How To Find Your Family History With Minimal Information

The one question that always comes up is how do I begin my search for ancestors?  What websites do I go to?

The first thing you can do is interview all your older relatives.  The eldest is the best to start with.  Ask them about their parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents.  Ask about birth days, death days, maiden names, nicknames, cities and counties they lived in or were born in.  Write it down or record it.  Ask about occupations, divorces, and baptisms.  Ask about addresses they remember.  Ask to look at their old pictures and copy names that may be written on the backs of the photos.  Questions and answers are key.  Genealogy begins with oral histories.  This is the prelude to building your family tree.

You can create simple family trees with software for your computer.  The file of your family tree can be saved as a Gedcom file.  There are also free websites such as Tribalpages.com, Geni.com, Ancestry.com, and FamilySearch.org.  some of the free sites have a paid membership to access more functions for researching records and to collaborate with others who have common ancestors or relatives.  Familysearch.org is offered by the Latter Day Saints and has a lot of free documentation available.

Make sure to always cite your sources.  It is important not to copy someone else's family tree, unless they have documentation of where they got their information.  Sometimes, new genealogists get excited to add an ancestors based off someone else's family tree, but the family tree can be in error.  So, it is always best to have a well researched tree that has documentation of where the information came from, such as death records, military records, birth certificates, baptisms, census records, etcetera.

When doing your research, remember that many people were illiterate or that people may have misspellings of their names.  For instance, some women have been born as Martha, but used Patsy as a name as well at Matty, or misspelled as Marta.  It happened in surnames as well.  Many people anglicized their names, such as Willett from the French spelling Ouellette.  Be open to looking for phonetic spellings and possible nicknames.

Last, but not least, remember that women have had affairs throughout history, and that ancestry DNA tests are also more accurate than the above information, when it comes to your ancestry.  Do not be discouraged if you have been told you were French on both sides, but have fairly recent Irish heritage according to your DNA.  Many people assimilated into other cultures as well as had affairs.

Once you get started on your genealogy, it becomes a never-ending story and hobby.  It's a great gift for your family as well.