Genealogy: 7 Dead-Easy Tips for Beginners

There may be a lot to learn about genealogy, but you don't need to know much to get started. You don't need any fancy tools, either. You already have what you need to begin: yourself.

Tip Number 1. Every family tree starts with one person, and this one starts with you. Think about your life. It doesn't have to be a full-blown autobiography, just a few vital statistics about your life.

Tip Number 2. Family trees begin with names and dates. So you want to write down your full name-first, middle and last. CAPITALIZE all the letters of your last name. Genealogists refer to your last name as your "surname," and they always capitalize them, so they will be easier to spot later, especially when you have recorded a lot of them.

If you have a nickname, write that down, too, only put it in quotation marks. Nicknames are written this way so they won't be confused with actual names.

The first date you should write down is your birth date. Genealogists have a special way of writing the date, too. They start with the date, then the month, followed by the year. However you write it, make sure you spell out the month. Here's why: If you have a date between 1 and 12, it can be confused with the number of the month. For instance 1/2/80 could be January 2nd or February 1st.

After that, put your place of birth. Again, genealogists write places in a certain way, putting down the city, county, state, and country.

If you are married, write down the same information about your spouse.

Now, you're ready to go back in time. You probably won't know a lot of the information you need here, but just write down what you do know. You can fill in the blank spots later when you've found out the information.

Above you in your family tree, are your parents. Write down your father's name (first, middle, "nickname," and SURNAME). Add his date of birth (date, month, year) and place of birth (city, county, state, country). Write down your father's date of marriage to your mother. If he is no longer alive, write the date and place of death, and the place and date of burial. Write down the names of all his children, along with their dates and places of birth.

Do the same with your mother, using her maiden name as the surname.

Your father had parents, your paternal grandfather and your paternal grandmother. Write down the very same information about each of them. Do the same for your maternal grandparents. There will be 4 grandparents. Each of these grandparents had parents as well, which are your maternal and paternal great-grandparents. There will be 8 of them.

Now you have finished writing down what you know. Look over what you have written, and see where the blank areas are. These are things you will need to find out. This is the research part.

Tip Number 3. One of the first things a genealogy researcher learns is to ask older family members first, before you jump right into doing research. It may be a parent, an aunt or uncle, a grandparent, or even a cousin. It could even be an older neighbor or friend of the family. You never know who knows what until you ask.

Ask questions, and listen carefully. Don't get in too big a hurry. Sometimes older people will start to remember things as they talk, so don't interrupt them; let them talk. For things they don't know, be sure to ask their advice about who might have that information.

Tip Number 4. Once you've finished interviewing, for the time being, it's time to do some simple research on the Internet. There are all kinds of genealogy web sites out there. Start off by seeing if there is some other family member who is researching your family tree and posting their results online. A cardinal rule of family history research is, never duplicate what someone else has already done.

If you find a relative's web site or blog, study it. If you have questions, leave a message or email them.

Tip Number 5. Then there are the archive sites, which means that they have digitized all kinds of names from record repositories and placed them online. You can search these sites for information about your ancestors. Some of them are free, and some of them charge a monthly membership fee.

Tip Number 6. There are online search engines, like Google, where you can enter information about your ancestor, and see what information comes up. To start, just type in the names of two married ancestors. Put the names in quotes with a capitalized AND in between the names. Try again, adding additional information, such as a date of birth or death, a city or state, or any other details that will narrow the search.

Tip Number 7. Once you have done this, you should have the basic information to fill in a four-generation family tree. Search for family tree forms online, and download one to print out. Then hand print your ancestry information into the blank spaces on the tree. When your chart is finished, you may even decide to frame it and hang it on the wall.

For many people, this is enough. For others, the genealogy fever starts to heat up, and they want to learn more, to go further back into their family history. That's up to you, but you have already learned enough to get started.

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