Modern Tools for Your Family Tree Project

After reading this article you will get to know the three important ways of getting more information about your lineage or family tree even with your intention of using the genealogy search method. Start by looking for all the objects that might be in your possession which could carry anything from the past. Get a hold of all the items that can hold a clue to your family roots, a great way of retracing the family origins.

Some small papers and stickers will help you to make notes or to label the items you find to preserve the information about them, because such valuable information should not be kept in the memory lest they should fade away. Do this for all the pictures you find.

Photos are the ones that should be handled with utmost care, be labeled very well as they tend to revive many memories. That is why old pictures should have names, places and dates written on their stickers to preserve valuable information and be kept in proper order for when they might be required.

If you are able to interview a few old people, the better for all the information they keep with them can come out to be recorded properly. Do your best to prod their memories and capture it in the best way you can for future reference. Use the information you get for further discussions with the existing relatives so that all facts can be tied together and all the pieces to the puzzles connected together to form a watertight genealogy of your family.

Use stationery like notebooks, binders and staplers for the compilation of the information you get. Using the modern day software will be an added advantage in this world of modern technology. The work can be enjoyable but you can make it even easier by using the modern tools that are made for such tasks.

 

How to Make a Family Tree Chart – Keep it Simple

Would you like to find your family roots? Who wouldn’t? Well, that’s what Genealogy can help you to do. It is not enough for some individuals to only know about themselves from the limited world they see The very idea that your ancestor may have been a famous person, perhaps even royalty, or someone who was a hero from the ancient past is an exciting adventure and can at times determine who a person turns out to be in life. But beyond what you can get from your older relatives and what they can dig up in the attic, most people haven’t the vaguest idea how to research their family history.

There could be no better place for one to find information today than on the Internet. Happily there is no lack of information there. You can find anything on the internet – you just have to know how to locate it. But where on the Internet can you find such genealogical information about your family history? Well, have you heard of such web sites as Ansestoy.com, Rootsweb or My Heritage.com? These and other sites like them have been setup specifically to assist you in tracing your family roots accurately.

And what sort of data can you find on these genealogy web sites? On these sites you can look up marriage licenses, birth or death certificates, military records, census records, wills, or even old tax information. But don’t think for a moment that researching the history of your family is without its challenges. You’ll need to make special effort to identify who your relatives really are. Why the difficulty? Believe it or not, you will find a whole lot of people with names similar or identical to those of your past relatives. But take heart, you will be able to gather enough information to help you fill in the blanks and build a complete genealogical picture.

The more information you put into a search engine on these sites, the easier it will be to find you relatives. One great advantage of the Internet as a source of such information is that vast amounts of records have been uploaded to the above mentioned genealogy sites. These are records that the average person would not normally have access to. You can sometimes find records of your ancestor’s trip into America. The important thing to remember about these records is that they were handwritten at the time. It is possible for the names to be spelled incorrectly.

Another great way to do your family history research is with the aid of court records. Like the genealogy websites, you can find marriage licenses, birth or death certificates, or divorce records. You may also find these records through your state department. Often times these types of documents contains links to other information or will fill in the holes that you might need to complete a more accurate search on the internet. And, by the way, don’t overlook funeral homes and cemeteries in the towns where your relatives lived as these can be a source of pieces of historical information regarding you past relatives. In addition to death records, funeral homes may provide clues like the names of spouses, children, or parents.

Unlike some other hobby genealogy is a hobby that is rewarding for not only the person who is doing the work but to other family members and generations to come. After all if someone else is to continue the record you started to compile about your family, it is vital that you provide them with with the most accurate foundation possible. They’ll be glad you did. and you will be proud of a job well done.

Want to learn more about researching and constructing your own unique family tree? Expert and Author Tony Nelson invites you to access his Free 10-Part Mini Course [http://GenealogyFamilyTreeSite.info/sign-up] and discover step-by-step how to unearth the history of your ancestors even if you’ve never studied genealogy before.

