The first step in successful genealogy research is to get started! Many people say they do not have time for family history research, but it does not have to take much time at all. With the numerous on-line databases available today, genealogical research has been streamlined and made significantly more efficient, but before you hit the Internet, do some ancestor research with the living, breathing resources you already have.
Put a Face on Your Family Research
Sit down with your parents and grandparents and ask them questions to start your ancestry research and give you a jumping-off point. Here are some sample questions to ask:
- What are/were your parents' and grandparents' names?
- What birth and death dates can you remember? Do you remember the places they occurred?
- Do you know where any family members are buried?
- When and where were you married? What about your parents? Grandparents?
- What are the birth/death/marriage dates and names of your children?
- Do you have any of this information about your aunts and uncles?
- Where did you grow up?
- What was it like when you were young?
- What are some of your favorite memories?
- What is the name of your oldest living relative? Where can I find him or her?
Plan to visit this relative as soon as you can. You will be able to do an amazing amount of genealogy background research and add branches to your family tree through talking to your living relatives.
When you work on research with living relatives, be sure you take copious notes and also record the interviews with audio or video tapes. Have them wear a lapel microphone so you get a good recording and so you do not have to hold a microphone in their faces. These interviews will be priceless in years to come, not to mention an excellent beginning for your family history research.
These face-to-face meetings breathe life into your research and can give you quite a bit of momentum in your genealogy search. You will soon discover you can find interesting histories for many of your ancestors through your genealogy and family research.
Work Backwards
As fun as it may be to use your genealogical research to figure out if you are related to royalty or to verify old family legends, trying to take a famous figure and follow his or her descendants down the line to you is a long and tedious method of ancestor research. Instead, take the information you gathered from your living relatives and work backward, searching for ancestors and their stories. You will be amazed at the exciting stories you will find using this historical research method.
Get Organized
Before you get too far into your genealogy, start a system of organization. If you don't, you will soon end up covered in a mountain of historical papers. No matter how interesting the papers, the mountain can be too hard to climb.
Take a three ring binder with dividers with you whenever you go to do your family research. Keep careful records of everything you find — and everything you do not find. You will be able to save yourself time later if you record a dead-end name and database combination.
Fill in Your Family Tree
As you work on your genealogy and find new names and new information, fill it all into a master family tree and watch it grow!
D. Blair Thompson