Where do I start?

[macwilkin]

You might take a look at your local library for books on getting started.

To further gilmore's suggestion here, check with your local public library to see if they have a genealogical department; many times genealogy librarians offer free "how-to" classes, including beginning genealogy. Also check with your local historical/genealogical society.

Our local genealogy department provides a good handout on beginning family research:

http://thelibrary.org/lochist/basicgen.cfm

Good luck, and happy hunting!

Todd

[ScottEPooh]

Thanks gang! I know my grandma did do some research before she passed away, so I am now on a quest through the family (joy...) to try and locate what she has done, which will hopefully give me a springboard into that. Also, who do you follow? I mean, just tracing back my grandparents parents (that's a mouthful) yields 8 people, and that's just back a couple of generations. Also, do you track "extended" family as well? This is starting to sound like an overwhelming quest!

[jordanjm]

I would also checkout familysearch.org it is the Mormon church website, and any of their family history libraries would be good too. They can order microfilm from the main library in Salt Lake City, so you can get access to all of those files. They have helped me to track my McGilvray line back to 1795.

[Oldhiker]

yes check the peripheal families, often families migrated in packs for generations. You might run into a genealogy junkie in a cousins familyand have details on your family.

census records
land records
tax records
marriage,birth & death records
church records

ignore spelling inconsistencies, even simple names get changed. The people were not very literate in the past and the record keepers were often different nationalites who guessed at spelling of foreign languages.,

After you get started keep an open mind on DNA testing, it is a tool to help prove or disprove your paper trail. it does not replace the paper trail.

good luck and remember to study the history in the area your families lived, it helps bring life into the black & white of the dates you gather. I can visualize some of my relatives based on the details I have learned

[Big Paul]

1. Purchase family tree maker type software. Makes life a lot easier!
2. Talk to the older members of your family. They are priceless!
3. Document EVERYTHING!
4. Don't take other people's info as fact. Do you own work, when ever possible.
5. Have blast!

http://genforum.genealogy.com/ is a good site as well.

[Cawdorian]

Family Tree Maker V. 16 is a good family tree software, you can find this program at Staples, Best Buy or similar stores. The Deluxe edition sells for $69.95 at Best Buy. A free nine month subscription to www.ancestry.com comes with the software. www.rootsweb.com is a free site and has quite a few search and information display options. Ancestry.com gives you access to census records and many other types of records, they have copied the original copies of the census and other records. It is pretty cool.

The best place to start is sit down with a pencil and paper or a recorder and talk with one or more of your oldest relatives, get as much information as you can from them including the maiden names of the females who married into the families. You can use this information to begin your research on Rootsweb.com. With the names of both marriage partners, their parent's names etc. you will be able to find any matches on the site easily, you do have to bring up one name to start and then use the sort option at the bottom of the page to refine your search. You need to get back to your great or great great grandparents, this will make it easier as you will have eight or sixteen sets of names to work with.

If you do find some matches on Rootsweb, the poster's e-mail address is shown, you can correspond with the person who posted the information, most people are very happy to share family with cousins. You may have some information they need. See if you can find somone in your family who has done some prior research on your family, they can give you a good start. If you have a famous ancestor try looking up their family information on Google, this can give you some direction or ideas about other families who were related to them and you.

As Old Hiker notes try exploring the lines of your uncles and aunts, great uncles etc. Often you will find familes back in the 1800's who lived in rural areas, in some of these cases many of the sons married the daughters of the families on the next farm or vice versa, if you can find one of these situations in your family, you will most likely find a gold mine of information from these overlapping family lines. I have found situations in my family where there was a lot of intermarriage between the children of three or four families in an area, the information you can dig out of some of these situations is huge.

Happy Hunting, there is no cure for an addiction to genealogy, it's like kilts, the only thing you can do is feed it.

Added note, if you are aware of revolutionary soldiers or civil war soldiers in your family you can often find copies or transcriptions of their pension records on the net.

[gilmore]

Thanks gang! I know my grandma did do some research before she passed away, so I am now on a quest through the family (joy...) to try and locate what she has done, which will hopefully give me a springboard into that. Also, who do you follow? I mean, just tracing back my grandparents parents (that's a mouthful) yields 8 people, and that's just back a couple of generations. Also, do you track "extended" family as well? This is starting to sound like an overwhelming quest!

Yes, you can track all of them, and yes, it is overwhelming. Every generation further back you go raises twice as many questions as it answers. It's something people do for decades, not weeks.

[gilmore]

I would also checkout familysearch.org it is the Mormon church website, and any of their family history libraries would be good too. They can order microfilm from the main library in Salt Lake City, so you can get access to all of those files. They have helped me to track my McGilvray line back to 1795.

While the LDS records MAY be a good place to start, they are HIGHLY unreliable. EVERYTHING you come across there MUST be verified by at least 2other sources, and often that means the incorrect source that familysearch.org got its information from, and a source with the correct info.

I have watched Mormons at work. It's often bored teenagers doing their religious duty as quickly as possible in order to get out of there and on to something else that they find more pleasant.

I have a cousin who says that he never accepts information until he can at least hold the original document in his hands. And sometimes, as in the US census records, even that is not always correct.