Planting Your Family Tree

Getting Started on your Family History

Planting a Family Tree

This article is written to assist Family History Consultants and private individuals just starting their family research. It consists of several steps and links to helpful websites for the research.

1. Gather information. Write down your name as it would appear on your birth certificate, your birth date and place, your marriage date and place, including the county or province. If you do not know the county, it can be found by doing a county search on www.rootsweb.com. Do the same for your spouse, your parents and your grandparents. 2. Enter information into a genealogical data program. There are many excellent genealogical database programs available for varying prices. Many will offer a free trial so you can decide which will suit you. There are at least two programs offered for free. The first and most popular is Personal Ancestral File from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It can be downloaded from www.familysearch.org. It is perhaps the best option for beginning researchers. Another free program is Legacy Standard version. A paid for version is also offered with more options, but the free version is fully functional and can be used indefinitely. It can be downloaded at www.legacyfamilytree.com/Download.asp. I use the paid for version of this program. It has excellent documentation features for recording sources. There are help files in the programs that can show you how to enter data into the programs. Personal Ancestral File or PAF has a free users guide that can be downloaded from the same website as the program. Once you have entered your personal information as suggested, you can start filling in blanks. 3. A good site for getting the feel of your family tree is www.houseofnames.com. Enter your surname (last name or family name) and it will try to find a history of that surname. It may also find a coat of arms or other interesting information about the name. Remember that a coat of arms belongs only to the person to whom it was given. Its value to you is that it is part of your history. Also, you may not be directly related to the person whose coat of arms is shown on the website. That can only be determined through research. 4. Another good website is www.dmarie.com. This website can give you a time capsule of what was happening in the world at a particular date. Try entering your birth date and that of your spouse and parents and grandparents. 5. www.rootsweb.com has several helpful features and you can spend quite a bit of time gathering information from this website. Not only can you find a particular county for a location, you have access to the social security death index. The information in this index can show you where to write for information of deceased social security recipients. Forms are available to send for the information for a fee. The index shows the name of the cardholder at death, the place of death and the place of issuance of the card and number. You can also access the U.S. death index on this site. Another feature is the Worldconnect. It is a gigantic website of genealogical data submitted by researchers all over the world. A vast amount of data can be accumulated in a short time from this. However, the data is only as good as the researcher and must be verified. You should do a Worldconnect search for all the names you know. 6. Obtain vital records. Documentation is essential in genealogical research. You can not remember every place you obtain data. It is important for your own record keeping as well as for those who might need that information from you. Be very particular about keeping good source information. Write everything down. You can do a web search using any popular web search engine such as www.yahoo.com or www.google.com to find websites for each area of your research to obtain vital records. For example: if you are searching for vital records in California, a search will show that you can obtain forms for purchasing birth, death and marriage records from www.vitalsearch-ca.com. Each state or county may have varying information available. But certificates should be available for a small fee from each area. You should try to obtain a legal certificate for each person in your tree to verify birth, marriage and death information. Adoption information varies greatly from state to state. 7. Continuing research. There are a number of websites that are among the most used by researchers. www.familysearch.org has several useful features. You should check the Family History Catalog for available publications on localities and surnames. Most of the information is available on microfilm for a small rental fee. The only catch is that you must view the film at a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Family History Center. There is a list of centers on the website. Most areas have one available. The 1880 census is fully indexed and available on the website. It is perhaps the first really useful census with several types of information available. You should search of each of your relatives that was living in 1880. The IGI (International Genealogical Index) is also useful for discovering family relationships. The Ancestral File is a compilation of submitted genealogies. And the Resource File consists of genealogies uploaded to the website via the “share” option. This is very helpful to prevent duplicate research. All of these files can be accessed from the site. 8. Ancestry.com is another excellent resource with complete census records, the World Family Tree and the new One World Tree that attempts to compile similar and duplicate files into one spot. It is a wealth of information. It’s only drawback is that most of the information requires a subscription to access. But I have found that it is well worth the fees. Some LDS Family History Centers have subscriptions. 9. Lastly, THE best source of links to genealogical websites is www.cyndislist.com. Cyndi Howell has thousands of links to various types of genealogical data. You could spend a lot of time on this site. 10. Make sure you check for genealogical and historical societies in the areas of your research. They can be a valuable resource and provide many services including classes in genealogical research, and data. Most of them don’t ask for a particular fee for some information but it is traditional to make a donation to the societies for their time and information. 11. Ask relatives for information and you are off an running. Remember to keep backups of all data and make a printout of all data. Printouts of family group sheets and pedigree charts should both be kept.

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