Also for more great articles on genealogy visit his site at [http://GenealogyFamilyTreeSite.info]

“This article may be freely reprinted or distributed in its entirety in any e-zine, newsletter, blog or web site. The author’s name, bio and web site links must remain intact and be included with every reproduction.”

 

Family Tree Scrapbooking – The Digital Basics

Creating a family tree scrapbook is a fantastic way to display and share your family history. To create a digital scrapbook, one that can also be printed, there are a few things that any researcher should keep in mind when approaching a digital scrapbooking project.

-Equipment: Your family tree digital scrapbooking project will require the use of a few pieces of equipment; fortunately, this digital equipment can often be found already existing in your home. A scanner is going to be one of your most-used tools when scanning and uploading your family photographs, birth certificates, and other important documents. Scanning them not only provides a copy for use in your digital scrapbook, but also provides copy that cannot be damaged by the hands of time the same way that a photograph can be. In addition to a good scanner, a digital camera is another vital tool for your digital scrapbooking project. You may wish to take photographs of your relatives, as well as photographs of any family memorabilia that they may be in possession of. There are also numerous family heirlooms that could be included in a family scrapbook; for example, your grandmother’s wedding ring is a wonderful item to document with a photograph! A dresser that may be sitting in your grandfather’s home might have belonged to his grandfather; items with rich family history behind them should definitely be documented to be included within your digital family scrapbook.

-Restoration: One of the primary upsides to creating digital versions of your memorabilia is that you will have the ability to restore and touch up photographs and documents that may have become faded or damaged with time. There are a few programs available that will help you digitally enhance your materials. Whether it be removing a water stain from a photograph, or digitally replacing faded wording from a handwritten letter, you are sure to find the exact tool needed to restore your digital memorabilia to near pristine condition. While there are certainly expensive options in the way of restoration software, there are also many free or low cost options.

-Creativity: Scrapbooking is a wonderful hobby for those who are artistically inclined; digital scrapbooking will allow hobbyists to be just as creative by offering many of the same methods used to create paper scrapbooks. If you are using family tree scrapbooking software you will likely find that there are several available templates to work with. In addition to the templates built into your software, there are hundreds of free templates available on dozens of digital scrapbooking websites. These templates will, often, work without the use of specialized scrapbooking software which will then allow you to utilize any word processing software to create your digital scrapbook.

-Printing and Sharing: While one of the benefits to creating a digital scrapbook is that you can preserve the history of your family in a digital format that can be stored safely away from possible damage, there are many options for printing your scrapbook. There is no shortage of professional printing companies that will take your completed digital files and print a high quality book that will be suitable for presentation in your home. Another great advantage to digital scrapbooking is that your scrapbook can be easily shared with family and friends via the internet; whether you upload the scrapbook to a webpage, or simply provide them with a copy burned to a CD!

Jeff Sallee is a hopeless genealogy enthusiast and truly enjoys helping others get started in this satisfying pursuit. For more information on his ebook, no-cost mini-course or other family tree scrapbooking articles visit http://www.SecretsOfGenealogy.com where Jeff helps other enthusiasts who want to climb higher into the family tree.

 

Your Family Tree – Follow Your Indirect Ancestors – Here is Why

As a beginner in genealogy building your family tree, you are likely very excited as you find yet another ancestor of yours. Once you find that first greatgreatgrandfather and his family, you probably did one of those little happy jigs at success! It is so satisfying to find the right unusual names in the right places with the right children with the right ages. Very satisfying indeed. And then you go on to try to find the next generation back on both his and his wife’s line, and on it goes into the past.

But there can be wonderful benefits from taking the time to search through the siblings of your direct ancestors and their particular family lines. One of the obvious benefits is to ensure that you do have the correct ancestors, by going through sidelines, as they are called, to check on naming patterns, residences, occupations, and so on. You may find as I did that there were a gaggle of Grover Buell’s in a family line, and some of them are first cousins in the same communities. How can you be sure you have the correct ancestor unless you make certain there is only one person with the correct details? I had to check through a number of burials before being certain of my details.

