How to go about searching ones ancestry/genealogy?

Question

How would one go about finding their ancestry/genealogy? I would ask my family but they don't know enough to search and the only ones who would know have passed before I was born and before anyone could learn anything. Please help. Any advice will be much appreciated.

Answer 1

There is an excellent tutorial for those who are new to family research at http://rwguide.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ ; everyone starting out in genealogy should understand the basics and this tutorial covers them. After you complete the tutorial, the following is a basic plan and generally only requires the tools that you already have like your computer and Internet service provider.



So, start with your birth certificate, which has your parents, and then ask your parents for copies of their birth certificates, which will have your grandparents on them. Then if you grandparents are living, continue the process. At some point, you will experience a problem depending on when you grandparents or great grandparents were born, in that; birth certificates did not exist before the early 1900s in most states. Therefore, you need to get back to 1930 with personal records because those types of records are not available to the public for 50 to 100 years depending on the jurisdiction in which they are held and census records which are quite valuable in tracing our ancestors movements are not available before 1930 at this time.



By copying or ordering these documents, you have gone to relatively little expense and including you, you have four generations and you have it documented with primary documents. That will give you 2 parents, 4 grandparents, and 8 great grandparents’ names to start researching. Now, you can use death certificates, marriage records, census records, immigration records, church records, court records and many other sources to research your ancestry. Your public libraries will most likely have both Ancestry.com and Heritage Quest.com free for anyone to use while at the library and with a library card you should be able to use Heritage Quest at home.



Another free online resource is the LDS/Mormon site, which has many free online records and original documents on their new Beta site at: https://www.familysearch.org/ . Their regular website has Ancestral Files, 1880 US Census, 1881 British Census, 1881 Canadian Census, International Genealogical Index, Pedigree Resource File, US Social Security Index and the Vital Records Index for some Countries. In addition to their online records, they have Family History Centers where you can go for personalized help with research and look at microfilm and while they will not do your research for you they will help you, a lot. They only charge if they have to order something specifically for you or you need photocopies and their charges are minimal. Look on the home page of their website to find a location near you and call to check hours of operation. http://www.familysearch.org/eng/Search/frameset_search.asp



Additionally, USGenWeb is another free online resource at http://www.usgenweb.org/ . This site is packed with how-to tips, queries and records for every state and most counties within those states. Then, there is Rootsweb at http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ a free site hosted by Ancestry.com where you can search for surnames, post queries on the message boards and subscribe to surname mailing lists.



Also, be sure to check each state that you need information from as many have their own projects, for example, the state of Missouri has a great website that has many free source documents online at http://www.sos.mo.gov/mdh/ and South Carolina has many free wills and other court documents at http://www.archivesindex.sc.gov/onlinearchives/search.aspx



Also, Family Tree Magazine’s 101 Best Websites, 2010 http://familytreemagazine.com/article/101-Best-Websites-2010 You may have to register for their free newsletter to access this list but you will find that helpful also as they highlight new websites and new research strategies in each newsletter.



And the only site that is included on this list which has some links that are free and some that are fee is Cyndi’s List but it will be well worth your time to look through the list for the free websites because of their quality: http://www.cyndislist.com/



There is a new free genealogy search engine, Macavo.com, that provide genealogist and newcomers alike with the best genealogy content on the web. It searches hundreds of thousands of genealogy web sites, looking for the words that you specify, all free. http://www.mocavo.com/

Answer 2

Start by printing out a pedigree chart, like this one:

http://www.wvhcgs.com/ChartSixGen.jpg



Fill out all the information you know, starting with yourself and working backwards. Your family members, especially the older ones, will know some of the information. Be sure to ask your more distant relatives, too, like cousins and great aunts and uncles; they might know some things that your immediate family doesn't know. For each ancestor, you'll want to find the following information:



Full name (maiden name for women)

Date and place of birth

Date and place of marriage

Date and place of death



Once you've gathered all the info your family can give you, you can begin looking for historical records to fill in the blanks and take you back further. No matter how average or nondescript your ancestors may seem, they did things throughout their lives that got recorded: they got married; had children; held jobs; bought and sold property; paid taxes; talked to the census taker; perhaps served in the military, or immigrated from a foreign country. They passed away, leaving wills, death certificates, obituaries and cemetery records. All these records contain bits of information that can tell you about your ancestors' lives, where they came from, and who their parents were.



Some of these records are online. Many aren't, but can be ordered by mail or viewed at libraries, archives and courthouses. Ancestry.com probably has the largest collection of online records, and there are lots of other great sites as well. Here are a few of my favorites:



Ancestry

http://www.ancestry.com/Default.aspx



FamilySearch (the Mormons)

http://www.familysearch.org/eng/default.…

http://search.labs.familysearch.org/reco…



Rootsweb

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/



USGenWeb

http://usgenweb.org/



Footnote

http://www.footnote.com/



CyndisList

http://cyndislist.com/



GenForum

http://genforum.com/



Aside from historical records, Ancestry and other sites allow users to upload their family trees. If you're lucky, someone else has already researched part of your family and published it to one of the online databases. But keep in mind that these online trees were not created by Ancestry employees or by a magic computer - they were submitted by regular users like you and me. Some may be experienced researchers, some may be beginners who've made some errors. If you find your family in an online tree, be sure to verify the information yourself by searching for historical documents to back it up.



Another way the internet can help is by getting you in touch with people who can help you: cousins who have researched your family, experts in specific areas, people who will volunteer to look up information for you. GenForum, Ancestry and Rootsweb have message boards and/or mail lists for specific surnames, locations and research topics.



