How can I conduct genealogy research and then create a family tree?

Question

Here's the scoop: I need to conduct genealogy research for an academic project, and create a detailed report about my family and their roots and highlight it with a family tree. How do I go about doing it? How do I begin? What are some good websites? Other sources? This is not only intellectually interesting, but its for a project grade (40%). Please help me. Thank you in advance. :)

Answer 1

The best place to begin researching your family tree is with your very own family. Get a note book and write down everything that you know about yourself and your siblings. Include dates and places of birth, marriage and if applicable death dates and places of interment. As soon as you have all that, move back a generation to your parents. Once you have all of that, move back to your grandparents and keep going until you run stuck. Once you have written down everything you know, talk to your family members. Sometimes even your siblings know more than you do, but usually if you talk to your parents or grandparents they can go a generation or two further than you can simply because they are a generation or two older than you.

One thing I should mention to you since you are a new genealogist is to document EVERYTHING! This will save you so much work later. If you get a date from Grandma's bible, simply document that information. If you can get in the practice of doing this from the beginning, you will avoid making the big mistake that most of us genealogists made while we were starting out. Think about it... if you have 50 people in your family tree, you might be able to keep this information "in your head", but what happens when this number rises to 500 or 50,000? After a while genealogy gets in your blood and 50,000 people is not and unfeasible number.

What happens next is up to you. What are you interested in? Would you like to know who all of your great great grandparents are? Are you interested in a particular surname? Are you trying to prove that you are related to someone famous? Only you know the answer to these questions? Once you've decided which avenue you want to explore you can continue. There are many records out there that genealogists use. Many of them are free, but there are others that are by subscription.

One thing I need to mention is that to trace your genealogy right, it is going to cost you, whether it be for a subscription to a genealogy site, paying for vital records, making copies of documentation, buying gas to visit libraries or cemeteries, but these are such worthwhile expenditures. The nice thing is that it is not money you spend all at one time. Many of my roots came from Michigan so everytime I go up there for a visit, I carve out time to got to the library or to the cemetery etc.

There are many people on this forum who are avid genealogists who have never paid for a membership to ancestry; however, I have found it invaluable. You might want to visit ancestry because they do have some free areas on their site. I live next to a branch of the National Archives and they have every census record in existence. If you start out looking up people in the census using the microfilms, there is a process you must follow that requires you to look at two microfilms before you find the census page of the family that you need. This is very time consuming and if you are looking up a family member with a name that is usually spelled wrong, there is no guarantee that you will find it. The beauty of having a membership to ancestry is that they have the censuses fully indexed meaning you can type in a name and pull it right up without looking on two microfilm rolls. Further, you can manipulate spellings of the name and the places you are searching in a single search. This alone has made Ancestry worth the money I have spent for a subscription. Many times Ancestry runs specials and I pay under $100.00 per year so if you divide that by 12, the expense is less than a subscription to Netflix or just about anything else. Ancestry also offers Military records, obituaries, marriage records, birth and death indexes and much much more.

With that said, there are also a lot of free resources. I have over 500 links to free genealogy records that I myself have found online. Here are some that can help just about everyone.

http://www.familysearch.org/eng/search/f... This is the webpage to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

http://searches.rootsweb.com/
This is a list of popular searchable databases on Rootsweb. There is a link to the Social Security Death index, as well as death records for California, Kentucky, Maine, and Texas. There are some international databases included too.

http://www.ellisisland.org/
If you are from the United States and know that you have ancestors that immigrated from other countries, there is a chance that Ellis Islands website could help you. You can actually look at the ships manifests on this site. It is so cool! You could even get information like how much money was in your great grandfathers pocket when he came over.

Then there are the message boards at both Ancestry and Rootsweb. They have boards for surnames, counties, States, and countries. This would be a great place to post information you already know about family members and attempt to build on it. It is always wise not to post information on living family members.

http://boards.ancestry.com/default.aspx....
http://genforum.genealogy.com/

You can also look at many of the existing trees out there to see if anybody has created one including members or your families. Sometimes you get lucky, but if you find one out there, I would recommend researching the information yourself before including it in your tree.

http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/..........
http://www.gencircles.com/

After you get so far, you may want to try to input your information into a family tree program. There are several commercially available; however, there are a few that you can download for free off of the internet. PAF (Personal Ancestry File) is a very respectable program that you can download at

http://www.ldscatalog.com/webapp/wcs/sto...