Another benefit is to come across 2nd and 3rd cousins who are also doing research in one or more of your ancestor lines. I was lucky to find excellent information and sources from a much-further-apart cousin who happened to be searching for a detail. By going on message boards or writing to forums on family surname association websites, you may well find wonderful details and ancestor sources already researched by someone else. I am always happy to benefit from someone else’s research, as long as it is correctly sourced and cited. Getting photos of burial stones in far-off cemeteries from cousins will help to clarify who is married to whom at what time, and helps eliminate a same-name relative from your direct ancestor line.

From those relatives mentioned above, you may be lucky to receive copies of documents or photographs of your direct and indirect relatives from the later 1800s or more. My greatgrandfather’s sister’s photographs were wonderful boons, and such a delightful surprise when my 3rd cousin sent them to me. How they enrich my family tree! I pore over the photograph looking at the nose (hmm, different) and the ears/lobes (hmm, the same) and try to find similarities in current relatives or in my face. I was lucky enough to be able to fly to visit one 3rd cousin and meet with her, sharing information on our common family lines. Another 3rd cousin lives now in Paris… how tempting!

If you have several ancestors with fairly common first names as well as common surnames, you may find it helpful to go up as far as you can go, then go down through those collateral lines and then back up again to your brick wall. Sometimes, you may find by going through cousins that you find your greatgreatgrandfather’s sister’s marriage registration is listed online with her parents’ full names. Aha! You only found her married name through your great aunt’s stories. Now you have a very likely place to start your next round of research. You will have to verify that you do indeed have the correct person, of course. But these sideways searches can be very helpful.

Since some families in the 1700s and 1800s had 10-14 children or more, sometimes with several spouses, and a rather small number of first names tended to be used, it can be daunting when looking for a particular ancestor. Do you know how many George Terwilliger’s there are? Many! And John Treat’s? Again, many of those potential ancestors. I also found so many same-name Kuhn ancestors that I had to make sure I was in a direct line by going up and down sidelines to be certain. Siblings often named their children after either a parent or a sibling (or two). Then, since there could be as much as 20 years between the first child and the last child, the first child may have been having children a full generation older than his/her youngest sibling’s children. They may have exactly the same name, and by being about 20-25 years apart, it could be tempting to believe that they are a parent-child relationship, instead of first cousins. How can you tell if you do not do the collateral line research?

Your research skills will become very much improved as you learn to look for more than one document or record for each ancestor in your family tree. Census records, tax rolls, military records, history booklets, birth-marriage-death records, burial gravestones, and more – all help you become more certain of the accuracy of your ancestor lines. Remember as you search that you want to have high quality sources, such as documents which were generated at the time of the event. An example would be a church record of a marriage written at the time of the marriage and signed by the minister/priest in the church books. Look very carefully at all the clues you can find in any document or record you find, and you will be doing many happy jigs!

For more helpful information, check out http://www.rootsbasic.com for free articles, free newsletters, inexpensive booklet and practical forms, free online links and more on RootsBasic: Genealogy for Beginners.

Retired from the fields of individual rehabilitation and family counselling, Celia is excited to offer quality information, resources, and services for beginners in Genealogy. Check out other articles, newsletters, booklets, forms, online links and more at http://www.RootsBasic.com.

 

What is the Meaning of a Family Tree?

A family tree is basically a chart that is designed to represent the various family relationships in a structure that resembles a normal tree. It is usually used to track a person’s family history. However it is sometime used in the fields of social work, genealogy and medicine. In this form it is known as genograms.

The image of the tree was added to the genogram due to the inspiration provided by the medieval art of the Tree of Jesse. It was used to illustrate Christ’s Genealogy as a prophecy done by Isaiah.

The tree was then used outside the Bible for the first time, to represent the full family relationships of the classical Gods as featured in Genealogia deorum gentilium. It was made in the year 1360.

The genealogical data can be represented in a lot of formats when presented. You can present it as a pedigree chart or an ancestor chart. The features the oldest generations at its top and the newest generations at it bottom.

