometimes takes as much as a year to find one piece of information. "There's no set approach. Every family has a different story to tell," Strong said about her research methods.
For researchers looking for information on their Jewish ancestors, the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogy Society offers resources, assistance and workshops.
Rodger Rosenberg, president of the society, said the focus on specific groups, such as Jews or African slaves, is growing as more information becomes available.
"There's a startling amount of information trickling out," he said. "We can bond to history like never before."
Most family trees become a bush as researchers expand their search to include other family lines, said Rosenberg, who is the descendant of a hoochie dancer, Al Capone's attorney, a card dealer and a moonshine maker.
"As genealogists in pursuit of documents, we sometimes forget the greatest sources - the people. My grandfather is now 87 years old and has cancer of the spine. This interview may have been my last chance to ask those important 'who, what, where, and when' questions," said Rosenberg about an interview with his grandfather.
For more information on the Family Research Center, call 968-0164; for the San Francisco Jewish Genealogical Society, call 666-0188; and for the Family History and Genealogy classes, call 940-1333.