Jennifer,
Your personal family history may only exist within your memories, scrapbooks of photographs and newspaper clippings, and certificates of birth and other legal documents. More than likely, someone related to you as assembled a collection of family memorabilia, and together with information found in many other sources (school yearbooks, local newspapers, local and regional history books, etc.) and written a memoir or formal family genealogy. They may even have posted their work on a website.
When you enrolled with WikiTree you were given a unique identifier, Shockley-238. That little bit of information tells you, and every other WikiTree subscriber and visitor that you are the 238th Shockley to submit personal information to the website. Now, anyone on WikiTree, perhaps a Shockley relative, can view your profile (the data you entered in the creation of your Shockly-238 membership) and link your profile to themselves or other Shockleys, maybe even to a distant aunt you never knew about in your mother's family. You might also find the connections yourself. Try this on your profile page:
1/ At the top of the page, left of center, place an * in the first name field and your last name in the last name field and then press the enter key.
2/ Look over the list of Shockly names that will be displayed, and click on any you would like to see displayed.
Simple as that. You have begun finding your roots and branches.
Welcome to Wikitree!
