Where do you start?

Getting started in genealogy can be a little overwhelming. Where do you start? Well, for me, it was easy. I simply asked my parents about their parents and grandparents. I took notes of names, dates, places, and any other information that might help me locate or verify other information about them.

Once I thought I had enough information to start researching, I turned to the best research tool in the world, the Internet. I started off by searching sites like Ancestry.com, RootsWeb, and FamilySearch.org. I cataloged every new piece of information I found and where I found it, including bookmarking pages in my browser.

Organization is key. Back then, I wrote everything down on a tree form printout that Ancestry provided for download. Nowadays, Ancestry.com has a great tool that helps you build your family tree online. You can save records you find to your “shoebox” to review later or you can save it directly to your family tree. And the coolest thing I like about Ancestry’s service is that you can view copies of some of the actual documents the information was retrieved from. I have several census records and World War II draft records that I’ve saved to my tree. You can also print them out easily, as well.

What do you do when you hit a brick wall?

There have been several times when I’ve been humming along one of the branches of my family tree when I hit a dead end, the proverbial brick wall. At that point, you just can’t seem to find any more information that will lead you to the previous generation in your family tree. My advice is… give up! Well, not exactly “give up”, but move on to another branch of your tree. You can come back to that branch in a few months and you might get lucky. That’s happened to me several times. I’d give up on one particular branch of the family tree and came back to it months later only to find a HUGE piece of information that led to the discovery of hundreds more ancestors.

Software

There are many great genealogy software products available to help you organize your family tree and print out great keepsakes. Ones that I use include Family Tree Maker and FamilySearch.org’s Personal Ancestral File. Both are commercial products that are available for purchase online. Family Tree Maker is a little more robust and has more features. Personal Ancestral File used to be free, but now there is a nominal fee charged for downloading it. Both are great products, but if you’re going to spend money on software, I’d go with Family Tree Maker, as it easily integrates with Ancestry’s database and let’s you create a family tree album you can print out.

I hope I’ve provided some good basic information for those of you wanting to get started in genealogy. I’ll be following up with more articles as I have time and perhaps even share some of the progress I’ve made in my own research. Who knows, some of you reading this could be related to me!

Growing up, I knew very little of my extended family. My grandfathers both passed away before I was born and my paternal grandmother died when I was 6. So, naturally, I was a bit curious about my genealogy. A few years after I first logged into the internet (waaaaaaaayy back in 1993), I discovered Ancestry.com, Rootsweb, and many other genealogical research sites.

I had very sketchy information about my family, so I asked my parents for a little more info. Armed with a few more names, dates, and places, I started searching. At first, it was very frustrating and I hit a lot of brick walls. However, slowly but surely I started finding bits and pieces of new information. I kept at it and within a few months I had a branch of my family tree stretching back to the 1600s.

It was fascinating reading about what some of my ancestors did: farmers, photographers, mayors, coal miners, and more. Hey, I even found royalty in my tree. Imagine, little ol’ me related to King James of Scotland. Cooooool.

I have researched all of this without ever leaving my house. It’s amazing. Someday I’d love to travel to Ireland and Scotland to do some research there, but for now, I have a wealth of information at my fingertips.

I’ve even helped some of my friends research their family trees. It can be incredibly frustrating, especially if you don’t have a lot of information to go on. But believe me, persistence pays off. One day you’ll find nothing, a few months down the road, you suddenly have a branch of 10,000 new family members!

Soon, I will be adding some tips and tricks for searching for your ancestors online.