My God, where do you all BEGIN?

[LaydeeBug]

I only know that my family is from Baltimore and before that Wilmington and Philly.

What do I do? :shrug:

How do I start? (I'm sort of embarrassed to ask this, so if I've offended, I am sorry) :blush:

[Spider Jerusalem]

1. Start with what you know.

Know your grandparents' names and places of birth? Great-grandparents? You can get birth and death certificates from state records offices (and birth certificates, and in some cases death certificates, will have the parents' names); many records have been digitised and are available (for a fee) through ancestry.com, which your local library may have. US Censuses for 1930 and earlier are also digitised and online and available via Ancestry; by searching further back through the available records you can make quite a few connections (and apart from birth and death certificates and census info, there are probate court records of wills, land records, military service records, burial records, church records...many of which are also available online). Also, quite often you'll find that someone else has been there ahead of you and done the work of documenting one branch of your family, which can be very helpful.

[csziggy]

2. Talk to your parents and grandparents

Aunts & uncles, too. Any relatives or family friends that might have information. Cyndi's List has links to some good guides for getting started. Some may be connected with commercial software, but ignore sales pitches, just see what the ideas are for getting started. http://www.cyndislist.com/beginner.htm#Guides Besides, while you are interviewing family, you can take notes or record the talks and develop family histories for each individual. My grandmother did that about a hundred years ago and it is really great reading the narratives she developed for each person in her family and her husband's family.

The Genealogy Forum Beginners' Center has some good resources such as forms to help you see what information you need and articles to help get started/: http://www.genealogyforum.com/gfaol/beginners/index.html

USGenWeb has a project going to collect archives from all over the US but it is a volunteer activity so some places are covered nicely and others have little, but it is all free" http://www.usgwarchives.net/

From the beginning, keep track of where you got the information. Some kind of software for keeping track of what you have and where it came from is helpful. Personal Ancestry File is free from Latter Day Saints and is easy to use, even if it is very basic - http://www.familysearch.org/eng/paf/pafonline.asp There are links for each individual for storing sources for each bit of information, for photos and for images of documents. It really does not matter which program you start with, all should be able to export and import GEDcom files which are the standard for sharing information across programs.

Or Legacy Family Tree Standard version is also free, but I have not used it much yet: http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/Index.asp

Once you see how much you can accumulate from family members, use places like Cyndi's List to find out what resources are available for the areas where they lived. Many things are on the internet now but you need to know where to start looking.

Good Luck!

[CBHagman]

3. It's all very doable, even if you have no one to interview.

The above instructions/suggestions are right on the mark -- start with what you know; compile first the record of members of your immediate family, with full names, birthplaces and birthdates, and move on to grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, et al. It goes layer by layer, but you don't always know where you are going to wind up.

A couple of suggestions/caveats:

1. Make copies of your driver's license/other identification to use when submitting official forms for birth, death, and other records.

2. Go for the original records as often as possible -- i.e., birth certificates, naturalization papers, etc.

3. "Trust, but verify" is not quite the motto here. It's "Verify." Your memory or another family member's may have gaps, or be faulty. Transcription errors may have occurred while transferring records to online databases. Official records may contain errors. Back things up with another source wherever possible.

4. Libraries are your friend. Aside from sometimes offering free access to subscription genealogy sites, they give you archives of newspapers, city directories, etc. These can be a godsend when researching.

5. Local genealogical and historical societies are your friends. They may have microfilmed records, photographs, and the like, and may offer seminars and newsletters to help in your research.

6. Look for local or regional Family History Centers (operated by volunteers from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) and regional outlets of the National Archives.

7. Make judicious use of online surname and location message boards. You may find someone who is searching for the same people (I did). You may find heretofore unknown relatives (I did). But be warned that a lot of it's just going to be people who are totally unrelated to you and just happen to be searching for similar surnames and/or within the same community.

8. Assume NOTHING. The name on Grandpa Jake's birth certificate or draft card may not be Jacob. Census takers may have recorded that your family was Swedish when they were really German. That detailed family tree you just found online may be filled with errors and mistaken assumptions. Expect surprises. Expect mistakes. Expect skeletons to come out of closets and scandals to be revealed.

9. Don't forget to Google various family names, in various forms, with and without locations. Specifically, make use of Googlebooks too; you never know who will turn up there.

10. Don't forget other resources -- churches, newspaper archives, the aforementioned city directories, etc. City directories and obituaries in particular have proven a rich source of material for me.

11. It can't all be done online, whatever you've heard. This is the time to pay attention to your mailbox or learn to crank microfilm readers.

12. Don't let anybody stop you with too many pat answers or platitudes -- e.g., "The records all burned!" "Why, Joe Schmoe over at Ancestry has posted our complete family tree going back to Charlemagne!" Think like a detective and keep going.

Have fun, and I hope you find an abundance of material.

[LaydeeBug]

4. Thanks so much you guys...

I am definitely bookmarking this page. So many places I'd never heard of (Cyndi's list) I had no idea there were beginner's websites, or anything like that.

[sybylla]

5. And I would add...

that there are low-tech ways to keep track.

You will probably find on Cyndi's List or similar sites a link for printable forms to track your family. Look for pedigree charts, family charts and even forms for recording census, birth, marriage and death records - until you can get that physical copy.

If you can't find free forms, you can buy them at genealogy bookstores like Origins. I use their eleven generation folded family tree punched for use a three ring binder - because you can't always take your software with you. I also give their 7-generation fan charts to my family, though it's amazing how many people it takes to fill one up.
http://www.originsbooks.com/

You could also send me a pm with your e-mail address and I'll send you the printable forms I downloaded for free years ago.

The point is, you don't have to buy or download software until you feel more comfortable with what you think you'd like to have. I've been doing this for 21 years and still have trouble finding family tree software I like that does everything I want it to. It's not always an easy decision. And even with software, I recommend having a paper backup anyway as well as loads of electronic backups. The last thing you want is to lose all your research and have no easy way to restore it or access it while the computer system is down.

Good Luck!

[kestrel91316]

6. When you THINK you don't know anything about a particular family member, ask

yourself what bits and pieces you DO know about them. Did you personally know them or did they die before you were conscious? If they dies when you were young, what grade were you in and so what year did they die, and does the social security death index have them? Where did they live in 1930, 1920, 1910, etc (track them through the census and track all the family members individually).

I can glean a lot from people's vague recollections about cousins' names and who married who and all that. You'd be surprised what you know, even if you start by thinking you know nothing.