i am reseaching my biological material grandfathers family....?

Question

my question is, i have information on his parents, but what side do i stick with? do i go for his mothers side or his fathers side? or both? or do i do one then the other? doing both at once right now is getting really confusing because it is already hard enough to do just on side. so i do his mom, then his mom's mom, then his mom's mom's mom, or how do i go about doing this?

Answer 1

Hey areservistwive,

You should do both eventually. Start with one side, and do what you can with it. If you get bored, or want to try the other go ahead. You can always come back. I hope you are using some Genealogy Software - it makes sense today, and you can easily see which branch needs work. On my tree, I try to go out evenly, but there are family mysteries that prevent that, so I go on to something more productive.

Answer 2

My "starting" point for research is always one person, and normally (for example) that would be me... since I know I am part of all my ancestors. That doesn't mean that you can't use another relative, such as the maternal grandfater, asn the root person.
There are 2 main types of visual charts that are common. The pedigree shows the direct ancestors of a person, in the normal tree format. Person 1 branches to the parents.. then the parents of those, so forth. Keeping that handy shows you the overall direction.
One important reason to not limit yourself, is pure geographical. You have grandma, for example... but keep in mind that both her parents got together at some point and locality. Since families didn't move as much then.. expect that it is likely for both sides of the family to be in the neighborhood. So.. when you are finding marriage records for a certain area, you have it "up" and it makes sense to pull all the information you can from that.
No one starting research ever imagines all the data that will accumlate. Even if you don't use a program, you can still keep records in 3 ring binders, filing them alphabetically. That way, when you want to know about the Jones family, you don't have to stop and remember which branch the Jones connect to.
At the point in time when you have so much that it won't go in one binder, then it can be divided into 2 binders by "his" side or "her" side.
As long as I know I can locate the papers and notes, I can shift easily. Sometimes the info just pours in on one family, and I tend to "run" with wherever it takes me, since it is fresh.
Have fun...

Answer 3

Genealogy is like doing a jigsaw puzzle, except there are no "edge" pieces. As soon as you fit one piece into the puzzle, you get two more pieces. As you discovered, as soon as you find someone, you wonder who were his/her parents.

I'd suggest doing the easy one first, which means the ones in the USA if you are in the USA, or the ones in the Australia if you are in Australia, etc. Follow each line until you get t the immigrant ancestor and then do the next line.

If you are in the UK, the Immigrant Ancestor may have come over with William the Conqueror, so this strategy won't work.

You'll hit dead ends; we all do. You'll make discoveries that will later turn out to be false; we all do that, too.

Pick a plan that works for you. There are arguments for and against all of them. The two that most people use depend on a pedigree chart.

Plan 1 is follow the "top" line - the base person's father, his father, etc - as far as you can, then come back down the tree until you get to someone whose parents you don't have, and trace them as far as you can, etc.

Plan 2 is to do "all" of the base person's parents, then all the grandparents, then all the great-grandparents, etc.