How to Trace Your Family History – Where To Start

The ideal place to start and learn how to trace your family history is with you.  It’s normally information you are already familiar with unless you were adopted and unable to obtain any information about your past.  Your task is not impossible, just a little more difficult.  But before you begin it’s wise to establish the parameters of your research.

How to Trace Your Family History - Establish Your Goal

This may depend on your resources, time and money.  If you intend to collect information on every person who touches your tree including researching the family history of in-laws, then your research could take years, requiring a great deal of travel, resources and money.  If on the other hand you limit your Family History to just those in your direct line the task is not quite as large, time commitment is much less and your costs are reduced.  It may be time to ask yourself. “Why am I doing this? ” Is it for your children, maybe grandchildren?  Or is it to establish a medical history?  Some people believe before you can go forth with your life, you must know where you have been.  Knowing your heritage helps build the future.  Once you have established your goal stick to.

From time to time and as you become more experienced, review the course you have establish and if situations have changed and a new course is warranted, consider modifying your original goal.  But stick within you own guidelines.

Documentation
Genealogy is all about documentation and record keeping.  It’s recording in a standard format, vital information on yourself and your ancestors.  For your work to have any creditability you must also document your Sources.  This is done in a manor that permits other people to verify your work.  You source documentation should indicate where the info can be found.  Always document your sources providing reference information such as a film number or name of a book, including any reference or page numbers.

If you are given genealogy records pertaining to your family, document where they came from and make sure you obtain their Sources.  Without that, the work is suspect and cannot be substantiated.  If it contains errors, it could set you back months in your own research and cast doubts on all of your work.
I cannot stress this enough… Record your sources.

Recording you Family History
There is several way of recording / documenting your family history and the one to chose is the method that you’re most comfortable.  You can do it on a personal computer with a program such as Family Tree Maker, or simply on 3 x 5 index cards and sheets in a binder.

Personal Computer
If you have a Personal Computer (PC) and are comfortable using it then you can obtain from the Internet, free or almost free a Genealogy Program.  Two that come to mind are PAF (Personal Ancestral File) and Brothers Keeper.
PAF ~ to download free, visit www.familysearch.org/ and go to their free download section.

Brothers Keeper ~ http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Brothers_Keeper/
Or  http://www.bkwin.org/ . (After you have had an opportunity evaluate this software you are expected to pay a fee to the developer of the program.)

A computer program normally provides all the features of good record keeping.  It will also automatically draw a number of charts.  A disadvantage is the reliability of the equipment.  Prepare Backup’s of your data at lease one a week in the event of a computer crash or virus infection.

The balance of this instruction book will detail the recording of your family history on paper.  Even if you are maintaining your family history on a computer, you cannot always take it with you during periods of research.  Some paper records will be required.

Tags: ancestry, family tree, How to Trace Your Family History, Tracing Your Family History