Genealogy, Genealogist and Family History, Part 1

One of the most important things to remember while doing genealogy is to begin with yourself. You must remember you are tracing your linage. You are researching in reverse, from you on back generations and generations. Write down your full name, parents, and your birth date, place of birth, your occupation and interests. If you are married take down all your spouse's information just as you would your own and don't forget your children. Now you have started off on the right foot.

Many genealogists make the mistake of trying to start with their parents or grandparents and lose their way quickly. If you want to do it right then you must always begin with yourself, then your parents and aunts and uncles and cousins. I think you are getting the picture now.

All this information is recorded on what is called a family group sheet. This is an important tool in the genealogist work. A family group sheet is made up for each family member as well as for brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles and so forth.

Click on the picture of the family group sheet above or Click Here and it will take you to a site you can download a free family group sheet to help you get started.

Don't be afraid to ask questions of those surviving relatives. Many beginning genealogist forget to do this or don't do it soon enough. It is an important part of genealogy. You can't ask them after they are gone and most of these surviving relatives are more than willing to share information with you and their experiences and family stories. Your surviving relatives hold a wealth of information and can be the key to unlocking more doors. Don't wait because they won't be on this earth forever. They can tell you things that you would have never known if you didn't ask. Many have family stories about long gone relatives that will help make it more personalized. Make sure you write all this information down because it is very important. You want more than just names and dates. You want the stories that go with those names and faces from your history. This is an important part of your genealogical work and your genealogy.

Again a lot of genealogist forget to document and show the sources of their research. Documentation is another very important part of genealogy and your research as a genealogist. You can never gather to much information or sources and documentation. If you got that information from your great Aunt Sallie then you need to record that as the source. If you got it from a record, record that also as another source to back up your research. You don't want another relative to ask "Where did you get that information?" and you can't remember. This is why it is so important that you must document your genealogy to make your research more creditable. There is a lot of misinformation out there, and it is important that you double check any information you find recorded on the internet which is not documented. First off contact the genealogist's who has the information to find out where the information came from and if she can't tell you or is not sure where she got the information from, then you need to do the research yourself to make sure it is accurate and not just go by their word. It's easy to copy someone else's findings, without documentation, which is what many of these genealogists do. You never know if the name was misspelled somewhere down the line or the birth date was recorded wrong by mistake. So many times this can happen so it is important to check out the sources to get it right the first time. I can't stress enough how important documentation and sources are in genealogy and by the genealogist so make sure you start out doing it right.

Well so you can organize and combine all this new found material you will probably want to get some genealogy software. I personally have always used Family Tree Maker, but there are other free genealogy software out there. I can't really tell you what is good and what is not, but here is a link to Cyndi's List which has a list of different genealogy software.

Like I said I have always used Family Tree Maker and it's is the most widely used genealogy software out there and I've never had a problem with it. It can now be purchased through Ancestry.com (just click on the link provided) and you can purchase it at different price points depending how many days of free ancestry.com you want with that purchase.