Usually the most common form of a family tree is an ancestry chart. It resembles a proper tree and is used to display the names of the ancestors of an individual. It will be much wider at the top than the bottom. Usually in such a individual will appear on the left and his or her ancestors will appear on the individual’s right hand side.

Then there is the descendant chart family tree, that is designed to depict all the descendants of an individual. This type of family tree is usually the narrowest at the top.

A family tree can feature a lot of themes. It can feature all the descendants related to a single figure as well as all of his or her known ancestors. It can also feature a lot of people with a particular surname.

Another popular theme is the one which features all the people who hold a certain office, such as the king of Germany. This usually relies on the dynastic marriages and is used to maintain the link between the various dynasties.

In short, a family tree is the ideal method for an individual to trace his or her ancestral roots to the first member of their family.

GDB Marketing Pvt. Ltd. launched family tree maker website.

 

How to Create a Family Tree Diagram

You may have seen some friends of yours with wonderfully made, artistic family trees which have captured your interest. Starting a documentation of your own family website is a wonderful hobby and will take up many idle hours. Not only this, you will have something unique and to be proud of once all that hard work is over.

Documenting your family website can take up a lot of your time. Not only do you have to research and contact your relatives quite a bit, but you also have to scan all the important documents related to their stories. In creating a genealogical history of your family, it is very important to stick to the facts more than to rely on memories alone. Often times, this leads to a lot of attic hunting and even trips to the local library to search for these among the library’s archives.

Once you have compiled all the important data such as full names, birth dates, marriage licenses and death certificates, then you are ready to organize it into a online family website. There are several methods in which you can create a family tree diagram. If you are creating this by hand, then it shall be really good for you. Not only will you feel twice as much pride when the family is completed, but you can also ensure the uniqueness of your family website.

First, you will need to draft out what you want the genealogical diagram to look like. If you wish, you can look at some sample family trees online before deciding on the style that you like best. Once you have decided this, you can map out several small drafts of the family trees, first with just the names of the relatives, then with all the information that the final diagram will have. You can do this on simple sheets of white paper, or even poster paper if your family is quite large.

When you have finalized the information and the style of your family tree diagram, then you can start drawing on the poster paper. Initially, you should focus more on getting the lay-out to look clean and balanced. Check also to make sure that you have added all the information that must be present before you start to decorate and style it. There is nothing worse than having completely decorated your family, only to find out that you’ve left something out.

Once you are sure that all the essential names and dates are written down, then feel free to embellish and add some style and shine to your family tree. For this step, you can recruit the help of several artistically inclined friends and family members. Another option is to bring all the information and data to a freelance graphic artist. There are graphic artists that specialize on the artistic embellishment of family trees. You can look it up in the local pages if you wish to watch your come alive under an artist’s hands, or you can search online to see someone’s portfolio, send your information, and wait for your professionally designed family website to arrive on your doorstep.

GDB Marketing Pvt. Ltd. launched family tree maker website. Create your online family tree and upload Family tree pictures.

 

Eleven Reasons You Should Learn Your Family Tree

Maybe you are like me, curled up on the couch with a nice warm blanket, watching another boring show on television. You have maybe a cup of tea or a southern comfort and coke sitting by your side that you occasionally sip.  The most intriguing thing that has happened to you in the past month is that there is a new odd sound coming from your car when you drive it.  You flip through the channels nothing grabs you; you absently pick up a magazine and start to read stories on people that have discovered their family trees.  Welcome to the world of genealogy, it is time to learn your family tree, so get ready to feel your heart beating faster and your imagination totally engaged.

What if you found out when you learn your family tree that your great, great grandfather was the president of the United States? Or that you come from a long line of slaves?  What if a past relative did something amazing that you would be proud to claim in your family history?  Pretty interesting don’t you think?  I’m not sure why things in our past get lost or sometimes even change; I just know that they do. But with diligence you can learn your family tree.