The LDS (Mormon) Family History Center in Salt Lake City has the largest collection of genealogical records in the world. It's a great place to visit, but you don't have to travel there to utilize their resources. Most Mormon churches throughout the world have a branch of the library inside their building: a Family History Center. You can borrow records from the big library on microfilm and have them sent to your nearest Family History Center. The volunteers there are very helpful. You don't have to be a member of the church, and they won't try to convert you.



Hope this helps some! Good luck!

Answer 3

Based on 2 reports in serving to others, I'd provide you with a warning - there's a small risk your aunt does now not wish to support on the grounds that her father abused her. That is not the one purpose aunts do not wish to support; a few seem upon it as foolishness, a few are too busy with different pursuits, however each as soon as in a at the same time you run into anybody who desires not anything to do along with her mothers and fathers on the grounds that her father abused her, verbally, bodily or sexually, at the same time her mom did not anything. So, do not push it. You could also be inadvertently reminding her of a few very disagreeable reports. Whenever I listen "We can not ask the daddy some thing" I get wary. (On the opposite hand, I recognize a girl whose step-father touched her inappropriately. He got here residence tomorrow to discover his garments in a pile at the entrance porch, the locks at the doorways modified, and a be aware from his quickly-to-be ex-spouse that if he got here into the residence she'd supply him each barrels of the goose gun.) Most of the guys who served in Viet Nam are nonetheless residing. There don't seem to be genealogical main points of residing folks on any respectable genealogical internet website online. (There are different main points of residing folks on internet websites. You can, for illustration, see Glen beck's critiques approximately practically the whole thing, and skim intriguing main points of the comings and goings of the wealthy, the popular and the notorious.) There aren't any complete lists of folks who served. There is a horny well one for many who served within the Civil War, however for any warfare after that the files are spotty. If your grandfather is useless, put up his identify, beginning 12 months, dying 12 months, siblings' names, and anybody will attempt to discover him within the 1930 and 1940 census for you. If you can not speak to any one approximately them, they usually weren't wealthy or popular (Donald Trump's exceptional-exceptional-grand youngsters will have to have NO problem discovering him, against this, will have to they have an interest, in 2112) essentially the most you'll normally discover approximately anybody is in an obituary, unfortunately.

Answer 4

There are over 400,000 free genealogy sites. Among them



www.cyndislist.com - 250,000 links, all categorized.

www.familysearch.org - The Mormons. Gazillions of records.

wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com - Roots Web World Connect - 600,000,000+ entries

usgenweb.org - Sites for every county in every state in the USA

ssdi.rootsweb.ancestry.com - Social Security Death Index, 83 million names

vitals.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ca/death/ - California Death Index, 9,366,786 records

www.findagrave.com - 43 million records

genforum.genealogy.com - Query boards for every county in every state, and thousands of surnames.

boards.ancestry.com - The other Query board site; counties and surnames too.

archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com Roots Web Mailing List Archive - Over 30 million messages



I have a page with real links to all of those, below, but you'll have to wade through some advice and warnings first.



If you search the resolved questions in this category only for the word "Free"(use "Advanced" to limit your search to this category only), you'll find there are thousands questions with the word, and at least 2/3rds of them ask "How can I trace my family tree for free?", just like you did. The answers to those questions have lots of links and tips. We top 10 paste our stock answer to that question 3 - 12 times a day, sigh, and wonder why you kids haven't read the resolved questions. You are rare and special in some ways, undoubtedly, but not in your curiosity about your family. As of February 2011 there were 5,075 resolved questions with the word "free" in them in Genealogy.



If you didn't mention a country, and you didn't go into Yahoo! by one of their international sub-sites, we can't tell if you are in the USA, UK, Canada or Australia. I'm in the USA and my links are for it.



If you are in the USA,

AND most of your ancestors were in the USA,

AND you can get to a library or FHC with census access,

AND you are white

Then you can get most of your ancestors who were alive in 1850 with 100 - 300 hours of research. You can only get to 1870 if you are black, sadly. Many people stop reading here and pick another hobby.



No web site is going to tell you how your great grandparents decorated the Christmas tree with ornaments cut from tin foil during the depression, how Great Uncle Elmer wooed his wife with a banjo, or how Uncle John paid his way through college in the 1960's by smuggling herbs. Talk to your living relatives before it is too late.



You won't find living people on genealogy sites. You'll have to get back to people living in 1930 or so by talking to relatives, looking up obituaries and so forth.



Finally, not everything you read on the internet is true. You have to be cautious and look at people's sources. Cross-check and verify.



So much for the warnings. Here is the main link.



http://www.tedpack.org/yagenlinks.html



That page has links, plus tips and hints on how to use the sites, for a dozen huge free sites. Having one link here in the answer and a dozen links on my personal site gets around two problems. First, Y!A limits us to 10 links in an answer. Second, if one or more of the links are popular, I get "We're taking a breather" when I try to post the answer. This is a bug introduced sometime in August 2008 with the "new look".



You will need the tips. Just for instance, most beginners either put too much data into the RWWC query page, or they mistake the Ancestry ads at the top for the query form. I used to teach a class on Internet Genealogy at the library. I watched the mistakes beginners made. The query forms on the sites are NOT intuitive.

Answer 5

I use family group sheets and create on for the parents, grandparents and go back one generation at a time. The reason I use the group sheet is because there is a place on them for sources that is obvious, unlike the pedigree chart. With out citing the sources of your information your work is useless and has little meaning.

Answer 6

Most families say they don't know but they all have basic information and their own civil records, like birth, marriage cets, drivers licenses etc

You start with you and your living relations and all their own records they all have which will give you lots of information and get you back at least 3 generations...depending on what country you are looking in depends on what civil records you can view....census in the US you need get back to 1930, in the UK 1911....this website will help you http://familytimeline.webs.com/recordsinyourownhome.htm