Researching Your Family Tree

Start with you and then go to your parents. Get the names of their parents, you probably will already know that, but then get their grandparents, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, nieces, nephews and cousins.

Try to get as much information from your living relatives before you really start digging. I found it was easier to start with one parent and do that side of the tree first. Get a blank tree chart to start recording your findings. You can find these free online.

Going online to genealogy forums is a great value. You may find other family members that you didn't know about are also researching your family tree. To find the forums just go to Google and type in something like 'family tree forums' or 'genealogy forums'.

When you get to the forums and type in your last name you will probably be amazed at all the people there looking for that same surname. Even if you think your last name is rare I bet it will be there. Don't get too excited though, not all of them will be kin to you.

Now that you have a list of names a mile long you can start looking for records. This is where the real fun begins.

Records to include are birth certificates, marriage certificates, military records, wills, family Bibles, cemeteries, census records, church, court records, land records, deeds, local histories, military records, newspapers, obituaries, photos, vital statistics, wills and other genealogy records.

Some of these records your family may have in their possession. Of course you would just copy and give them back. Others you can check online. Birth and death records can usually be ordered from the state the person was born in.

There are numerous websites where you can look up some census records for free or have someone do that for you. You can buy memberships at some sites to get access to all available census records. There is a world of information out there, some are free, others aren't.

When you find a census record and see your relatives name in handwriting, you get a sense of accomplishment. It's those things that keep you hunting and looking for more. The more you find, the more you want to find.

When you first start researching your family tree, you have no idea how many papers and pictures you will end up with all over the place. I bought a genealogy program for my computer designed to compile all of that information. Everything became organized in one nice little neat place. I could put pictures and copies of documents in the program.

If I clicked on a button I could go online and the program would search for any names associated with the ones I already had listed. It would place 5 stars next to the names where it found the closest matches. I could then click on a name and the program would take me somewhere on the web where more information could be found about that person. A lot of my relatives were found that way.

There are so many helpful programs out there that make researching your family tree a lot easier. The best thing to do is just get going, but be forewarned, once you start you won't be able to stop. It is a very addicting but rewarding hobby.