So now is the time to go hunting for buried treasure that only you have the map to.  Delve into all the scenarios that are about you and your family and enjoy.  Let’s look at what genealogy is:  Genealogy (which comes from the Greek words genea, meaning family and logos meaning knowledge) is the study of family lineages. Usually this is done by collecting names of family members (both living and dead) and looking for a link between them, based on evidence and documents. The results of these investigations are then used to learn your family tree.  Let us discuss the reasons you should learn your family tree.

You should learn your family tree because it is important for the following reasons:

1.    If you want to understand yourself better, you must understand where you came from and you can only do that if you learn your family tree.

2.    You can find lost relatives.

3.    Curiosity is hard to not follow.  People just want to know where they came from, who they are related to, how they got here.  This is especially true if they are adopted.

4.    Reconnect with your family.  Give them as a gift all the information you have found. You can even print it up as a genealogy book and hand it to them on Christmas morning.  Everyone wants to know where they came from and you would be the barer of this most wonderful news. If your relatives are like mine they are spread out across the whole world it seems.  Bring them together with your discoveries.

5.    Commonality in traits.  Find out why your little finger is naturally bent or why at 4 months old your son has dimples or your husband has such a practical joking side.  Traits do run in families so it is important to know them.

6.     Hereditary illnesses.  Now if you learn your family tree, this can be life saving.  Perhaps you find out that many in your family had a heart murmur or that breast cancer was prevalent in your history.  Would not knowing this change the way you do things today?  That little chest pain might be looked at earlier if you knew your family history.

7.    Puts your own problems into a new light when you realize the struggles and trials your ancestors went through.  These people had hardships and what made their DNA up now flows in your blood.  Draw on it for strength.

8.    You are making a keepsake and passing it down for future generations

9.    Bring the past into the present and revel in the fact that you are made up of history, good and bad.

10.    You may just find that someone in your past, hid money away in one shape or another.  I know of a man that researched his past and unbelievably it was found that a man way back in the genealogy left some money in a bank for the first descendant to claim and over a hundred years later, that descendant turned out to be this man.  He then claimed over 200 thousand dollars. 

11.    Knowing your family history may just give you purpose in your present life to walk a little taller or even to become more interesting as you now can talk of pretty neat stuff.  You could even inspire others to search their own trees for any loose coconuts.

There are two ways to research and learn your family tree: one is to do it yourself, this usually involves joining a genealogy service and the other is to hire someone with great knowledge and the ability to research and do it for you.  There are of course pros and cons to both of them.  If you do it yourself it will take time to learn your family tree, some people chase their history for 40 to 50 years and it is still not complete.

It takes patience and lots of it to learn your family tree as you will come up against a lot of stop signs and missed paths.  It might help to join a genealogical service to help if you are in a hurry to find the information.  Most of all it takes persistence and it can not go without saying that those that do the research themselves find it to be a most pleasant and satisfying hobby. 

When you hire someone to do it for you, you know you will get good and correct research. You know they can go places you cannot go or even know to go and you know the price up front.  We are of the now and do it generation so for most, hiring someone to find your family tree is the way to go and they find it gratifying.

Corinne Bridgewater delights in sharing her knowledge of how to learn your family history. Get your free 10 part mini series on “Learn your family history-How to find your family tree”. She invites you to learn more information on genealogy research by visiting her site at http://www.learnyourfamilyhistory.com

 

Your Family Tree – Interview Your Relatives For Family History Stories and Other Treasures

As you build your family tree, you may find that all you have are names, dates, and places along with a few documents to prove each detail. However, this simply gives you the bare bones of your line of descent from ancestors. To enrich the family history of your relatives and your ancestors, you will need more details and stories. Here are some ideas on how to find stories and other treasure which will give you more of a picture of your ancestors’ lives and times.

Start by looking at your basic family tree and identify several gaps or very limited information on individuals. For instance, you see that you know very little about your grandparents and their brothers and sisters. If you have their birth dates and birth places, where they lived when growing up, you could ask questions of any of the older living relatives. Not sure if they would be interested in answering your questions? You might find that relatives will be happy to cooperate and are interested in what you are doing. And, glad that someone else is doing this research!

