Firstly speak to all your older relatives and ask them if you can copy or if you can borrow the birth, marriage and death certificates they hold. These contain all sorts of information which you will need to copy down – don’t forget that marriage certs and full copies of certs have details of other relatives – father or mother, occupation and addresses. You need to know where your family lived so that you can search the records in that area.Once you have this info you can start searching. But do yourself a favour and either sign-up to Genes-united or buy a programme CD for generating family trees. I use ` Create Your Own Family Tree Genealogy Suite by Focus – cost me £9.99 from Amazon. If you use Genes united you can search their births, deaths, marriages and census database but this costs £5 for 50 credits, which does not go far, so get as much info as you can from the family – if necessary write to them and ask for any info that may be relevant. I managed to get bach to my great grea
Get as much information from family as possible, particularly senior members. Tape them if they will let you. You might find some of the information they were confused on. However what might seem to be insignificant ramblings and story telling might turn out to be very significant. People who do this say after doing research for awhile they go back and listen to the tape again and hear things they didn’t hear the first time around. Go to your public library and check the genealogy section. See what all they have. They might have a subscription to Ancestry.Com which has a lot of records and is obtaining more all the time. They have all the censuses through 1930. The 1940 is not available to the public yet. Family trees on any website (paid or free) must be viewed as clues not as fact. A lot is not documented and there are errors in many trees. Even when you see several submitters with the same information, a lot of copying is being done. However, the information can point you to the pla
Start to make a Family Tree with yourself at the bottom of the sheet. Add when and where born – draw a line up to your parents with as much info about them – date of birth, place of birth, jobs, etc. Fill in when and where married for your parents. Then continue up for next generation and generation before that. You can see now everything you don’t know. Take this chart to grandparents – ask them to help fill in the gaps and ask if they have any registration certificates you can copy. If you look at a Marriage Certificate it will have the names of the couple getting married and their fathers On a birth Certificate you will have the baby and both parents. So you can work back gradually filling in your chart. Identify the County where all this happened and see if there is a web site for the Family History Society for that County plus a list of all the names being researched by members. Someone may have done your Family Tree already. For example, my family were from Bristol, Devon and Som
The best way is simply to start with your own family. If you want to do it on the computer, you can download PAF (Personal Ancestral File), which is free genealogy software at http://www.familysearch.org under Order/Download Products. I imagine you can pick it up pretty quick because it is very user-friendly. Then talk to your parents (and grandparents if still alive) and get as much information as you can from them including names, dates, and places. Here are a few online resources for you to use: http://www.familysearch.org – Probably the best free online resource. http://www.ancestry.com is one of the best but has a hefty subscription fee (for most of its databases). Also, you can check the surname message boards for your surname at: http://genforum.genealogy.com