STARTING YOUR FAMILY TREE - STEP 1

Post date: Dec 30, 2014 8:38:54 PM

This first step in researching your family history may seem fairly obvious. Start by writing down what you know about your family and about your ancestors and your cousins, including the relationships through which you are connected to them ; Stick with what you know to be fact. Ignore any family rumors that you have Native American ancestry, or that you are supposedly related to __________ (fill in the blank with your favorite famous historical character).

Collect photographs and documents. These will likely help you to recall names and dates, plus they will be useful additions to your tree.

For this step, I find it to be helpful to either sketch out a tree on paper while compiling my information, or to use a genealogy program or website that will enable you to compile the information about your family within the structure of a tree. A genealogy website will also allow you to build and to share your free tree with others (if so desired). I use a website that enables me to maintain a private tree, and that enables me to choose those with whom I will share the tree.

If you choose to use genealogy software or a genealogy website on which to maintain your tree, it is important to choose one that will enable you to keep track of the source of each piece of information that you add to your tree. Tracking the source of each piece of information is less important for this step than it will become in later steps, and in the future.

You should also add vital records and other documents, pictures, and stories or anecdotes to individuals in your tree.

There are a large number of websites that offer the ability to build a family tree, but many of these do not allow you to only selectively share your tree. I strongly suggest that you avoid those sites. I mention this because you, and other members of your family, may not be particularly comfortable with the idea that, by publicly publishing your tree, you are broadcasting to everyone with a computer, smartphone, or tablet, information about your date of birth, mother’s maiden name and other personal information.

It is good practice to use only maiden names (as opposed to married surnames, or maiden and married surnames) for females. I find that this helps to avoid confusion, and, as you work backward in time, it is helpful to focus on the maiden name. You can also avoid having to change the name of a female in your tree once you discover who she married. For this reason, and because of the following warning, I am personally not a fan of sites like geni.com. Trees on such sites have a propensity to use married names for females, though occasionally they contain an inconsistent mix of married and maiden names.

WARNING:

As much as this first step only involves what YOU know, it is worth mentioning that you should avoid blindly accepting information contained these publicly published trees. The information contained in those trees is usually non-sourced (they do not identify the source of the information), so there is no way to verify the accuracy of the information contained in those trees without doing the research to find the relevant records. Furthermore, once you do the research, you are likely to find that much of the information contained within those trees, once you are further than 2 or 3 generations from the person who published the tree, is inaccurate and incorrect. Incorporating information (even information with source attributes) from trees published by amateur researchers may provide you with a very nice looking family tree, probably with connections to various famous people, but you are also likely end up with a tree filled with people with whom you are not actually related. For further reading on this point, see: http://www.ancestorsandcousins.com/Posts/makesureyourgenealogyfactsarecorrect.

Please feel free to contact me at mail@ancestorsandcousins.com with any questions.

Watch this space for step 2, coming soon.