At any time when relatives get together, use the opportunity to ask questions. Some of these questions may be about clarifying data you have: such as occupations, residence moves, immigration, engagements and marriages, burial places. But here are some other questions that could bring out more stories, and may encourage your relatives to bring out their old photo albums and other genealogy treasure!

Mail a list of some of the following questions for your relatives before you go to visit, or telephone them. Don’t overwhelm them with too many questions! Then, go over these and other questions with your Aunt Ethel or your Great-Uncle Hal over a cup of tea. You may find it helpful to bring a recorder as well as a few photos of the older relatives.

• Did Grandma and Grandpa ever talk about their engagement or wedding? Or about other relatives’ weddings?


• Do you remember if anyone in our family joined the military, fighting in WWI or WWII, or other battles?


• Did anyone in the family die in the battles? buried where? any medals given?


• Those who did not join the military, what did they do at home?


• Do you know why Grandma and Grandpa moved from Ireland to England, or when?


• Do you remember hearing how they travelled across Canada to BC in 1914?


• Who in the family has been in touch with any of the relatives who stayed in England?


• How did your parents and/or grandparents celebrate holidays or birthdays?


• What kinds of jobs did our grandparents (and/or their parents) do when they were young, when they were older?


• Did anyone in the family like to play pranks on others? or tell jokes? or love to tell stories?


• Do you know if anyone in the family loved to dance or sing, or play an instrument?


• What did they do in the evenings together? What card games or other things did they do?


• What was it like growing up in that time? What were the days like? the weekends? the holidays?


• I saw on the censuses that the family lived in one town for over 20 years – did they own property there?


• What do you remember about the area, the town?


• Where did the kids play, and what kinds of games did they like to play?


• What did your parents or grandparents die of – do you remember?


• Was anything special handed down from one person to another in the family?


• What did you and your best friends do during the days, the weekends, the summers?


• What do you remember about getting sick, about what your parents did about illnesses?


• Were there any funny sayings or things one parent said a lot that you remember?


• Do you know if anyone got divorced? and how that was done? how other relatives felt about that?

Have you found that one line of family relatives seem quite cool to the idea and not very helpful? Other researchers have found that one can get some cooperation by asking very politely for “corrections” to the family history and details, and deliberately make a few errors in dates! Sneaky, but effective!

Bring a few older photographs out of your photo albums, if you have any. You could also bring a 4 or 5 generation family sheet, with a few family group records as well, that they may be able to look at and fill in a few gaps or give you some stories. Sometimes it just takes a photograph and a question to start the details flowing. Happy searching!

Retired from the fields of individual rehabilitation and family counselling, Celia is excited to offer quality information, resources, and services for beginners in Genealogy. If you are a beginner, check out the RootsBasic booklet, at http://www.rootsbasic.com – an inexpensive guide to help you get started, including 16 practical forms to help keep you organized. FREE resources: articles, newsletters, online links and more on RootsBasic: Genealogy for Beginners.

 

What Exactly is a Family Tree and How You Can Create Your Own in One Afternoon

Family memories often fade with time, and the passing of family members takes precious personal memories and information that can never be recovered and our history fades. Each family member has a unique perspective on events and people. Remember and preserve the rich heritage of your family by starting your family tree now.

Family trees can be elaborate and take years of extensive research to complete. In fact, many individuals find it very hard to start tracing their family trees. But you don’t have to be an expert to make your own family tree. There is no set rule about how far back to trace your roots, although there are those that are so engrossed in the process they are working their way back to biblical days.

The tree is used to record a certain persons ancestors of more than one generation. It is up to you how far back and what is included in your personal genealogy tree. Starting your research will be easy because these are things you know. As you get deeper into your research you will need the help of your parents, aunts and uncles or others that have information to help round out the story of your life.

Starting with your personal information, always write full names and for married women, include their maiden name. Include birth date, birthplace, and if married, try to include the date/location of such marriage.