There are several different language versions available. Most programs have places for you to document your sources and have a file format called GEDCOM making it easy to share your tree with people using a different genealogy program or easy for you to change programs without reentering all of your information.

So, as you can see from my answer... there is a whole lot to learn about genealogy and finding resources. I learned just by jumping in and doing it. Once you get out in the genealogy community you will see that there are a lot of people eager to help you in any way they can. Have I made mistakes along the way? You bet... who hasn't? You will find though that the rewards are numerous and that it can get quite addicting.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me through my profile. Good luck!

Answer 2

Hey Maria,

Start with yourself. Your birth certificate, and that will show you how Vital Records work. It says your parents names, their ages when you were born, and their birth locations. That is a document that proves your tie to your parents. Now, get their Birth Certificates, Marriage Certificates and it will show your Grandparents. That is the basic proof of Genealogy, Vital Records. Each subsequent generation requires proof, and that proof takes the form of Vital and secondary records. Vital records include Birth, Marriage, Death, Wills, Probate, Deeds and a few others like adoption, or name change, immigration, naturalization.

Secondary records include things like Obituaries - since they are just in the News Paper, they are not attested to by a Notary Public.

To get the information for your tree, interview all of your living ancestors: Parents; Grandparents; Aunts; Uncles; etc. and use a systematic interview process. See the Pedigree charts below (you can print them). That will keep you on track with your questions during interviews.

The oral information is valuable, but remember you must eventually prove that.

Then enter all the information into a Genealogy Software Package. There is a free one available at Family Search.com, or you can spend the $30.00 for an excellent one. This will give you a place to organize your information, and the software will have options for printing the tree that will satisfy the toughest genealogy class. And, you will have a permanent legacy to pass on to your future family members (kids, nephews, nieces, etc.).

So, now you want to look for vital records to support the claims made during interviews of Uncle Harry and Aunt Mildred that "so n so" is your 5th great grandfather. You entered all the relationships, but you want to prove each, and store the proof with the Family Tree.

For each person attempt to get Vital Records - you may need to do that later, and do the Family Tree exercise for now.

Some good tools from the internet are:
Family Search.com
Ellis Island.com
GENFORUM.com
and hundreds of others, which you can find by simply looking.

When you get your software you might get some FREE time on the PAY sites. BE SURE TO STOP the subscription prior to the FREE period ending, (unless you really need the service and can afford to pay for it). Genealogy.com has trees sitting there waiting for you to discover that they have some of your Family Tree Branches all put together for you already. Cool stuff, but caution, most of them are not proven.

Anyway, take the advice of the other answerers here too, most of them really know this field.

Remember that when you get stuck, you can come back here and ask a specific question. The last site is an education site. Read a lot about this topic. You will find it is a life time hobby, or one can make a profession out of it.

Answer 3

Get a No Cost Background Check Scan at https://bitly.im/aNHr1

Its a sensible way to start. The site allows you to do a no cost scan simply to find out if any sort of data is in existence. A smaller analysis is done without cost. To get a detailed report its a modest payment.

You may not realize how many good reasons there are to try and find out more about the people around you. After all, whether you're talking about new friends, employees, doctors, caretakers for elderly family members, or even significant others, you, as a citizen, have a right to know whether the people you surround yourself with are who they say they are. This goes double in any situation that involves your children, which not only includes teachers and babysitters, but also scout masters, little league coaches and others. Bottom line, if you want to find out more about someone, you should perform a background check.

Answer 4

All of these are really great answers so I'll just ad a couple of things.
1. Don't believe everything you find on the net. Research is only as good as the researcher. That's why it's important to document (birth, death and marriage certificates) Headstones work too but they can be wrong.

2. I suggest that you invest in a book called "unpuzzling your past". Your local library may even have it. It will take you step by step.

3. You will run into brick walls. Just move to another line and then come back. Its a great hobby but expensive.

If you're really not into it and its just a project then you won't do well. You have to be willing to put in a lot of hours of REAL research in order to present a true and accurate picture of your roots. Who knows you might just get hooked once you start.

Good luck and happy hunting.

Answer 5

Try http://www.myheritage.com

You'll need to sign up, but it's completely free as far as I know. The only reason I use it is because you can upload your photo and see what celeb you look like, but you can also create a family tree.