How to Get Started on Your Ancestry

Are you curious about your family history, where your ancestors lived, what they did? You can gain knowledge of history through learning about your family. Ancestors may have lived at the time of the Salem witch trials, founded New England towns, or been prominent leaders of communities.

You will be amazed at the interesting times in which your ancestors lived and be awed by the hardships they overcame. A genealogist can help you in your search.

Before you seek out a genealogist to help you with your ancestral tree, find out as much as you can from your family through talking to relatives and such things as family Bibles that have entries for births, deaths, and marriages. Find out if anyone in the family has done any previous research on your family tree, and talk to that person. If he/she is deceased, find out from another family member what happened to that research.

Talk with older members of your family about their memories of earlier generations of your family. Ask them for any dates, places, or maiden names that they remember.

Every family has little stories that are passed down that, though somewhat changed through the years, have some kernels of truth. A genealogist will help you to try to verify those clues.

After you have exhausted your search, turn to a genealogist and family researcher, such as myself, to help you research other members of your family tree through the information you have discovered. To begin your family history, a genealogist begins with you and would lay the foundation by recording all the information about you and your siblings.

A genealogist would then ask for the names of your parents and where they were born or married, and, if deceased, where they died. From there, a researcher works backward, generation by generation.

Information would be researched through primary source documents, such as birth, baptism, marriage, and death certificates, and other information you might have in your possession, such as obituary notices from newspapers, diplomas, wills and probate records, funeral memorial cards, and photographs.

A genealogist would also look at other sources, such as town history books, family histories, church records, military records, census records, immigration lists, ship passenger lists, cemetery records, and naturalization records, among others.

Information would also be collected through computer research through genealogical organizations and by on-site research at genealogical libraries, town halls and state and historical society libraries.