The next branches on the tree will belong to your parents. Write all of their important information just as you did yours. Make sure that you fill up all their vital statistics and that of close relatives. Work upwards by including your grandparents, as well as your great grandparents. Don’t forget to include any dates of death and burial places. Ask family members what they know about their respective parents or grandparents.

You can create your family tree in one afternoon it doesn’t have to take years, cost thousands of dollars or trace your roots back to the Egyptians. The most important thing is to get started and you can add to it as you go. You can include personal stories and special memories from each person or generation. Remember to include special things like news events and service in the armed forces.

Spark fun conversations and learn things you never knew about your own family history by involving your family. You can add as many new pages and information you want to include with the easy to use and fun to create downloadable book you’ll find at http://agatheringofmemories.info/.

 

5 Fast Facts on Genealogy & Family Tree Research

If you’ve ever thought about following your family tree back to figure out “where you came from,” then you’ve contemplated the very essence of genealogy. While who you’re related to is not always going to lead to some lost fortune awaiting you, there’s little doubt that it’s a treasure in itself to learn a bit about your parent’s parents, and their parents, and so on.

People trace their family tree and collect genealogy information for different reasons. Some folks take pleasure in learning they are kin to the Founding Fathers, while others discover they are “blue blood,” stemming from a line of royalty. In any event, whether it’s learning you’re related to a small town’s only doctor or the judge, people love to figure out who begat who.

The fantasy is the easy part, however. The simple fact of the matter is that very few people really have their bearings when it comes to embarking on the journey of figuring out where they came from. The internet has opened up a tremendous opportunity, but the cold, hard fact is that you’re still going to have to roll up your sleeves and use a little elbow grease.

If you don’t know how to sort through massive amounts of data, you can actually become buried in the genealogy information you find on the internet. There are an abundance of websites alone, and knowing where to begin can be its own challenge. Should you start with Ancestry.com? Or would you be better off going with Rootsweb or MyHeritage.com? Just having some guidance to get started can mean all the difference between a great success and a great failure.

In general, these types of websites (assuming you’re using the right one) can be helpful in conveniently locating useful records such as marriage licenses, birth & death certificates, census reports, wills that have been probates, someone’s military records, and sometimes even tax returns. Ironically, sometimes you will not have trouble getting genealogy information, but rather getting information that is actually pertinent to you and your family tree. There is an awful lot of repeated information as well, so you can quickly become buried in useless data. You might also be surprised to discover how many people have the same name. To make matters worse, keep in mind that you’ll be researching the family history for perhaps dozens of people… so the chance for confusion is only multiplied.

The most rewarding, and least frustrating, approach is to find an efficient way to land the biggest batch of useful genealogy information right off the bat. From there, you can proceed to fill in all the cracks. If you start off with a nice head start, it’s often motivating to dig deeper for the remaining information you’ll need which, admittedly, can sometimes be more challenging. You’ll also want to fully leverage websites to gain access to “local” records, since few people really have the time or money to travel throughout the country (or world) to sift through local records.

However, if you belong to a family that has settled an area for generations, you may actually find the local library or courthouse to be a veritable goldmine for you. Tapping into court documents, or state department records, for a given location can be extremely useful, since you’re not having to sift through volumes of people that are not related. Another tip to use for a family that has planted firm roots in a given area is to visit the local funeral home. Often times, especially in smaller towns, you’ll find staff working there who have been there a while. It’s not uncommon for them to really know a lot about “who’s who in the zoo!”

Once you get the hang of genealogy research, one of the best benefits is the way that it’s useful for so many people. You’ll be out there playing detective and discovering relevant information not only about yourself, but also about those related to your family tree. You may find that you enjoy putting your findings together in a genealogy portfolio, which will be a blessing to those in your family who may not have even had the time, resources, motivation or desire to accomplish what you’ve done. But they’ll nevertheless enjoy learning all you’ve found.

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Esmerelda Nightingale is a family history enthusiast and genealogy aficionado. Visit her genealogy & family tree website at http://www.mygenealogydepot.com today and get your mini-course free!