Find Your Family Tree – 5 Basic Steps to Begin Your Genealogy Search

How to locate your ancestors for a family tree.
Starting your genealogy search requires a few basic steps: charts such as a pedigree chart is helpful, also what you know of your family history and how deep do you want to dig into your ancestry.Knowing about your family history is such an intriguing and fascinating endeavor.
To find out if we have relatives who came through Ellis Island, what wars they may have fought in, were they in the forefront for workers rights and women’s rights.Now with the internet the information available is enormous. There are so much and so many places to find out about our family tree that it can be quite overwhelming.That is why it is good to have a strategy on how to get started.Below are five basic steps to help you with the process of making a family tree.Step 1: Knowledge of your family. The number one rule for genealogy research is begin with what you already know about your family and goes back from there.Start with birth dates and place of birth for yourself, your siblings, and your parents. Marriage dates and place, also if it applies any dates of death.Then the fun part begins. Start talking to your parents and relatives about their childhood and where they lived and went to school.You will find the first step requires the most basic of data. Birth, marriage and Death are the most important records.Step 2: Family tree charts and templates. These are available online and cost very little. They are a great help to keep all the information you are starting to get organized.A pedigree chart will start with one person. Put your name down and then the next line your parent’s names, then your grandparents and so on.There is space to put your basic information like birth and places.Family tree templates will show couples, with their birth, marriage dates. Also below, you will put each child for that couple. These chart and templates are a great way to fill in what you already know about your family.Step 3: Go through the family home and try to find what documents there might be. You could find old school yearbooks, funeral cards and scrapbooks with family memorabilia.Many times old, photo albums will have dates and names next to family pictures. Baby books with christening information.Put all this information in your pedigree chart and family tree template.When you find a source that can verify what documents you have already like birth and marriage records, make sure you write that source down in your records.Just because some of your charts or templates do not have a place for certain information your have gathered like a persons military service or occupations and schools they attended, be sure you keep track of all of it on a separate page.Because any information you learn will become quite useful in the results of making a family tree.Step 4: Find out what genealogy information you still need to find. You are just a beginner and you already have a very good handle on your basic family history.Check it over thoroughly and look for what may be missing. Are gaps between years you have not been able to fill in yet? Many times these gaps are easily to fill in.Do you have a birth date for a relative, but not parents? Alternatively, is a sibling’s place of birth missing? You know what day family members may celebrate an anniversary but do you know the year.A new genealogy researcher should try a narrow down a list of specific data they are interested in. Have you found the name of all your ancestors’ parents? Also important do you have locations of the cemeteries they were buried in.Try to make for yourself a goal of how much information you can find and document.Step 5: Finally, at the end you will want to find answers to the goals you have set for yourself.When looking for birth, death and marriage data from the late 1700′s to mid 1900′s, government resources are the best. From old census records to town halls, you will be able to get much of your information.The resources are endless for genealogy research. From old newspapers to tax records, property purchases and cemeteries to name a few.What makes this research so fascinating as you uncover one answer it will usually then come with another question to follow up.Making a family tree is always fun and very educational for you and your whole family.